Developed by US company OpenAI, ChatGPT has taken the internet by storm, winning 100 million users since it came out in November 2022. People can ask the robot to write stories and emails, create instructions for cooking a certain food, translate languages, and answer all kinds of questions. In its own words, it is "a language model trained in a large amount of internet text to help users get human-like text."

Compared with Siri or other chatbots, ChatGPT uses a much bigger information center for training. It also uses stronger software (软件) and hardware to learn things by itself. For example, if it provides a wrong answer to your question, you can tell it the right one and it will correct itself. "It's a totally different chatbot," computer scientist Liu Xiaoguang from Nankai University told Tianjin Daily. "The knowledge level ChatGPT shows is the same as a university student. That's why it shocked the world."

But one big problem with ChatGPT is that it makes mistakes or even gives false information. When Rezza, a 28-year-old from Indonesia, used the robot to write an essay (论文), it "gave out many examples which other writers actually hadn't mentioned at all", he told The Guardian. Since the robot is trained using words from the internet, it can also pick up biases (偏见) about certain groups. These are all things that need to be dealt with.

There are many deserts (沙漠) on the earth. And the following are some facts you may find interesting.

What are deserts like?

Deserts can be hot and dry places. Rain may not fall there for months or years. Some deserts are sandy and stony (多石的). Deserts can also be very windy places. The wind can change the shape of the deserts. It moves sand around from place to place.

Temperatures in the desert can vary enormously(非常). During the daytime, the temperature may reach 40℃ even in the shade (阴凉处). At night, deserts can become very cold. In winter there may even be a frost (霜冻) in the early morning.

Living in the desert

The camel is sometimes called "the ship of the desert". It stores food in its hump (驼峰) and can go for days without water. It has large feet which help it not to fall into the soft sand. Its long eyelashes (睫毛) keep out the sand during sandstorms.

An oasis is an area of the desert where water may be found. The water may be in pools or under the ground. People and animals visit an oasis for water and food. Plants grow at an oasis. Some farmers are able to grow crops here.

The Arabian Desert

The Arabian Desert lies between the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. In some parts of the desert, it is too hot for people to live. Oil was discovered under parts of the desert and in the Arabian Gulf. This oil has made some countries in the area very rich. Much of the money has been spent building fine cities with lovely parks and lakes, and people live a comfortable life there.

Science shows why we trust people who are confident. Imagine this: one person tells a lie confidently, while another says something true in a hesitant voice. Which person would you trust?

According to British scientist Dean Burnett, humans are far more likely to believe information expressed confidently by a confident person or in some other ways using confident language. "Humans trusting confident people over those who are more uncertain is a known thing," wrote Burnett for Science Focus magazine. "When two people are trying to make a decision but each person says different things, confidently expressed arguments are seen as passing on better information, which decides the decision."

Why is this the case? As Burnett said, humans are social animals. In our ancient past, most of our information about the world came from our tribe(部落), in other words, the people around us. So, if ancient humans heard someone confidently saying "There's a tiger coming" , believing what that person said could save our lives.

On a more personal level, we use our own experiences to understand what other people do and say. That's how our brain works. When we are confident, it's for good reason. Therefore , we believe that when someone else is being confident, they must have good reason, too.

However, we need to realize that confidently expressed information may be more persuasive(有说服力的), but that doesn't mean it's correct. As Burnett wrote, we are living in a more and more different world. Trusting very confident people without checking the facts can lead to "unexpected results".