Taking a bus or subway, making payments online, or just walking — these daily activities can help turn China’s deserts into forests if you are using Ant Forest.

Ant Forest is a feature (功能) in the Alipay mobile payment app. It records users’ low-carbon (低碳的) activities — taking a bus to work instead of driving, for example — and gives users “green energy”. When the user’s green energy gets high enough, Ant Forest and its partners will plant a real tree for that person.

Last month, Ant Forest received the 2019 Champions of the Earth award, the UN’s highest environmental honor. It won the award by encouraging people to live greener lifestyles and protect the environment.

About half a billion people have used Ant Forest since it came out in August 2016. Ant Forest and its partners have planted about 122 million trees in China’s driest areas, including parts of Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Qinghai and Shanxi. The trees cover an area of 112,000 hectares (公顷). This makes Ant Forest China’s largest tree-planting project started by a private company and Ant Forest also shows us how we can use technology to solve environmental problems.

AI is becoming more and more common in our life. Not long ago, an AI canteen (餐厅) opened in Shanghai.

The AI Canteen, located (位于) in the Hongqiao Area, covers about 130m². It can serve about 300 people every day, and most of them are old people living nearby or office workers in the area.

At the canteen, people need to order food on a screen. For those who are not sure what they want to eat, the canteen’s cooking system (系统) can give advice.

The canteen’s robotic arms cook dishes. They can make different kinds of Chinese dishes like noodles, gongbao chicken, and so on. What’s more, the robotic arms can pack dishes and control the temperature for dine-in or takeaway.

At the self-service area, people simply need to put their dishes on a smart cash desk and the system will tell them the price of the meal. People can pay in different ways, like using bank cards or QR codes (二维码). The prices of the food at the AI canteen are pretty good. The meat dishes cost 8 yuan while the vegetable dishes cost only 3.5 yuan.

“The meals cooked by robots taste as good as those cooked by humans. It is cheap and convenient for us to eat in the Al canteen,” said an old man.

Months ago, at a show in the UK, we saw some things about science in 1923. What will science be like in 2123? We asked some experts for their ideas.

Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock, space scientist:

I think people in 2123 will work hard to develop technology for traveling in space. If successful, we could get to Alpha Centauri (半人马座阿尔法星). And in 100 years, people may be able to answer the questions “Are we alone in space? Are there other humans in space?”.

Professor Steve Brusatte at University of Edinburgh:

I think in 100 years, people will improve medical science. Well, of course, doctors in 2123 will still use many of the medicines made in the 2020s. And I think that if there is a show of today’s things in 2123, it will have some masks (口罩) during the COVID-19.

Professor Andrea Sella at University College London:

I think in the future, people will laugh at our worry about AI. At the same time, they may have to stand worse weather. They will wonder why we didn’t act to stop the world from warming by 4°C-5°C.