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AI: PROS AND CONS

Artificial intelligence is showing up everywhere this fall: in our phones, our classrooms and our newsrooms. Most Americans still aren’t sure how they feel about it. A Pew Research Center survey taken in June found that 52% of U.S. adults are more concerned than excited about AI. For the first time, a majority of adults under 30 feel the same way.

Those worries aren’t coming from nowhere. When the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union tested leading AI assistants on news questions, 45% of the answers had at least one significant problem, from bad sourcing to outdated facts. But AI is also doing real good, including helping doctors screen for skin cancer and diabetic eye disease.

In the video below, I argue for a middle path: use AI as a tool, check every fact it gives you, and never hand it your byline. Watch, then tell me in the comments whether you agree.

AI -- The "Pros and Cons"

Artificial intelligence is showing up everywhere this fall: in our phones, our classrooms and our newsrooms. Most Americans still aren’t sure how they feel about it. A Pew Research Center survey taken in June found that 52% of U.S. adults are more concerned than excited about AI. For the first time, a majority of adults under 30 feel the same way.

Those worries aren’t coming from nowhere. When the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union tested leading AI assistants on news questions, 45% of the answers had at least one significant problem, from bad sourcing to outdated facts. But AI is also doing real good, including helping doctors screen for skin cancer and diabetic eye disease.

In the video below, I argue for a middle path: use AI as a tool, check every fact it gives you, and never hand it your byline. Watch, then tell me in the comments whether you agree.

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The image that represents 9/11 to me

This photograph has become a powerful symbol of September 11 because it freezes the moment the World Trade Center was visibly under attack: one tower already shrouded in smoke as a fireball erupts from the other. 

Flight 175 strikes the South Tower of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (Jim Harding/Los Angeles Times)

As a photograph, its power comes from the terrifying clarity of the composition, with the familiar symmetry of the Twin Towers shattered by flame, smoke and debris against an otherwise bright blue sky. 

It represents the scale and shock of the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed in coordinated attacks on New York, the Pentagon and aboard Flight 93; the 9/11 Memorial & Museum’s historical exhibition provides an essential account of the attacks and their aftermath. The National Park Service’s September 11 timeline provides another valuable resource, tracing the events of that morning and helping place images like this one in their historical context

My autobiography

I was born in the Avalon Park neighborhood of Chicago in 1965. During that time, the neighborhood was beginning to change. The neighborhood was first populated by Germans and Swedes in the 1880s. And for the next 80 years, it was predominantly white. But African-Americans began moving in the neighborhood in the early to mid-1960s. Chicago, one of the nation's most segregated cities, was experiencing white flight throughout the city, a phenomenon which was encouraged by unscrupulous real estate agents who engaged in panic peddling among white families. This happened in Avalon Park as well, which was well-documented by this 1963 article in a real estate journal, "How Marynook Meets the Negro", which looked at how a relatively new community in Avalon Park called "Marynook" addressed integration. Despite the best intentions of many, white families in Avalon Park were almost non-existent by 1980. But the neighborhood is still a middle class community, with 65 percent of its African-American residents employed in white collar jobs, a much higher number than when the neighborhood was all white. The neighborhood also maintains some of its wonderful landmark attractions, from the beautiful Avalon-Regal Theatre, designed by noted theater architect John Eberson in 1927; to the imposing Chicago Vocational High School, a mammoth institution built in 1940, with a still-extant airplane hangar; and the hundreds of handsome bungalows built in the 1920s.

My five favorite websites

I have always been a big proponent of websites with strong interactive functions. One website that is a favorite is the New York Times, which has been in the forefront for multimedia presenations for the past 15 years. One of the best examples of the New York Times' great work with multimedia is its presentation, "The 1619 Project." I also appreciate the work done at ESPN.com, which offers up interesting investigative pieces in addition to highlights.