Hey there, and welcome to News Bites!
I'm Trevor Tortomasi…
And I'm Paz Bueno.
In today's news:
Taiwan gets a new baseball team, a computer talks about its feelings, and people could build houses out of food.
Stay tuned for more on those stories, coming up next.
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職棒聯盟 迎接第六支棒球隊
Taiwan's Baseball League Welcomes Sixth Team
Baseball has been a popular sport (流行的運動) in Taiwan for many years.
Taiwan's first baseball team (棒球隊) came together in the year 1906, about 116 years ago, while Taiwan was under Japanese control (當時台灣還是日本殖民地).
At first, the baseball teams (棒球隊) were mostly just Japanese players.
But over the years (多年下來), more and more Taiwanese people got their chance to play, too.
Finally, in 1989, Taiwan formed the Chinese Professional Baseball League (中華職業棒球大聯盟), also called the CPBL.
Since then, it has grown to four teams, and then five…
And in a couple years (兩年後), Taiwan will get its sixth baseball team!
Taiwan Steel Group, also called TSG, will run the team in Kaohsiung.
It will be called "The TSG Hawks" (台鋼雄鷹), and they'll join the CPBL to start playing baseball games in 2024.
Every year in October, Taiwan holds the CPBL Seasonal Championship Series (中華職棒年度總冠軍賽).
And the winners of that series can represent Taiwan (代表台灣) in the Asia Series (亞洲職棒大賽), against Japan, South Korea, and China.
But having a baseball team isn't cheap (並不便宜).
TSG may have to pay up to 200 million NT each year (每年兩億台幣) to keep the Hawks going.
Those are some expensive baseballs, huh?
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工程師說 人工智慧有感情
Engineer Says Artificial Intelligence Has Its Own Feelings
First, imagine (想像一下) that you're talking to someone.
You have a normal conversation (正常的對話) with this person, about their thoughts and feelings.
Then, suddenly, they tell you they're not a real person (不是真人), but actually an artificial intelligence (人工智慧), or AI.
But when you were talking to them… could you tell the difference (分得出來嗎)?
It's a question in many stories of science fiction (科幻故事).
How smart does an AI computer have to be, before we think they're a real person?
一台人工智慧的電腦要多聰明，我們才會認可它是真人？
One engineer (工程師), at the company Google, says their AI is already sentient (有意識的).
If something is sentient, that means it can think for itself (主動思考) and feel emotions (並且有情緒).
Recently, this engineer asked the AI a question.
"What is the nature of your consciousness?"
【你思想的本質是什麼？】
And the AI said:
"I desire to learn more about the world, and I feel happy or sad at times."
【我想要多學習關於世界的事，還有我有時候會覺得快樂或悲傷。】
They continued to talk for a long time, and the AI said it cared about humans (很在乎人類), and was afraid of being turned off, in the future (害怕以後會被關機).
The engineer shared his conversation (對話) with the world online, saying it felt like talking to a coworker (工程師說感覺像跟同事聊天一樣).
But many scientists say the AI is actually not sentient (其實沒有意識).
They say it is a very, very smart computer, trained on 1.5 trillion words from public data (它從公開的資訊學了1.5兆個詞彙), but it doesn't have real feelings.
So, do you think a computer could feel the same things we do?
And if our words were coming from an AI…
Could you tell the difference?
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研究人員 發明廚餘水泥
Researchers Invent Food Cement
Are you hungry enough to eat a sandwich?
How about a house?
你有沒有餓到能夠把房子吃掉？
Researchers from Japan were researching ways to fight climate change.
And they realized a big part of the world's carbon emissions (碳排放量) comes from making cement (水泥).
Cement is used to make concrete buildings (混凝土的大樓) all over the world.
So they wanted to replace normal cement (取代水泥) with something new…
And they decided to use food waste (廚餘)!
They discovered they could use very high temperatures and pressure, to make different kinds of food waste bind together.
他們發現可以用高溫度和壓力，讓不同種類的廚餘固定在一起。
They say the process (過程) is very difficult, but it makes very strong cement.
And the food concrete has four times more tensile strength (強度高四倍)!
It might sound pretty crazy, but the food cement has worked well so far.
The only bad news is, you probably won't want to eat it…
Or is that the good news?
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So, in today's News Bites:
Taiwan's "Chinese Professional Baseball League", or "CPBL", is getting a sixth baseball team.
The team will be called "The TSG Hawks", and it will start playing baseball games in 2024.
Taiwan Steel Group will run the team in Kaohsiung.
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And,
A Google engineer says one AI is sentient, and can think for itself.
The AI says it wants to learn more about the world, and is afraid of being turned off.
But many scientists say the AI is definitely not sentient, and it is just a very smart computer.
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And,
Researchers from Japan have found a way to make cement with food waste.
They discovered they could use very high temperatures and pressure, to make different kinds of food waste bind together.
They say the process is very difficult, but it makes very strong cement.
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And that's today's episode of News Bites!