‘AI and robotics will aid, not end, human space exploration’
Mark R. Whittington at The Hill
Some people “contend that advances in AI, robotics and electronics will allow Earth to explore and even commercially exploit other worlds such as the moon and Mars with just machines,” says Mark R. Whittington. But “humans will not be replaced either on Earth or in space” and robotics “will actually enhance human capacity.” While robots can “take over tasks that involve pattern optimization,” humans “will still retain tasks that require creativity, emotional intelligence and determining why actions need to be undertaken.”
‘Trump’s presidency is what evil looks like: absurd, frightening, cruel’
Nesrine Malik at The Guardian
Trump “defies attempts to make his actions cohere,” says Nesrine Malik. His “lack of vision or ideology are misread as attributes that make him somehow less dangerous than the authoritarians of the past who have become the template for what evil looks like.” But Trump’s “constant self-aggrandizement, his grudges against political adversaries, the fury at being challenged by the press, the revenge he promises to wreak” are “ways to erase and avoid what is a permanent terror of humiliation.”
‘How American schools can address political polarization’
Deborah Kenny at Time
Polarization “has become one of the defining threats to American democracy,” says Deborah Kenny. To “address these issues, some schools have turned to civics content, media literacy and dialogue initiatives.” But these efforts “misunderstand the problem. Polarization is more than a knowledge deficit. It is a self-government deficit.” Students “should be exposed to competing views and learn to articulate multiple sides of an issue,” and schools “must defend free inquiry, reject dogma and privilege the unencumbered search for truth.”
‘Why are workers stuck? Not enough employers.’
Kathryn Anne Edwards at Bloomberg
What “makes recessions so harmful to workers is the freezing of movement,” says Kathryn Anne Edwards. The “gears of the labor market — gears that are constantly shuffling workers from job to job to unemployment to job again — slow to a crawl.” This is “what is making today’s labor market so damaging.” The “market has been heading toward a situation like this — with recession-like conditions of slow gears even when the market should be tight — for a while.”