How will people travel in the future? Hollywood movies have considered about a future of flying cars which might not be too far from reality. By 2030, 1/4 shared passenger miles traveled on America's roads could be in self-driving cars. It's believed eight out of ten people will be using Robo-taxis in cities where available by 2035. Sharing journeys will also be more popular. All these could reduce the number of cars on city streets by 60%，emissions (排放) by 80%, and road accidents by 90%.

Uber (优步) spends much money in the flying cars. Los Angeles, Dallas, and some states in Australia could see test flights within a couple of years-but these cross-city flights need changes to air traffic control systems, which will probably take longer to develop than the flying cars themselves.

Traveling across country could be much quicker, too. China is leading the world in high-speed bullet trains that are able to travel over 400 kilometers per hour. But for high-speed travel, the Hyperloop could leave bullet trains in the dust. The lack of air resistance (阻力) means pods could reach speeds of over 1, 000 kilometers per hour.

In the air, the makers of supersonic jets (超音速射流) are promising to reduce travel times, too. Arion wants to carry 12 passengers at 1. 4 times the speed of sound-about 60% faster than typical aircraft today, and rival Boom hopes to be flying its supersonic airliner by 2023, carrying 55 passengers up to 2.2 times the speed of sound.

Although some people think these ideas are not practical and expensive because there are many technical challenges, tech and engineering companies are still trying to solve the problems and promise to propel us into the future.

One hundred years ago, in January 1921, a play that changed the world was shown in Prague. Rossum’s Universal Robots （R.U.R） marked the first time that the word “robot” was used to describe human-like machines. Here is how robots are used.

Helping hands

Robots have found their way into homes and classrooms. In 1999, the Japanese company Sony produced a robot called AIBO. Then in 2008, a French company introduced a robot called NAO. It is used by schools around the world to help teachers with lessons. Recently, a NAO robot called Elias began to teache primary school students in Finland. The “teacher” is a small, blue machine. Whenever students have problems, it helps them very patiently and never gets bored. The robot can make students more active in class than usual.

Out of this world

Nowadays, robots are not only used in our everyday lives, but also used for exploring space and space research. Robots have become an important part of space missions （任务）. The Curiousity rover（好奇号火星探测车） explored the surface of Mars. The International Space Station has a robot called Robonaut 2（R2）. It was sent into space in February 2011. It could perform some tasks so that astronauts had more time to do scientific research.

Into the future

Some people are afraid that robots will take too many jobs away from humans. However, some think that the use of robots will create more jobs. Besides, it has been proved that robots and humans can work together. In my opinion, whether it’s in education, entertainment （娱乐） or exploration （探究）, robots will play a big part.

For as long as humans have appeared, we have been the most intelligent species（种类）on Earth. Monkeys know how to use simple tools. Elephants can be taught how to count. But things like art, literature（文学）, the Internet, and space travel have only been made possible by the amazing intelligence of humans. And yet, there are some who believe that we can create machines that can think and feel just like we do. Artificial intelligence（人工智能）, or AI, is defined（定义为）by Merriam-Webster as “the capability of a machine to imitate intelligent human behavior”.

AI is around us every day. From Apple’s voice-activated assistant Siri to the software algorithms（算法）that shipping companies use to deal with deliveries（投递）, AI is very much a part of our lives.

But why do we put so much effort into creating machines that can think the way we do? For one thing, AI can make our lives much easier. Imagine being able to be in a car, tell it your destination, and sit back in comfort as the AI-guided self-driving car takes you there. We’re already getting there—Changsha became the first city in China to roll out self-driving taxis in April 2020.

However, there are risks. What if we somehow produced an artificial intelligence that was smarter than us? How would it behave toward us? These are the kinds of difficult questions that AI researchers ask themselves all the time.

Apart from the risks, it is already clear that AI is here to stay. Only time will tell if it will lead us into a new age of prosperity（繁荣）, or be our end.