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AI textbook series to be introduced into schools

Primary and secondary schools will introduce the country’s first AI textbook series into classrooms next year, according to media outlet, The Paper. The 10-volume series will be introduced by hundreds of schools across the country as either elective courses or part of the school-based curriculum. A part of the program has already been piloted in Shanghai. Significant technological research and development in the field is being reported across China, with authorities now moving to promote AI-related education. The country’s first artificial intelligence textbook for high school students was released earlier this year.

Senior citizens embrace mobile payment apps

For more than a decade, Ma Wansheng ran a small food stand in a night market in Lanzhou, Gansu province, providing snacks for people working overtime or out for the night. Managing change for customers meant Ma, 71, often had to fumble in his pocket on chilly nights while keeping an eye on the food. Doing business became much easier after his grandson helped him set up mobile payment apps like WeChat Pay and Alipay last year. A piece of paper with his QR payment codes has helped streamline the payment process. “About 95 percent of my customers pay with their phones. It’s convenient,” Ma said .

Restored Gainsborough painting on show

A Gainsborough portrait of his nephew was restored and more than a century’s worth of yellowing varnish removed revealing just why one friend of the artist described it as “more like the work of God than man”. A specialist at the National Portrait Gallery in London meticulously cleaned the 1773 portrait of Gainsborough Dupont, and the result has been a revelation. Dupont, the gallery said, looks less the son of a humble Suffolk carpenter and more a gilded youth who could have stepped straight from the royal court.