NYTimes: “While the road ahead for computer science education may be uncertain, the market for A.I.-assisted software is poised for growth, experts say. A.I. is a productivity tool, and every new wave of computing — the personal computer, the internet, the smartphone — has increased the demand for software and for programmers. This time, they say, the result may be a burst of technology democratization as chatbot-style tools are used by people in fields from medicine to marketing to create their own programs, tailored for their industry, fed by industry-specific data sets. “The growth in software engineering jobs may decline, but the total number of people involved in programming will increase,” said Alex Aiken, a professor of computer science at Stanford.”
WSJ: “We usually feel the impulse to tame or civilize teenagers, but maybe that’s wrong. Instead of trying to teach or enlighten them, maybe we should be importing some of their seemingly chaotic and maddening traits into our own lives. Instead of making them more like us, we should be thinking about how we could fruitfully be more like them. Rather than feeling annoyed or amused or worried, we should be viewing their way of life as a gentle but powerful reproach of our own. When I ask my 16-year-old son at, say, 3 p.m. if he will be around for dinner, he looks at me like I am asking him where he will be in three years. His plans are always up in the air. Impromptu gatherings involving three, four, five people cohere instantaneously out of nowhere. Like most adults I know, my dinners, drinks or lunches with friends are planned at least a week in advance, and usually weeks. While I don’t think I would thrive in the total fluidity of teenage social life, maybe I could learn to see friends a little more spontaneously, to pop out for coffee or a walk with one of them on impulse. Wouldn’t it be kind of great to decide to meet someone for drinks in 20 minutes?”
FT: “Maybe, with ChatGPT, we will now enter a new, more civil era of the break-up. With a bit of judicious prompting, we will become the Valvert to its Cyrano. ChatGPT will make us sound more sensitive, compassionate and warm. It will offer us emotional detachment from the awkward job of being human, whilst lending us the manner of a literary swain. And not only in our love lives. In the workplace, ChatGPT is reviving long-forgotten courtesies. Especially among those so desensitised by decades of email that their online conversation is now limited to a few monosyllabic grunts. The advent of new AI tools offers us a spellcheck, a bit of a polish and a buffet of automated responses. “That sounds great! Please go ahead,” prompts the little Gemini gremlin who hovers over all my correspondence. I’m always tickled by how effusive and encouraging it makes me seem.”
Democratic political consultant Hank Sheinkopf: “The [US] Democratic Party has become a group of clans that come together every two or four years, for a particular purpose, but have nothing in common beyond that. What binds the party together is not ideology, but individual concerns [grievances] be it gay or trans or affirmative action or pro-choice. There’s no overriding principle. That’s why they’re in decline. They don’t have a set of crossover arguments.”
