Computers have beaten human world champions at chess and, earlier this year, the board game Go. So far, though, they have struggled at the card table. So we challenged one AI to a game.

    Why is poker(扑克) so difficult? Chess and Go are “information complete” games where all players can see all the relevant information. In poker, other players' cards are hidden, making it an “information incomplete” game. Players have to guess opponents' hands from their actions—tricky for computers. Poker has become a new benchmark for AI research. Solving poker could lead to many breakthroughs, from cyber security to driverless cars.

    Scientists believe it is only a matter of time before AI once again vanquishes humans, hence our human-machine match comes up in a game of Texas Hold's Em Limit Poker. The AI was developed by Johannes Heinrich, researcher studying machine learning at UCL. It combines two techniques: neural(神经的) networks and reinforcement learning(强化学习).

    Neural networks, to some degree, copy the structure of human brains: their processors are highly interconnected and work at the same time to solve problems. They are good at spotting patterns in huge amounts of data. Reinforcement learning is when a machine, given a task, carries it out, learning from mistakes it makes. In this case, it means playing poker against itself billions of times to get better.

    Mr Heinrich told Sky News: “Today we are presenting a new procedure that has learned in a different way, more similar to how humans learn. In particular, it is able to learn abstract patterns, represented by its neural network, which allow it to deal with new and unseen situations.”

    After two hours of quite defensive play, from the computer at least, we called it a draw.

    It seems that the great desire among the young is to be popular. The desire to be popular can force you into looking and acting like everyone else. You can lose yourself in a sea of identical hairstyles and thinking styles.

    I was forced to think about popularity not too long ago in a talk I had with my daughter. Margy had to change schools when my busy work schedule made it necessary for me to move houses. I suppose that，for a girl in her teens，entering a new school is like spending a season alone in the tropical jungles. At least that's how Margy found it at first. However，as the school year drew to a close，one student after another came to her.I told Margy that I would have been more concerned if she had been an instant social success in her new school. Nobody can please everyone. If you try to do so，you will find values as lasting as soap bubbles blown into the air.

    Some teenagers claim they want to dress as they please. But they all wear the same clothes. They set off in new directions in music. But somehow they all end up listening to the same record. Their reason for thinking or acting in a certain way is that the crowd is doing it. They have come out of their cocoon into a larger cocoon.

    I know that it has become harder for a young person to stand up against the popularity wave. Our way of life makes a young nonconformist stand out like a Martian. These days there's a great barrier for the young person who wants to find his or her own path. But the barrier is worth climbing over. You may want to listen to classical music instead of going to a party. Well，go to it. Be yourself .Popularity will come with the people who respect you for who you are. That's the only kind of popularity that really counts.

    If you are in Dubai you may notice a robot police officer sharing the street with you. Your first thought might be, “Have I walked into a movie set？”

    The answer is no. That robot is Dubai's newest police officer. The robot has a touch screen instead of a gun. The robot will be employed mostly at shopping centers and other places popular with visitors.

    The robot's face has eyes but no mouth or nose. It stands 165 centimeters tall and weighs 100 kilograms. If the robot works well, Dubai says 25 percent of its police force could be robots by 2030. The robot cop(巡警) was officially presented at Dubai's Gulf Information and Security Expo and Conference in May.

    The police hope the robot will make life easier for the people of Dubai. Khalid Al Razooqi is Director General of Smart Services at the Dubai Police. He said the robot can help the public every day, and that “it won't ask for any sick leave”.

    The robot cannot make arrests (逮捕). But it can recognize faces and compare them to photographs on a criminal database. It can also sense emotions. People can use the robot's touch screen to do things like reporting a crime, paying fines and reporting lost or found things. They can also ask how to get somewhere. The robot can greet and shake hands with people. So far, the robot can speak Arabic and English. It soon will learn other languages such as Russian, Chinese, French and Spanish. In addition to having a touch screen, the robot has a camera that can live stream video to a police command center.

    Dubai has plans to add other kinds of robots to its police force. Within two years, the city plans to use a three meter tall robot that can run up to 80 kilometers an hour. The Dubai government says the machine would be the world's largest robot. A human police officer will be able to sit inside and control the robot. It will be able to lift heavy objects.

    The city also plans to use an egg shaped robot to control parking areas and give tickets to people who break traffic laws.

    Artificial Intelligence (AI) is making it possible for companies to monitor workers' behavior in great detail and in real time. Start to slack off (懈怠), and AI could talk to your boss.

    One company offering such services is London-based start-up Status Today. Its AI platform relies on a regular supply of employee data, including everything from the files you access to when you use a key card. From this, it builds a picture of how employees normally function and signals any unusual performance. The idea is to spot when someone might become a security risk by doing something different from their usual behavioral patterns. “All of this gives us fingerprint of a user, so if we think the fingerprint doesn't match, we raise a warning”, says Mircea Dumitrescu, the company's chief technology officer.

    The system also aims to catch employee actions that could accidentally cause a security breach (漏洞), like opening malware (恶意软件).“We're not monitoring if your computer has a virus.” says Dumitrescu. “We're monitoring human behaviors.”

    But catching the security breach means monitoring everyone, and the AI can also be used to track employee productivity. “It seems like they are just using the reputation of AI to give an air of lawfulness to old-fashioned workplace surveillance (监视),” says Javier Ruiz Diaz of digital campaigning organization the Open Rights Group. “You have a right to privacy and you shouldn't be expected to give that up at work.”

    Exactly how companies use the system will be up to them, but it's hard to shake the picture of an AI constantly looking over employees' shoulders. “It will bother people, and that could be counterproductive if it affects their behavior,” says Paul Bemal at the University of East Anglia.

    Phil Legg at the University of the West of England says it will never catch every security risk. “If people know they're being monitored, they can change their behavior,” he says.

    While we all try to find happiness, sometimes we still end up feeling low. While most people can control this feeling, low moods can stay with some, leading to depression. About 322 million people suffered from depression in 2015, according to a report by the World Health Organization in February. This is more than 4 percent of the world's population.

    Depression is described by the WHO as a mental disorder. It has several symptoms including sadness, loss of interest and feelings of low self-worth. In severe cases, depression may even lead to suicide.

    The number of people living with depression is increasing. The WHO reported a rise of 18.4 percent between 2005 and 2015. Young people are a group known to suffer with depression. “The pressures on today's youth are like no other generation, perhaps," Dan Chisholm, an official of WHO, told Reuters.

    In China, depression among young people is on the rise, Zhu Zhuohong, a psychology professor with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told Xinhua News Agency. Competition to outperform others, especially in education, can cause a lot of pressure for Chinese youth.

    Almost 1.2 million Chinese people aged 15 to 24 suffer from depression, according to a report released by British science journal The Lancet in May.

    Luckily, more and more efforts are being made to deal with this problem. This year's World Health Day, held on April 7, will focus on depression. The day will highlight the “Depression: let's talk" campaign. The campaign aims to make sure that people with depression both seek and get help.

    Plants are boring. They just sit there photosynthesizing (光合作用) while animals have all the fun. Right? Not so much. A new study has found that there is a long history of interactions between ants and plants. The ant and plant co-evolution (协同进化) started with ants feeding on plants and plants evolving ant-friendly features.

    Plants make a number of different structures that are specific for ant use. Some plants have evolved features that persuade ants into defending them from attack from other insects and even mаmmаlѕ. Тhеѕе іnсludе hollow thorns that аntѕ will live іnѕіdе, or ехtra nесtаr (琼浆) оn lеаvеѕ or stems for the ants to eat. Some ants will just cheat and take the nectar and run, but some will stick around and attack anything that tries to hurt the plant. Other plants get ants to help them move their seeds around, by providing them with rich food packets attached to the seeds. The ant will pick up the seed and carry it away, eat the food packet, and leave the seed—often in a nutrient-rich area where it'll grow better, and since it's farther away from its parent, they won't have to compete for resources.

    But scientists weren't sure how the evolutionary relationship between ants and plants got started. If evolution is an arms race between species developing ways to make use of their neighbors, then scientists wanted to know whether plants or ants fired the first shot. It was a chicken-and-egg question, whether things started with ants developing behaviors to take advantage of plants, or plants evolving structures to take advantage of ants.

    The history of ants and plants evolving together goes back to the time of the dinosaurs, and it's not easy to tell from fossils who fired the first shot. However, it is a question of little significance. Scientists say their study maters because it provides a look at how these widespread and complex interactions evolved.