Good morning. Here's what you need to know to start your weekend:
If you are part of the shrinking population that still hasn't tried ChatGPT, it's time. My first experiments with an AI chatbot shook me. I asked it questions related my job and the memo it offered was, at least at first glance, convincing. My mind raced, fear overtook me, I slammed my computer shut and went on a long walk.
Since then I've tried to avoid AI and chatbots. But this week I was shaken out of complacency.
Two stories offered a strange and colorful view into skyrocketing AI use
Students from high schools and colleges around America made it clear in James D. Walsh's New York magazine story: AI chatbots are as ubiquitous in schools as iPhones. In interview after interview, students explain how they use AI to outline, write and edit essays, develop computer code, conduct research and, in one egregious case, build tools to help one another blatantly cheat.
[Read more: Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College, via New York Magazine]
And then Harvard economist David Deming shared stunning facts about AI adoption on the excellent Podcast Plain English with Derek Thompson. According to Deming's research, "39 percent of the U.S. population age 18-64 used generative AI. More than 24 percent of workers used it at least once in the week prior to being surveyed, and nearly one in nine used it every workday." This technology is becoming common-place faster than the personal computer or internet did, his research shows.
[Listen here: The Job Market for Young Grads Is Flashing Red via The Ringer]
A lesson from the Luddites: New technology will offer a new deal
In the early 1800s when industrialized machinery first developed, a group known as the Luddites broke into the world's first factories and smashed the machines. Former L.A. Times tech reporter Brian Merchant tells their story (and its lessons for the AI age) in his incredible book Blood in the Machine.
The Luddites were maligned as resisting progress. But put yourself in their shoes. For generations their bargain was to weave fabrics at home 3-5 days a week and sell their wares on the market. Suddenly, somebody invented a machine and offered them a new deal: Work in this stinky dark factory or starve.
Like the industrial revolution, there's no stopping AI — only making the best of it
You'll find AI-driven work everywhere now. In your text messages, your email, across dating apps, supercharging medical research, revolutionizing a doctor's ability to diagnose disease, speaking for the dead and giving you a pretty good answer to any question you pose in Google search.
And with a large part of its development coming from right here in Silicon Valley, Californians will have to lead the charge developing the regulations, norms and usage that prevent AI from ushering in a dystopia of inequality. It's going to require standing up to the tech giants and their money while also accepting that AI is the future whether we like it or not.
Figuring out how we can use (and not be used by) this tool is still something only humans can do, together.
More on AI from the L.A. Times
The week's biggest stories
Army Corps of Engineers Col. Brian Sawser is overseeing the debris removal program in the Palisades fire burn zone in Pacific Palisades on April 15. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
Toxins in the soil where the fires burned
The LAFD union president who was suspended speaks out
A threat to the new Chuckwalla monument
The Menendez brothers
More big stories
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This week's must reads
(Alex Eben Meyer / For The Times)
ADUs made of shipping containers and robot-built bungalows are a growing trend as L.A. rebuilds post-fire. Prefab housing is poised to push forward as residents in fire-ravaged neighborhoods seek to rebuild — fast. Is L.A. ready for a robot-built bungalow?
More great reads
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For your weekend
Ana Maria Martinez as Margarita Xirgu and Daniela Mack as Frederico Garcia Lorca in the Los Angeles Opera production of Osvaldo Golijov's "Ainadamar" at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. (Cory Weaver / L.A. Opera)
Going out
Staying in
Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team
Karim Doumar, head of newsletters
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