 Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. Coming up on the program, Katie Weaver reports on record low sea ice in Antarctica. Gregory Stockle has a story on the U.S. Nuclear Research Centers aimed to modernize America's atomic weapons. Brian Lin brings us the Technology Report on chat GPT adding voice and pictures to its AI services. Later, Andrew Smith and Jill Robbins present the English lesson of the day. But first, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, NSIDC, reported Monday that winter sea ice hit record lows in Antarctica this year. Researchers say the lack of sea ice is evidence of serious climate change at the South Pole. Researchers say the lack of sea ice will affect penguins who mate and raise their young on the ice. In addition, a lack of ice speeds Earth's rising temperatures. A large amount of sea ice keeps the planet cool because it reflects sunlight back into space. The amount of sea ice was at its highest level on September 10th toward the end of the Southern Hemisphere's winter. However, it only covered 16.96 million square kilometers. That was the lowest coverage since satellite records began in 1979. The latest measurement breaks a low ice record from 1986 by about 1 million square kilometers. Walt Meyer is a top NSIDC scientist. It's not just a record-breaking year, he said. It's an extreme record-breaking year. The group said the ice measurement findings are not complete. It said a full report would come out in October. Sea ice reaches its peak or highest level in late September in the Southern Hemisphere. The ice melts to its lowest point during the Hemisphere's summer in February or March. The last summer measurement came about six months ago, which also set a new record for melting ice. I'm Katie Weaver. Los Alamos in the southwestern American state of New Mexico is where the U.S. government set up its secret mission to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. 80 years later, it is the home to huge government research and development laboratories. Now, Los Alamos National Laboratory is taking part in the nation's largest nuclear weapons effort since World War II. The aim is to modernize America's nuclear weapons. New workers there are producing an important part of nuclear weapons, plutonium cores. The government has given jobs to about 3,300 workers in the last two years. The workforce is now over 17,270. Close to half of the workers live in some other part of New Mexico. The population of Los Alamos nearly doubles during the work week. While new technology has changed the way work is done at Los Alamos, some things remain the same. Secrecy and a sense of duty that came in the 1940s are still part of the community. James Owen is an engineer. He has spent more than 25 years working in the nuclear weapons program. What we do is meaningful. This isn't a job, it's a vocation, and there's a sense of contribution that comes with that. Owens told the Associated Press. He added, the downside is, we can't tell people about all the cool things we do here. While the main goal of Los Alamos is maintaining America's nuclear weapons, the research center also works in other areas. These include energy, national security, space exploration, supercomputing, efforts to limit disease and threats from computer attacks. Employees say their work is necessary because of worldwide political insecurity. Most people in Los Alamos are connected to the laboratories, so opposition is rare. But groups that follow nuclear development, such as activists and non-profit organizations, question the need for nuclear weapons and the increasing costs. Greg Mello is director of the Los Alamos study group. It is an organization that has disagreed with the laboratory over safety, security, and cost concerns. He said, for some time, Los Alamosans have seemed numbed out. Christopher Nolan's recently released film Oppenheimer brought new attention to the town. The attention increased support for an effort to expand the federal government's radiation compensation program for a group of people in several western states. The group includes people in southern New Mexico, where the Trinity test of the first atomic bomb took place in 1945. In July, the U.S. Senate voted to expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which would pay money to people who might have been affected by nuclear-related activity in the U.S. The activist groups argue that the federal government's modernization effort has already gone above spending predictions. Additionally, they say the effort has taken years longer than planned. Independent government researchers released a report earlier this month that showed the growing costs and delays. Owen said officials feel a sense of urgency because of increasing threats around the world. What's being asked is that we all need to do better in a faster amount of time, he said. I'm Gregory Stockle. The artificial intelligence AI tool ChatGPT has added new abilities that include voice and image recognition. The changes permit some users to directly ask ChatGPT questions and receive voice answers. In addition, the tool can recognize images and provide information about what is in them. ChatGPT is a chatbot, a computer-powered tool designed to interact smoothly with humans and perform high-level writing. The technology is also known as Generative AI. The creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI, announced the tool's latest additions or upgrades this week. Currently, the new voice and image upgrades are only available to users of ChatGPT's Plus and Enterprise services. ChatGPT's main service, called GPT 3.5, is free for all users. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 per month. The enterprise service is designed for individual companies with costs tied to the services used by the business. OpenAI explained that ChatGPT Plus and Enterprise users would be able to use the voice and image additions over the next two weeks. The upgraded tools would be made available to other groups of users, including developers soon after. The voice and image upgrades will also be added to devices using the iOS and Android systems in the near future. The company said ChatGPT's new voice control is designed to provide a natural way for users to communicate with the AI tool in a way that is similar to speaking with a human. But it noted the Chatbot can do more than answer questions. It can also tell a story to children or provide detailed instructions for making or building something. Users can choose different voices they want the Chatbot to use. The company said it worked closely with professional voice actors to make the interactions more realistic and personal. The voice interaction ability of the ChatGPT upgrade already exists in many voice assistance systems. These include Amazon's Alexa, Alphabet's Google Assistant, Apple's Siri, and others. American software maker Microsoft added voice controls to its new ChatGPT-powered Bing search engine earlier this year. Another notable change to the ChatGPT tool is image recognition. This permits users to upload a photo to the system and then get information about what is contained in the picture. For example, the company says a user could take a picture of what is currently available in their refrigerator. After entering the photo into ChatGPT, the tool could suggest dinner possibilities based on what the person has. The system could also provide step-by-step instructions for preparing the meal. Another example given is a parent who might take a picture of a child's math problem and then seek advice on how to explain to the child how to solve it. There is even a way for users to mark areas of the image, for example with a circle, to get more specific information or help with that element. Along with its announcement, OpenAI issued another warning about how its ChatGPT tool can easily get things wrong. It noted that because the system is trained using massive amounts of publicly available information, it can return results that are false, outdated, or discriminatory. The company urged all its users to watch out for misinformation and to attempt to verify the information provided by ChatBots. OpenAI announced its AI technology is also being used by the Digital Music Service Spotify. ChatGPT is being used to power a system designed to permit Spotify podcasters to translate their shows into different languages. The translations are completed in the podcasters own voice in an effort to make them sound more natural, OpenAI said. Spotify says the first languages to be added in the coming weeks will be Spanish, French, and German. I'm Brian Lin. Brian Lin joins me now to talk more about his technology report. Welcome back Brian. Thanks Dan, glad to be here. This week you reported on some upgrades to the widely used AI tool ChatGPT. We learned one of the upgrades gives users the ability to speak directly to the system. How does this ChatBot differ from other digital assistant products already available? Yes, industry experts are saying people have already become very used to the idea of humans speaking directly with machines, especially with personal computers, phones and other devices. And many of us have experimented with those virtual assistants with mixed results. Sometimes good, sometimes not so good. But OpenAI says with its ChatGPT voice upgrade it's offering an AI tool that is much more powerful and in its view smarter than existing voice assistants offered by Amazon, Google, Apple and others. You noted in the report that these upgrades are not immediately available to all ChatGPT users. Why is this? So OpenAI said it decided to start with a slower release in order to further test the additions and collect feedback from users on possible issues. And this is actually how the company has treated all its past releases as well. So the people who will be able to use the system first are paid users, both individuals and businesses. But OpenAI has said it does plan on expanding these upgrades to other user groups very soon. It has not yet said however whether the voice and image abilities will one day be extended to all non-paying users. Alright so I guess we'll have to wait to hear more about those future plans. Thanks again for joining me, Brian. Sure, Dan. Thanks for having me. My name is Anna Matteo. And my name is Jill Robbins. And I'm Andrew Smith. You're listening to the Learning English podcast. Welcome to the part of the show where we help you do more with our series Let's Learn English. The series shows Anna Matteo in her work and life in Washington, D.C. This lesson has three parts. First, you will hear and repeat a few informal expressions Anna uses that are very common in American English. Next, you will hear Andrew and me having a native speaker conversation. Third, you'll get to practice hearing and listening to phrases that begin with the word what. We have a lot to do in today's lesson so let's get started. Here's Anna in lesson 19 when she learns that she is going to make a new TV show. I have a new assignment for you. Your skills are perfect for a new show. A children's show. A children's show. That is awesome. When do I start? You start next month. Start thinking of ideas for the show. I have tons of ideas. I can show children what it's like in outer space or great. Tons of is an informal way of saying a lot of. A ton in the units of weight used in the United States is 2,000 pounds which is about 907 kilograms. So that's why a ton of or tons of means a lot or very many. Anna has a lot of imagination so she has tons of ideas. I have tons of ideas. And there are tons of things we can talk about based on the Let's Learn English series from VOA Learning English. Here's some more examples with the expression tons of. So Andrew, I'm going to Charlotte, North Carolina next weekend for a work meeting. But I haven't had time to plan my trip and I don't really know what to do. Oh, don't worry about that. There's tons to do. There are more than one really good art museums downtown. There are major sports teams. There's an NBA basketball team, an NFL football team, soccer teams. There's a very good symphony orchestra and a lot of good restaurants. You will have plenty to do. Yeah, I'm sure I will. Hey, I meant to ask you. Would you help me move my office furniture if you're not too busy? Yeah, no problem. I've got tons of time. Speaking of the office, do you have any paper clips? Oh, I've got tons of them. Take all you want. Andrew, pretty soon our listeners will have tons of examples. That's true. I think they probably get the idea. But they should remember that tons of is a little bit informal and it is used more in speaking than in formal writing. That's true. So how about teaching another informal expression? Well, how about, how about? Yeah, we can do that. Here's Anna and Jeannie in Lesson 14. Anna needs some clothes to wear and a Jeannie appears and tries to help. Tonight I am going to the theater with my friends, but I don't know what clothes to wear. Maybe this magazine can help. Her clothes are beautiful. I really want a friend like her to help me. Who are you? I am Jeannie. You want help? I am here to help you find the right clothes. Awesome! How about jeans and a t-shirt? No! Jeans and a t-shirt are too casual. How about something more formal? Sure! When Anna says, how about, she means, what if we try this? Awesome! How about jeans and a t-shirt? And when we speak quickly, we sometimes drop the ah sound from about and just say about. So it sounds like this. How about this? Or how about that? How about we listen to Anna one more time? Can you put on a jacket? Why not? I love the jacket! How about a hat? I think we can find tons of examples of people saying, how about? I'm sure we can. But how about we do something else? There's something Anna says at the end of Lesson 19 that we could talk about for our native speaker conversation. Let's listen. I have tons of ideas. I can show children what it's like in outer space or in the deep, dark ocean. Those are great ideas, Anna. Please, go think of more at your desk. Yes! What other things can I show them? Mount Everest! Everyone has different skills. You have skills. I have skills. The important thing is to know what you are good at. Until next time! I think Anna has some useful advice. It is important to know what you are good at. Yeah, for example, last week, I realized that I'm good at catering. You know, like setting up food and tables for a party? It's probably something I learned from watching my mother. Let's move on to our third topic for today. Phrases that start with the word what? Grammatically, these are called noun clauses. But you don't have to worry about the name. Just listen to the word order. You hear the word what? Then you hear a subject followed by a verb. Here's Anna again in lesson 19. Excited that she's going to have a new TV show. The noun clause is at the end. A children's show. That is awesome! When do I start? You start next month. Start thinking of ideas for the show. I have tons of ideas. I can show children what it's like in outer space. When she says what it's like, you hear the word what plus the subject it plus the verb is using the contraction form it's. So normally when we ask a question with words such as what or where, the verb comes before the subject, like when we say what is your name. But if we put the what or where inside a sentence or statement, the subject and verb change places like this. I want to know what your name is. The words what your name is are the object of the verb no. So their job in the sentence is to function like a noun instead of a question. So that's why the word order is not like a question with what. It can be tricky to reverse the subject and verb order correctly. But don't worry, we're going to give you tons of examples. I can show children what it's like in outer space. And how about these examples? I can show you what I want. I can show you what I need. I can tell you what I think. I can tell you what I see. You can show me what you want. You can show me what you need. You can tell me what you think. You can tell me what you see. I can tell you what to do. I can tell you where to go. You can? Yes, I can. Go ahead, tell me some more. I can tell you what time it is. I can tell you what the weather is. I can tell you what my cat likes to eat. I can tell you where my cat likes to sleep. I can tell you what it's like to watch the moon and stars at night. I can tell you what I want. I can tell you what I need. But I can't tell you what to do because that's really up to you. You know, I think that's true. You can't tell me what to do. But you can give me some good advice. Well, here's some advice for our listeners. Practice repeating the sentences you hear on this lesson of the day. And use the Let's Learn English series to find many more examples of things you can learn to say. That is some good advice. We hope you've enjoyed today's lesson of the day on the Learning English podcast. I'm Andrew Smith. And I'm Jill Robbins. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak.