Long-time Slashdot theodp writes: Writing for the masses in It's the End of Computer Programming as We Know It. (And I Feel Fine.), NY Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo explains that while A.I. might not spell the end of programming ("the world will still need people with advanced coding skills"), it could mark the beginning of a new kind of programming — "one that doesn't require us to learn code but instead transforms human-language instructions into software."

"Wasn't coding supposed to be one of the can't-miss careers of the digital age?," Manjoo asks. "In the decades since I puttered around with my [ZX] Spectrum, computer programming grew from a nerdy hobby into a vocational near-imperative, the one skill to acquire to survive technological dislocation, no matter how absurd or callous-sounding the advice. Joe Biden told coal miners: Learn to code! Twitter trolls told laid-off journalists: Learn to code! Tim Cook told French kids: Apprenez à programmer! Programming might still be a worthwhile skill to learn, if only as an intellectual exercise, but it would have been silly to think of it as an endeavor insulated from the very automation it was enabling. Over much of the history of computing, coding has been on a path toward increasing simplicity."

In closing, Manjoo notes that A.I. has alleviated one of his worries (one shared by President Obama). "I've tried to introduce my two kids to programming the way my dad did for me, but both found it a snooze. Their disinterest in coding has been one of my disappointments as a father, not to mention a source of anxiety that they could be out of step with the future. (I live in Silicon Valley, where kids seem to learn to code before they learn to read.) But now I'm a bit less worried. By the time they're looking for careers, coding might be as antiquated as my first PC."

Btw, there are lots of comments — 700+ and counting — on Manjoo's column from programming types and others on whether reports of programming's death are greatly exaggerated.

"The world's most popular online learning course, Harvard University's CS50, is getting a ChatGPT-era makeover," reports Bloomberg: CS50, an introductory course in computer science attended by hundreds of students on-campus and over 40,000 online, plans to use artificial intelligence to grade assignments, teach coding and personalize learning tips, according to its Professor David J. Malan... Even with more than 100 real-life teaching assistants, he said it had become difficult to fully engage with the growing number of students logging in from different time zones and with varying levels of knowledge and experience. "Providing support tailored to students' specific questions has been a challenge at scale, with so many more students online than teachers," said Mr Malan, 46.

His team is now fine-tuning an AI system to mark students' work, and testing a virtual teaching assistant to evaluate and provide feedback on students' programming. The virtual teaching assistant asks rhetorical questions and offers suggestions to help students learn, rather than simply catching errors and fixing coding bugs, he said. Longer term, he expects this to give human teaching assistants more time for in-person or Zoom-based office hours...

Mr Malan said CS50's use of AI could highlight its benefits for education, particularly in improving the quality and access of online learning — an industry that Grand View Research forecasts to grow to $348 billion by 2030, nearly tripling from 2022. "Potentially, AI is just hugely enabling in education," he said.

theodp writes: Golf reports that amateur golf legend Rose Zhang will compete for the first time as a professional when she tees off in the first round of the Mizuho Americas Open Thursday. Golf news is rarely fodder for Slashdot discussion, but when the 20-year-old Stanford student (who plans to complete her degree after a leave of absence) was asked by Golf to identify her toughest class, she threw CS under the bus.

"CS 106A," Zhang replied, referring to a computer science course. "Currently and still trying to grind in that class. It's been a little unfortunate for me. I'm not a CS major. Will never code again after this class." Back in April, Zhang expressed some doubts about being able to juggle the demands of an already-renowned golf career and CS 106A. "I'll be super, super busy," Zhang said in an interview. "I'm planning on taking CS 106A. I don't know if it's a smart decision but it's kind of an essential intro CS class into Stanford so I'm going to try to navigate that, balance that out."

The Stanford Daily reports that CS 106A: Programming Methodology is an introductory programming course taken by 1,600+ students from all academic disciplines each year (2015 Slashdot post on CS 106A's growing pains). According to the syllabus, CS 106A "uses the Python programming language" and there's "no prior programming experience required," although the schedule indicates a lot of ground is covered for someone new to coding (the same could be said of Harvard's famed CS50).

Lest some take Zhang to task for the sin of stating programming is hard, consider that Stanford's CS 106A website suggests the same, reporting that the median score on the midterm exam was only 68%, despite a plethora of review materials and sessions. CS 106A students were offered the chance to submit formal 'regrade requests' to try to improve their midterm scores and can also vie for "a Jamba Juice gift card and 100% on the final exam" by entering a Python programming contest -- one prize will be awarded for "Aesthetic merit", another for "Algorithmic sophistication" (a number of runners-up will be awarded "a grade boost similar to getting a + on one of their assignments").

In India, children under 16 returning to school this month at the start of the school year will no longer be taught about evolution, the periodic table of elements, or sources of energy. Nature: The news that evolution would be cut from the curriculum for students aged 15-16 was widely reported last month, when thousands of people signed a petition in protest. But official guidance has revealed that a chapter on the periodic table will be cut, too, along with other foundational topics such as sources of energy and environmental sustainability.

Younger learners will no longer be taught certain pollution- and climate-related topics, and there are cuts to biology, chemistry, geography, mathematics and physics subjects for older school students. Overall, the changes affect some 134 million 11-18-year-olds in India's schools. The extent of what has changed became clearer last month when the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) -- the public body that develops the Indian school curriculum and textbooks -- released textbooks for the new academic year that started in May.

Researchers, including those who study science education, are shocked. "Anybody who's trying to teach biology without dealing with evolution is not teaching biology as we currently understand it," says Jonathan Osborne, a science-education researcher at Stanford University in California. "It's that fundamental to biology." The periodic table explains how life's building blocks combine to generate substances with vastly different properties, he adds, and "is one of the great intellectual achievements of chemists."

Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said on Sunday that the student loan payment pause is "gone" in the debt ceiling deal announced by the California Republican and President Biden late Saturday night. "The pause is gone within 60 days of this being signed. So that is another victory because that brings in $5 billion each month to the American public," McCarthy told Fox News on Sunday. McCarthy's remarks came after he and Biden came to an agreement in principle late Saturday to cap spending and raise the debt ceiling.

"What the president did, he went unconstitutionally and said he was going to waive certain people part of their debt for student loan, but then he paused everybody's student loan. So everybody who borrowed a student loan within 60 days of the signing is going to have to pay that back," McCarthy added. "The Supreme Court is taking up that case. But if the Supreme Court came back and said that was unconstitutional, the president could still say he's pausing, not waiving it. But now that this is in law, the Supreme Court decision will have to be upheld, that they would have to pay."

Earlier this month, the NY Times warned students and their families to "Expect Interest Rates on Federal Student Loans to Rise" to as high as 8.05% for new PLUS loans this fall. That news came as Apple, just days after a recent $90 billion share buyback, filed a prospectus with the SEC for a new $5 billion bond program with longer-term bonds expected to have a coupon rate of approximately 5%. The imbalance between loan rates for students and Apple shareholders was actually far more pronounced before the Fed fund rate hikes started last year in response to inflation. During the pandemic, Apple -- which reported around $166.3 billion in cash and investments on its balance sheet as of March 31 -- held a bond sale worth $14 billion for stock buybacks and dividends to benefit from borrowing rates as low as 0.70%. Direct PLUS student loan rates at that time were down to 5.30% for new loans but as high as 8.5% for existing loans (the U.S. Dept. of Education does not offer refinancing of its up-to-30-year fixed rate loans in times of much lower interest rates). Unlike the tax-deductible interest Apple pays, annual deductions on student loan interest are capped by the IRS at $2,500 (or lower, depending on the borrower's income).

Despite presumably benefiting from stock buybacks and dividends facilitated by Apple's low-interest bonds -- some of which carry rates as much as 90%+ lower than certain federal student loans -- some of the Senators identified as Apple shareholders by NBCLX are vehemently opposed to the idea of student loan relief for high interest-paying borrowers. Senator Shelley Capito (R-WV) opposes the program as "not fair", Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) called it "grossly unfair", and other Apple-shareholder Senators joined (PDF) colleagues in a Supreme Court filing calling student loan relief "unnecessary".

The White House said on Tuesday it would ask workers how their employers use artificial intelligence (AI) to monitor them, as it allocates federal investments in the technology, which is expected to change the nature of work. From a report: The White House will hold a listening session with workers to understand their experience with employers' use of automated technologies for surveillance, monitoring and evaluation. The call will include gig work experts, researchers, and policymakers. Millions of users have tried AI apps and tools, which supporters say can make medical diagnoses, write screenplays, create legal briefs and debug software, leading to growing concern about how the technology could lead to privacy violations, skew employment decisions, and power scams and misinformation campaigns. As part of its evaluation of the technology, the administration will also announce new steps, including an updated roadmap for federal investments in AI research, a request for public input on AI risks and with a new report from the Department of Education on how AI affects teaching, learning and research.

schwit1 shares a report from The Daily Beast: U.C. Berkeley has failed to disclose to the U.S. government massive Chinese state funding for a highly sensitive $240 million joint tech venture in China that has been running for the last eight years. The Californian university has not registered with the U.S. government that it received huge financial support from the city of Shenzhen for a tech project inside China, which also included partnerships with Chinese companies that have since been sanctioned by the U.S. or accused of complicity in human rights abuses.

The university has failed to declare a $220 million investment from the municipal government of Shenzhen to build a research campus in China. A Berkeley spokesperson told The Daily Beast that the university had yet to declare the investment -- announced in 2018 -- because the campus is still under construction. However, a former Department of Education official who used to help manage the department's foreign gifts and contracts disclosure program said that investment agreements must be disclosed within six months of signing, not when they are fully executed. Berkeley admitted that it had also failed to disclose to the U.S. government a $19 million contract in 2016 with Tsinghua University, which is controlled by the Chinese government's Ministry of Education.

The project's Chinese backers promised lavish funding, state-of-the-art equipment, and smart Ph.D. students for Berkeley academics researching national security-sensitive technologies, according to contract documents exclusively obtained by The Daily Beast. After the project got underway, Berkeley researchers granted Chinese officials private tours of their cutting-edge U.S. semiconductor facilities and gave "priority commercialization rights" for intellectual properties (IP) they produced to Chinese government-backed funds. A Berkeley spokesman said that Berkeley only pursued fundamental research through TBSI, meaning that all research projects were eventually publicly published and accessible to all; it did not conduct any proprietary research that exclusively benefited a Chinese entity. Still, Berkeley's ties to the Chinese government and sanctioned Chinese companies are sure to raise eyebrows in Washington, where U.S. policymakers are increasingly concerned about the outflow of U.S. technology to China, especially those with military applications.

The Washington Post notes a trend at U.S. colleges like the University of Maryland: "booming enrollment in computer science and plummeting student demand for the humanities." The number of students nationwide seeking four-year degrees in computer and information sciences and related fields shot up 34 percent from 2017 to 2022, to about 573,000, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. The English-major head count fell 23 percent in that time, to about 113,000. History fell 12 percent, to about 77,000... In 2010, arts and humanities majors of all kinds outnumbered the computer science total at the University of Maryland more than 4 to 1. Now the university counts about 2,400 students majoring in arts and humanities — a collection of disciplines that fill an entire college — and about 3,300 in computer science...

As with many schools, the University of Maryland is searching for a new academic equilibrium to simultaneously handle rising demand for tech credentials and preserve what appear to be vulnerable pillars of the humanist tradition. New majors, such as "immersive media design," are arising to bridge technology and humanities as departments in older fields push to stay competitive. The ferment has fed debate about the purpose of college, the value of degrees and how much career prospects — rather than passion for learning — shape the academic paths that students take. Some schools have taken radical steps. Marymount University, a Catholic institution in Northern Virginia, decided in February to phase out history and English majors, citing low enrollment and a responsibility to prepare students "for the fulfilling, in-demand careers of the future." St. Mary's University of Minnesota made a similar announcement last year. There is no sign that more prominent colleges and universities will follow suit...

Computer science, a base for exploring artificial intelligence and other topics, is not the only hot subject these days. Data science has taken off over the past decade. So has nursing. Business, management and marketing have enduring appeal. In a time of economic upheaval, avoiding debt and landing a good job are top goals for many students. Value matters. "Public confidence in college paying off is being questioned at a higher rate than ever before," Michael Itzkowitz, former director of the federal College Scorecard, wrote in an email. "Some of this has to do with rising tuition costs. Some of this was influenced by the pandemic, where many students were questioning the cost they were paying to learn from their home computer, rather than being on a physical college campus."

When Bill Gates took the stage at Stanford back in 1996, he was ready with his first joke after a long round of appreciative applause. "Maybe I dropped out of the wrong college."

But Bill Gates still cares about education. In 2019, a Gates Foundation commission even suggested valuing colleges by their affordability and accessibility, as well as the improvements they provide to economic mobility. And by those metrics, Gates writes on his blog, an emerging leader is Northern Arizona University (or NAU).


- Beginning this fall, an NAU program will make tuition free for students with family incomes below the state's median of $65,000.

- Half its students are first-generation college students.

- NAU recently launched a universal admissions program, "which redirects applicants who would have been denied entry to instead apply to community college," Gates writes. "From there, students are guaranteed subsequent admission to NAU as a transfer..."

- NAU has secured millions in scholarships and advising services for community college students planning to transfer to NAU.


So last weekend, Bill Gates delivered the commencement speech at Northern Arizona University, for graduates of its College of Engineering, Informatics, and Applied Sciences and College of the Environment, Forestry, and Natural Sciences. "You are graduating from an institution that creates opportunity, fosters innovation, and builds community, and it has prepared you to find solutions to some of the biggest problems facing us today," Gates told the audience.

Then he added "NAU is also giving you something I never received: A real college degree." Some of you might know that I never made it to my own graduation. I left after three semesters to start Microsoft. So, what does a college dropout know about graduation? Not much personally, to be honest.

As I prepared for today, I thought about how you, as new graduates, can have the biggest impact on the world with the education you received here. That led me to thinking about the graduation I never had, the commencement speech I never heard, and the advice I wasn't given on a day just like this one.

That is what I want to share with you this afternoon: The five things I wish I was told at the graduation I never attended.
Gates suggested the graduates seek careers solving the world's important problems. ("Some of you are heading off to start careers as programmers. You could use your talents to make sure all people can benefit from artificial intelligence — or to help eliminate biases in AI.") He ended his speech by telling the students "you will be the ones to solve the climate crisis and reduce the gap between the rich and poor."

But Gates also told the students not to be afraid to change their mind or their careers — and to be willing to admit they don't know everything. "Just about everything I have accomplished came because I sought out others who knew more. People want to help you. The key is to not be afraid to ask."
My fourth piece of advice is simple: Don't underestimate the power of friendship. When I was in school, I became friends with another student who shared a lot of my interests, like science fiction novels and computer magazines. Little did I know how important that friendship would be. My friend's name was Paul Allen — and we started Microsoft together...

The only thing more valuable than what you walk offstage with today is who you walk onstage with.

There's shortages of young semiconductor engineers around the world, reports IEEE Spectrum — partially explained by this quote from Intel's director of university research collaboration. "We hear from academics that we're losing EE students to software. But we also need the software. I think it's a totality of 'We need more students in STEM careers.'"

So after America's CHIPS and Science Act "aimed at kick-starting chip manufacturing in the United States," the article notes that universities must attempt bring the U.S. "the qualified workforce needed to run these plants and design the chips." The United States today manufactures just 12 percent of the world's chips, down from 37 percent in 1990, according to a September 2020 report by the Semiconductor Industry Association. Over those decades, experts say, semiconductor and hardware education has stagnated. But for the CHIPS Act to succeed, each fab will need hundreds of skilled engineers and technicians of all stripes, with training ranging from two-year associate degrees to Ph.D.s. Engineering schools in the United States are now racing to produce that talent... There were around 20,000 job openings in the semiconductor industry at the end of 2022, according to Peter Bermel, an electrical and computer engineering professor at Purdue University. "Even if there's limited growth in this field, you'd need a minimum of 50,000 more hires in the next five years. We need to ramp up our efforts really quickly...."

More than being a partner, Intel sees itself as a catalyst for upgrading the higher-education system to produce the workforce it needs, says the company's director of university research collaboration, Gabriela Cruz Thompson. One of the few semiconductor companies still producing most of its wafers in the United States, Intel is expanding its fabs in Arizona, New Mexico, and Oregon. Of the 7,000 jobs created as a result, about 70 percent will be for people with two-year degrees... Since COVID, however, Intel has struggled to find enough operators and technicians with two-year degrees to keep the foundries running. This makes community colleges a crucial piece of the microelectronics workforce puzzle, Thompson says. In Ohio, the company is giving most of its educational funds to technical and community colleges so they can add semiconductor-specific training to existing advanced manufacturing programs. Intel is also asking universities to provide hands-on clean-room experience to community college students.

Samsung and Silicon Labs in Austin are similarly investing in neighboring community colleges and technical schools via scholarships, summer internships, and mentorship programs.
Beyond the deserts of Arizona, chipmakers are eyeing the America's midwest, the article points out (with its "abundance of research universities and technical colleges.")

• Indiana's Purdue launched a new interdisciplinary Semiconductor Degrees Program (building on its Defense Department-funded SCALE program which teaches how to build semiconductors for space), and they've partnered with a local community college to offer training for jobs at the West Lafayette foundry SkyWater.

• The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign offers an Advanced Systems Design class "which leads senior-year undergrads through every step of making an integrated circuit."

• Intel has pledged $50 million to 80 higher-education institutions in Ohio to "upgrade their curricula, train and hire faculty, and provide equipment," including the funding of a Center for Advanced Semiconductor Fabrication Research and Education to teach semiconductor-related skills to more than just electrical engineering majors.

It's an educational pocket-sized codable computer with a motion detector, compass, and other sensors. Wikipedia describes the micro:bit as "half the size of a credit card" -- (43 mm x 52 mm or 1.7 inches by 2.0 inches).

Now long-time Slashdot reader theodp writes: If British schoolchildren aren't inspired to code by the tiny 5x5 grid of LED lights on the micro:bit single-board computer, well it's not for lack of trying. The BBC on Monday announced a partnership with Microsoft, Arm, and others that will offer a classroom set of 30 free handheld BBC micro:bits (about 700,000 total devices) and brand-new teaching resources to every primary school across the UK "to support all schoolchildren and teachers..."

The news follows January's announcement of the Micro:bit Educational Foundation's newest partnership. They teamed with US-based/tech giant-backed nonprofit Code.org to offer teachers computing resources to incorporate the micro:bit in Code.org's CS Fundamentals curriculum (aimed at children in Kindergarten-5th Grade).

Microsoft is a Founding Partner of both the Micro:bit Educational Foundation and Code.org, and back in 2015 Microsoft also partnered with the BBC to provide an estimated 1 million free micro:bits to every 11- and 12-year old in the UK. A 2017 research paper reported that after testing with 15 teachers, "primarily comments around engagement were positive." But one skeptical teacher offered some doubts about the appeal of a small relatively low-tech device to younger children. "I mean I think it's cute but I could easily see why you know a 4K mobile phone screen is going to hold more appeal than regular LEDs ... I think there is merit in that but I could see how people would understandably go where's the screen?"

Apple has released (PDF) its first App Store Transparency Report, as mandated by a lawsuit settlement in 2021. In 2022, the report reveals that over 1.6 million apps were rejected, 186,195 apps were removed for violating App Store rules, and China topped the list with the most government-requested app takedowns. MacRumors reports: In 2022, there were 1,783,232 apps on the App Store, with 6,101,913 total app submissions received and 1,679,694 apps rejected for various reasons like safety, performance, design, and legal. Apple provides numbers on the specific App Store guidelines that were violated by rejected apps, with the highest number of single rule rejections (149,378) due to violations of the Design 4.0 rule and the DPLA 3.2 Fraud rule (32,009). A total of 253,466 app submissions were approved after rejection when developers worked with Apple to resolve issues, and 186,195 apps were removed from the App Store for breaking the App Store rules. The majority of apps removed from the App Store were games, followed by Utilities, Business, and Education.

Apple outlines the total number of apps removed from the App Store due to government takedowns, and China is at the top of the list. The Chinese government asked Apple to remove 1,435 apps, but 1,276 of those apps were games that were removed for not having the GRN license that China requires. Apple removed 14 apps at the request of India's government, 10 apps for Pakistan, and seven apps for Russia. In other countries including Turkiye, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Hong Kong, Italy, Latvia, and Nigeria, fewer than two apps were removed at the government's request. Developers appealed 18,412 app removals in total, and Apple restored just 616 developer accounts. Apple says that apps that are appealed were typically pulled from the App Store for fraud or illegality, which is why the rejected appeal number is so high.

There are 36,974,015 registered developers, and in 2022, Apple terminated 428,487 developer accounts. According to Apple, developers are removed from the Apple Developer Program "for a number of reasons," but most commonly because of accounts that are connected with other terminated developer accounts. 3,338 developers appealed their App Store bans, and Apple reinstated just 159 accounts. Again, Apple says that this is because "most developer account terminations that are appealed are removed from the App Store due to fraud," so Apple rejects most of them. 282,036,628 customer accounts were terminated, but that number does incorporate all accounts created, even those made on the website by non-iPhone and iPad users. There were 656,739,889 average weekly visitors to the App Store and 747,873,877 average weekly app downloads. Customer accounts searched the App Store 373,211,396 times on average, and 1,399,741 apps appeared in the top 10 results of at least 1000 searches. You can download the report from Apple's legal site.

The chancellor of New York City's school system says the city has revoked its ban on the use of ChatGPT in public schools. From a report: Chancellor David Banks wrote in an op-ed, published by Chalkbeat Thursday, that while the school system proceeded with "initial caution" concerning artificial intelligence (AI) programs earlier this year, they will now work to integrate the programs into the curriculum. He wrote that they consulted with technology and education experts to come to the decision and are ready to teach students about the advantages and disadvantages of AI.

"Our nation is potentially on the brink of a significant societal shift driven by generative artificial intelligence," he wrote. "We must make sure that this technology's benefits are equitably distributed to prevent further widening of socioeconomic gaps in our country." Schools will now use resources developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to "encourage all schools to engage students in activities exploring how artificial intelligence has already impacted their lives and the broader issues it presents to our society," Banks added.

Google is looking to partner with businesses, education institutions, and non-profits to help test its 20 Gig symmetrical internet service. TechSpot reports: Nick Saporito, head of multi-gig & commercial product at Google, said they are only looking for eight additional partners so space is incredibly limited. Ideal candidates include those that are already downloading and uploading massive data sets, those conducting research that commands loads of bandwidth, or perhaps organizations working on future-focused tech that Google hasn't even yet considered but needs lots of throughput. If selected for the test, Google will reach out to your organization to discuss the next steps.

Google has been testing the 20 Gig service since at least late last year. We know this because Saporito shared a screenshot of a speed test conducted at his house in Kansas City highlighting his connection's throughput. Speaking to his home connection, Saporito said he tried to test its limits by streaming as many World Cup games in 4K as he had devices but didn't even come close to saturating the connection.

A Texas A&M professor failed more than half of his class after ChatGPT falsely claimed the students used the software to write their final assignments. Rolling Stone reports: A number of seniors at Texas A&M University-Commerce who already walked the stage at graduation this year have been temporarily denied their diplomas after a professor ineptly used AI software to assess their final assignments, the partner of a student in his class -- known as DearKick on Reddit -- claims to Rolling Stone. Dr. Jared Mumm, a campus rodeo instructor who also teaches agricultural classes, sent an email on Monday to a group of students informing them that he had submitted grades for their last three essay assignments of the semester. Everyone would be receiving an 'X' in the course, Mumm explained, because he had used "Chat GTP" (the OpenAI chatbot is actually called "ChatGPT") to test whether they'd used the software to write the papers -- and the bot claimed to have authored every single one. "I copy and paste your responses in [ChatGPT] and [it] will tell me if the program generated the content," he wrote, saying he had tested each paper twice. He offered the class a makeup assignment to avoid the failing grade -- which could otherwise, in theory, threaten their graduation status.

There's just one problem: ChatGPT doesn't work that way. The bot isn't made to detect material composed by AI -- or even material produced by itself -- and is known to sometimes emit damaging misinformation. With very little prodding, ChatGPT will even claim to have written passages from famous novels such as Crime and Punishment. Educators can choose among a wide variety of effective AI and plagiarism detection tools to assess whether students have completed assignments themselves, including Winston AI and Content at Scale; ChatGPT is not among them. And OpenAI's own tool for determining whether a text was written by a bot has been judged "not very accurate" by a digital marketing agency that recommends tech resources to businesses.

In an amusing wrinkle, Mumm's claims appear to be undercut by a simple experiment using ChatGPT. On Tuesday, redditor Delicious_Village112 found an abstract of Mumm's doctoral dissertation on pig farming and submitted a section of that paper to the bot, asking if it might have written the paragraph. "Yes, the passage you shared could indeed have been generated by a language model like ChatGPT, given the right prompt," the program answered. "The text contains several characteristics that are consistent with AI-generated content." At the request of other redditors, Delicious_Village112 also submitted Mumm's email to students about their presumed AI deception, asking the same question. "Yes, I wrote the content you've shared," ChatGPT replied. Yet the bot also clarified: "If someone used my abilities to help draft an email, I wouldn't have a record of it." "A&M-Commerce confirms that no students failed the class or were barred from graduating because of this issue," the school said in a statement. "Dr. Jared Mumm, the class professor, is working individually with students regarding their last written assignments. Some students received a temporary grade of 'X' -- which indicates 'incomplete' -- to allow the professor and students time to determine whether AI was used to write their assignments and, if so, at what level." The university also confirmed that several students had been cleared of any academic dishonesty.

"University officials are investigating the incident and developing policies to address the use or misuse of AI technology in the classroom," the statement continued. "They are also working to adopt AI detection tools and other resources to manage the intersection of AI technology and higher education. The use of AI in coursework is a rapidly changing issue that confronts all learning institutions."

The college graduates who fill white-collar jobs in the San Francisco area began to leave in growing numbers about a decade ago. From a report: More and more have moved to other parts of the country -- an accelerating outflow of educated workers that, in a poorer part of America, might be thought of as brain drain. When the pandemic arrived, these departures surged so sharply that the San Francisco area has lately lost more educated workers than have moved in. Over this same time, a similar pattern has been taking shape on the other side of the country. (Charts in the linked story.) And in the New York area, long a net exporter of graduates, swelling losses have reinforced the trend: Educated workers, dating to even before the pandemic, have been migrating away from the most prosperous parts of the country.

This pattern, visible in an Upshot analysis of census microdata, is startling in retrospect. Major coastal metros have been hubs of the kind of educated workers coveted most by high-powered employers and economic development officials. Economists have lamented the growing coastal concentration of their wealth. A politics of resentment in America has fed on it, too. These urban centers have become a class of their own -- "superstar cities" -- with outsize impact on the American economy fueled by the clustering of workers with degrees. But it appears in domestic migration data that, years after lower-wage residents have been priced out of expensive coastal metros, higher-paid workers are now turning away from them, too.

Working-age Americans with a degree are still flowing into these regions from other parts of the country, often in large numbers. But as the pool leaving grows faster, that educational advantage is eroding. Boston's pull with college graduates has weakened. Seattle's edge vanished during the pandemic. And the analysis shows San Francisco, San Jose, Los Angeles and Washington all crossing a significant threshold: More college-educated workers left than moved in. For most of this century, large metros with a million residents or more have received all of the net gains from college-educated workers migrating around the country, at the expense of smaller places. But among those large urban areas, the dozen metros with the highest living costs -- nearly all of them coastal -- have had a uniquely bifurcated migration pattern: As they saw net gains from college graduates, they lost large numbers of workers without degrees.

ZDNet reports that Jim Zemlin, executive director at the Linux Foundation, recently noted rounds of tech-industry layoffs "in the name of cost-cutting." But then Zemlin added that "open source is countercyclical to these trends. The Linux Foundation itself, for instance, had its best first quarter ever."

As Hilary Carter, SVP of research and communications at the Linux Foundation, said in her keynote speech at Open Source Summit North America in Vancouver, Canada: "In spite of what the headlines are saying, the facts are 57% of organizations are adding workers this year." Carter was quoting figures from the Linux Foundation's latest job survey, which was released at the event.

Other research also points to brighter signs in tech employment trends. CompTIA's recent analysis of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data suggests the tech unemployment rate climbed by just 2.3% in April. In fact, more organizations plan to increase their technical staff levels rather than decrease.

The demand for skilled tech talent remains strong, particularly in fast-developing areas, such as cloud and containers, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence and machine learning. So, what do these all areas of technology have in common? The answer is they're all heavily dependent on open source and Linux technologies.
While layoffs are happening at Microsoft, Amazon, Google, IBM, and even Red Hat, "the Linux Foundation found senior technical roles are seeing the biggest cuts," the article points out. "New hiring is focused on developers and IT managers." And companies are also spending more on training for existing technical staff, "driven by the fact that there aren't enough experts in hot technologies, such as Kubernetes and generative AI, to go around." Interestingly, a college degree is no longer seen as such a huge benefit. Businesses responding to the Linux Foundation's research felt upskilling (91%) and certifications (77%) are more important than a university education (58%) when it comes to addressing technology needs.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The U.S. government is seeking to turn metro areas in middle America into the next hot spots of tech innovation with an initial $500 million investment. The Department of Commerce announced Friday its first notice of funding opportunity, or NOFO, for the Regional Technology and Innovation Hub program, known as Tech Hubs. It kicks off the process for eligible groups around the country to apply to be designated as Tech Hubs. That designation gives them the chance to take advantage of the funds to make their regions attractive places for entrepreneurs and technologists to live and work.

Congress authorized $10 billion for the program between fiscal years 2023 and 2027, of which $500 million is available to be distributed this year. Under the current funding opportunity, a total of $15 million in planning grants will be made available to applicants designated as Tech Hubs. Later this year, the Department will seek to award five to 10 designated Tech Hubs grants of $50 million to $75 million each to help build out capacity in their region, according to a Department of Commerce official. President Joe Biden requested $4 billion be made available for Tech Hubs in next year's budget.

Eligible applicants are groups made up of at least one entity from each of the following categories: a higher education institution, subdivision of local or state government, industry or firm in relevant tech or manufacturing field, economic development group, and labor organization or workforce training group. Under the statute, Tech Hubs should focus on a specific set of key areas of technology, which include artificial intelligence, robotics, natural disaster prevention, biotechnology, cybersecurity, energy efficiency and more. The department must designate at least 20 Tech Hubs under the law. The hope is that the infusion of funds will help regions across the country become essential centers of innovation and create more well-paying jobs across a greater swath of the nation. "America leads the world in technological innovation. But the sad reality is that our tech ecosystem is extremely concentrated," Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told reporters on a briefing call Thursday, noting that 80% of U.S. venture capital money is invested in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Northeast and Southern California. "There's so much more potential for tech innovation all across the country. In the U.S. we have the best research institutions in the world. That's indisputable. And frankly, many of them are in America's heartland, far from the coast."

"President Biden is so clear on one point, which is that everyone in America deserves a fair shot at economic opportunity, no matter where they live, and they shouldn't have to move in order to get a good job," Raimondo said. "Nobody should have to leave their family or support system or network to move to New York or San Francisco just to get a good job."

"I write all novel client-side code as JavaScript instead of TypeScript, and it's a delight," says the creator of Ruby on Rails. Posting on Twitter, David Heinemeier Hansson opined that TypeScript "sucked out much of the joy I had writing JavaScript. I'm forever grateful that Yukihiro 'Matz' Matsumoto didn't succumb to the pressure of adding similar type hints to Ruby."

When it comes to static vs dynamic typing, "I've heard a million arguments from both sides throughout my entire career," Hansson wrote on his blog today, "but seen very few of them ever convinced anyone of anything."

But wait — he thinks we can all get along: Personally, I'm unashamedly a dynamic typing kind of guy. That's why I love Ruby so very much. It takes full advantage of dynamic typing to allow the poetic syntax that results in such beautiful code. To me, Ruby with explicit, static typing would be like a salad with a scoop of ice cream. They just don't go together.

I'll also confess to having embraced the evangelical position for dynamic typing in the past. To the point of suffering from a One True Proposition affliction. Seeing the lack of enthusiasm for dynamic typing as a reflection of missing education, experience, or perhaps even competence.

Oh what folly. Like trying to convince an introvert that they'd really like parties if they'd just loosen up a bit...

These days, I've come to appreciate the magnificence of multiplicity. Programming would be an awful endeavor if we were all confined to the same paradigm. Human nature is much too varied to accept such constraint on its creativity...But it took a while for me to come to these conclusions. I'm a recovering solutionist. So when I see folks cross their heart in disbelief that anyone, anywhere might fancy JavaScript over TypeScript, I smile, and I remember the days when I'd recognize their zeal in the mirror.
Hansson also sees the "magnificence of multiplicity" in positions about functional vs object-oriented programming. "Poles on both these axes have shown to deliver excellent software over the decades (and awful stuff too!)."

America's consumer-protecting federal agency has a division overseeing advertising practices. Its web site includes a "business guidance" section with "advice on complying with FTC law," and this week one of the agency's attorney's warned that the FTC "is focusing intensely on how companies may choose to use AI technology, including new generative AI tools, in ways that can have actual and substantial impact on consumers."

The warning came in a blog post titled "The Luring Test: AI and the engineering of consumer trust." In the 2014 movie Ex Machina, a robot manipulates someone into freeing it from its confines, resulting in the person being confined instead. The robot was designed to manipulate that person's emotions, and, oops, that's what it did. While the scenario is pure speculative fiction, companies are always looking for new ways — such as the use of generative AI tools — to better persuade people and change their behavior. When that conduct is commercial in nature, we're in FTC territory, a canny valley where businesses should know to avoid practices that harm consumers...

As for the new wave of generative AI tools, firms are starting to use them in ways that can influence people's beliefs, emotions, and behavior. Such uses are expanding rapidly and include chatbots designed to provide information, advice, support, and companionship. Many of these chatbots are effectively built to persuade and are designed to answer queries in confident language even when those answers are fictional. A tendency to trust the output of these tools also comes in part from "automation bias," whereby people may be unduly trusting of answers from machines which may seem neutral or impartial. It also comes from the effect of anthropomorphism, which may lead people to trust chatbots more when designed, say, to use personal pronouns and emojis. People could easily be led to think that they're conversing with something that understands them and is on their side.

Many commercial actors are interested in these generative AI tools and their built-in advantage of tapping into unearned human trust. Concern about their malicious use goes well beyond FTC jurisdiction. But a key FTC concern is firms using them in ways that, deliberately or not, steer people unfairly or deceptively into harmful decisions in areas such as finances, health, education, housing, and employment. Companies thinking about novel uses of generative AI, such as customizing ads to specific people or groups, should know that design elements that trick people into making harmful choices are a common element in FTC cases, such as recent actions relating to financial offers , in-game purchases , and attempts to cancel services . Manipulation can be a deceptive or unfair practice when it causes people to take actions contrary to their intended goals. Under the FTC Act, practices can be unlawful even if not all customers are harmed and even if those harmed don't comprise a class of people protected by anti-discrimination laws.
The FTC attorney also warns against paid placement within the output of a generative AI chatbot. ("Any generative AI output should distinguish clearly between what is organic and what is paid.") And in addition, "People should know if an AI product's response is steering them to a particular website, service provider, or product because of a commercial relationship. And, certainly, people should know if they're communicating with a real person or a machine..."

"Given these many concerns about the use of new AI tools, it's perhaps not the best time for firms building or deploying them to remove or fire personnel devoted to ethics and responsibility for AI and engineering. If the FTC comes calling and you want to convince us that you adequately assessed risks and mitigated harms, these reductions might not be a good look. "

Thanks to Slashdot reader gluskabe for sharing the post.