“Computers can’t do math.” David Schaengold has a clear and provocative essay on the differences between computer “thinking” and human thinking: “we can be sure that there are world states beyond the comprehension of any AI. And I suspect that those world states will not necessarily be the ones that seem extreme to us. We don’t have to reverse the moon’s orbit. It will be a matter of strange, seemingly incomprehensible sentences. Or donning cardboard boxes, as some US Marines recently did as an exercise in dodging an AI-enabled camera setup. As far as the AI ​​was concerned, the boxes might as well have been invisibility cloaks, and the Marines walked right past the camera. It is as if the frameworks have shifted the representation of the world state to a hidden integer, and thus the Marines have simply disappeared from the computer’s conceptual apparatus. We are used to human intelligence, but whatever capabilities a computer has, intelligence is not one of them.” (Recommended by Adam Smith.)

“I heard Ol’ Neil.” Bill Kauffman reflects on two independent Canadian thinkers – George Grant and Neil Young: ‘George Grant understood that healthy nationalism – or, much better, healthy patriotism – is based on love and loyalty, not on resentment or simple anti-ism . .”

 “Lina Khan’s hipster antitrust policy is actually conservative.” Matthew Yglesias explains the paradoxes Khan must deal with as she leads the FTC: “Is antitrust law a tool to protect consumers from higher prices, or to defend small businesses against big corporations? The implications of the answer are more than just theoretical. One approach to antitrust is shiny and new and has won Khan praise from both left and right – but is legally untested. The other is a bit boring and often criticized, but there is a lot of legal precedent behind it.”

“The Least of My Brothers: Sally Thomas’ Works of Mercy.” Abigail Wilkinson Miller reflects on the wisdom of Sally Thomas’ novel: “Many of us lament the lack of a vibrant and supportive community in our neighborhoods and cities. But can we really have community without the discomfort of real flesh-and-blood encounters with other people? Chatting with the grocery store clerk, arguing with babies at Mass, listening to the man at the end of the line chewing his popcorn too hard during a movie matinee—these are all part of what it means to be human. It is the discomfort of particularity that also allows us to practice virtue.”

“The artwork.” LM Sacasas warns that offloading seemingly onerous or unpleasant tasks to machines could reduce our ability to do more creative work. This is an enduring paradox: Wendell Berry, for example, strongly disagrees with WB Yeats’ neat dichotomy: ‘Man’s intellect is forced to choose the perfection of life or of work’, and Kathleen Norris’s little book. Quotidian mysteries also reflects on how everyday labor could serve artistic and spiritual labor. As Sacasas puts it: ‘In other words, I wonder whether the work of doing laundry or washing dishes – these are almost always the examples, but they stand in for a large number of similar activities – might does not provide a certain indispensable basis. to the artistic endeavor, linking it to the world in a vital rather than intoxicating way.

“When children talk to machines.” July Sedivy makes a distinction between the way computers learn language and the way humans do so. People rely on social interactions, perception of motivation, and trust in profound ways: “Amid the AI ​​hype, it’s critical to remember that humans don’t learn like machines; it is not just the availability of information that counts, but also the social context in which that information is experienced – a fact that helps explain the disappointing learning outcomes associated with MOOCs (massive open online courses), which have suffered low student engagement and persistently high dropout rates, especially in less affluent countries.”

“What’s Wrong with Congress (and How to Fix It).” Yuval Levin defends the filibuster and proposes other policies that could improve American politics by requiring the difficult but necessary work of cross-party consensus building. A slim majority in Congress “is trying to govern on its own, and has been emboldened by half a century of congressional reforms to keep trying, thus avoiding the hard but necessary work of broadening coalitions.” For the sake of Congress, and to make our society less divided, potential reformers of the current Congress should emphasize this work of cross-party coalition building, rather than helping Congress avoid it.”

“Is there a common Canadian culture?” Jean-Christophe Jasmin examines Quebec’s history and present to grapple with fundamental questions about what it means to cherish local or regional cultures in an age of globalism and amnesia: “The culture that Quebec and Canada share is not Canadian. It’s American. This raises the existential question at the heart of Canadian identity: what sets the country apart from its American neighbor?

“University-Community Engagement: Recent Approaches.” Craig E. Mattson reviews several recent books that explore different dimensions of how universities could better serve their local communities: “friendship corrects an institutional bias toward greatness. Institutions like to put forward big visions for their place in the world. This trend, as old as Babel, is also as contemporary as the Christian college brochure that promises to turn students into world changers. But by creating a movement from the grand global to the humble local, friendship can undermine institutional grandeur. Making friends and being friends means submitting to the pull of being together, or at least to the wish being together.”