With the help of a new mobile application called Farm Assistant, developed by Wu Zeyin, farmers in Botswana can make their work much easier.

近日，吴泽胤开发了一款名为Farm Assistant的种地小程序，这让博茨瓦纳农民的工作轻松了许多。

Wu, an 11-year-old pupil from Hubei province, moved to Botswana with his family seven years ago.

11岁的吴泽胤是一名湖北省的小学生，七年前，他和家人搬到了非洲国家博茨瓦纳。

"During the past years living in the country, I found that the quantity of fruit and vegetables sold at local supermarkets very limited, and quality was poor," he said. Some vegetables weren't ripe, such as small carrots and green tomatoes, and they are quite expensive."

他说：“在博茨瓦纳生活的这些年里，我发现当地超市出售果蔬的数量非常有限，而且质量不好。有些蔬菜甚至还没有成熟，比如小胡萝卜和绿番茄，价格还很贵。”

Tropical savanna and desert climates are the norm in most parts of the country, making it difficult to grow common crops.

该国大部分地区都属于热带草原气候和热带沙漠气候，这让种植常见的作物变得困难。

For a long time, Botswana had to import many grains, fruits and vegetables from neighboring countries, such as South Africa, to meet the needs of its people.

长期以来，博茨瓦纳必须从南非等邻国进口许多谷物、水果和蔬菜，以满足该国人民的需求。

In a bid to eliminate food shortages, Botswana has embarked on a series of cooperative arrangements with China. 

为了缓解粮食短缺问题，博茨瓦纳与中国开始了一系列合作。

In July last year, a pilot project to grow China's water-saving and drought-tolerant rice was successfully undertaken in Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, which brought Wu some new ideas on local agriculture.

去年7月，中国节水抗旱稻种植试点项目在博茨瓦纳首都哈博罗内成功开展，这给吴泽胤带来了一些关于当地农业的新想法。

"At that time, I was preparing for the first Youth Artificial Intelligence and Future Media Global Innovation Challenge," he said.

他说，“当时，我正在备战首届青少年人工智能与未来媒体全球创新挑战赛。”

"When I got the news, I gave up my initial plan of developing a personal time management app, and decided to develop an app for agriculture."

“得知这个消息后，我放弃了最初开发个人时间管理应用程序的计划，而决定开发一款农业应用程序。”

The app supports eight crops commonly grown locally, including tomatoes, potatoes, onions, corn, carrots, cabbage, eggplant and radishes.

这款应用程序包含八种当地常见的作物，如西红柿、土豆、洋葱、玉米、胡萝卜、卷心菜、茄子和萝卜。

Farmers who use the application can click on the crop picture to see its planting node, watering needs, ripening time, seed price, selling price and yield.

在该应用程序中，农民只要点击作物图片，就能看到其种植节点、浇水量、成熟时间、种子价格、销售价格和产量。

After planting the seeds, farmers click the timer to start, and the application reminds them what to do at each stage.

播种后，农民点击开始计时器，应用程序就会提醒他们在每个阶段要做的事情。

Wu quotes an old saying in China: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime."

吴泽胤引用了一句中国古话：“授人以鱼只救一时之急，授人以渔则可解一生之需。”

Apple is testing generative AI concepts that could one day be destined for Siri, despite fundamental issues with the way the virtual assistant is built, the New York Times reports.

据《纽约时报》报道，苹果正在测试类似于ChatGPT的生成式人工智能技术，这些技术有朝一日可能用于Siri虚拟助手，尽管Siri的设计方式存在一些根本性问题。

Employees were apparently briefed on Apple's large language model and other AI tools at the company's annual AI summit last month.

上个月，苹果公司在年度人工智能峰会上，向员工介绍了苹果的大型语言模型和其他人工智能工具。

Apple engineers, including members of the Siri team, have reportedly been testing language-generation concepts "every week" in response to the rise of chatbots like ChatGPT.

据报道，苹果的工程师们，包括Siri团队成员，“每周”都在测试语言生成的概念，以应对像ChatGPT这样的聊天机器人的崛起。

These next-generation AI technologies have highlighted how Siri, Alexa, and other voice assistants have squandered their lead in the AI race, the report explains.

这些新一代人工智能技术表明，Siri、Alexa等其他语音助手在人工智能的竞赛中浪费了他们的领先优势，报告中解释道。

Siri, in particular, has faced multiple roadblocks to meaningful improvements.

尤其是Siri，面临着重重障碍，这阻碍它实现有意义的改进。

Speaking to the New York Times, former Apple engineer John Burkey, who worked on Siri and was made responsible for improving it in 2014, explained that the voice assistant is built on "clunky code that took weeks to update with basic features." 

前苹果工程师约翰·伯基曾负责Siri的开发，并在2014年负责其改进工作，在接受《纽约时报》采访时，他解释说，Siri是建立在“笨拙的代码之上的，即使是添加基本功能也需要花费数周时间。”

Its "cumbersome design" made it very difficult for engineers to add new features.

其“繁琐的设计”使得工程师很难添加新的功能。

For example, Siri's database contains a large list of phrases in almost two dozen languages, making it "one big snowball."

例如，Siri的数据库包含了近24种语言的大量短语，它就像“一个大雪球”。