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eyes on the U.S.

Battle Of The Zingers - Obama And Romney Trade Jokes At Charity Dinner

WASHINGTON POST, LOS ANGELES TIMES (USA)

Worldcrunch

NEW YORK - President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney took a break from the presidential race on Thursday night to trade jokes and roast each other at charity dinner, reports the Washington Post.

Every four years, the Alfred E. Smith Dinner, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York’s annual charity dinner hosts the presidential candidates. This year’s event raised $5 million for the foundation to benefit needy city children, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Dressed in white tie and tails, Obama and Romney both gave speeches mixing humor with gibes, says the LA Times, adding that the evening was an opportunity for both men “to shake off the animosity after a campaign that has grown increasingly bitter and competitive.”

Some of the evening’s best zingers:

Romney: “A campaign can require a lot of wardrobe changes: blue jeans in the morning perhaps, a suit for a lunch fundraiser, a sport coat for dinner,” he said. “But it’s nice to finally relax and to wear what Ann and I wear around the house.”

Obama: “Everyone please take your seats, otherwise Clint Eastwood will yell at them.”

Romney: “President Obama and I are each very lucky to have one person who's always in our corner, someone that we can lean on, and someone that's a comforting presence without whom we wouldn't be able to go on another day. I have my beautiful wife, Ann, he’s got Bill Clinton.”

Obama: "I had a lot more energy in our second debate. I felt really well-rested after the nice long nap I had in the first debate."

Obama: “Sometimes it feels like this race has dragged on forever, but Paul Ryan assured me that we’ve only been running for 2 hours and 50-something minutes.”

Romney: “In the spirit of Sesame Street tonight, the president’s remarks are brought to you by the letter O and the number 16 Trillion.”

Obama: ““Mitt is his middle name. I wish I could use my middle name Hussein.”

Romney: “And I've already seen early reports from tonight's dinner, headline; ‘Obama Embraced by Catholics. Romney Dines with Rich People.’”

Not to be left out, the evening’s MC, Al Smith IV: "I want to say a special welcome to all of the accomplished women here tonight. It's good to see you made it out of those binders.”

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Future

AI Is Good For Education — And Bad For Teachers Who Teach Like Machines

Despite fears of AI upending the education and the teaching profession, artificial education will be an extremely valuable tool to free up teachers from rote exercises to focus on the uniquely humanistic part of learning.

Journalism teacher and his students in University of Barcelona.

Journalism students at the Blanquerna University of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

© Sergi Reboredo via ZUMA press
Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ - Early in 2023, Microsoft tycoon Bill Gates included teaching among the professions most threatened by Artificial Intelligence (AI), arguing that a robot could, in principle, instruct as well as any school-teacher. While Gates is an undoubted expert in his field, one wonders how much he knows about teaching.

As an avowed believer in using technology to improve student results, Gates has argued for teachers to use more tech in classrooms, and to cut class sizes. But schools and countries that have followed his advice, pumping money into technology at school, or students who completed secondary schooling with the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have not attained the superlative results expected of the Gates recipe.

Thankfully, he had enough sense to add some nuance to his views, instead suggesting changes to teacher training that he believes could improve school results.

I agree with his view that AI can be a big and positive contributor to schooling. Certainly, technological changes prompt unease and today, something tremendous must be afoot if a leading AI developer, Geoffrey Hinton, has warned of its threat to people and society.

But this isn't the first innovation to upset people. Over 2,000 years ago, the philosopher Socrates wondered, in the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus, whether reading and writing wouldn't curb people's ability to reflect and remember. Writing might lead them to despise memory, he observed. In the 18th and 19th centuries, English craftsmen feared the machines of the Industrial Revolution would destroy their professions, producing lesser-quality items faster, and cheaper.

Their fears were not entirely unfounded, but it did not happen quite as they predicted. Many jobs disappeared, but others emerged and the majority of jobs evolved. Machines caused a fundamental restructuring of labor at the time, and today, AI will likely do the same with the modern workplace.

Many predicted that television, computers and online teaching would replace teachers, which has yet to happen. In recent decades, teachers have banned students from using calculators to do sums, insisting on teaching arithmetic the old way. It is the same dry and mechanical approach to teaching which now wants to keep AI out of the classroom.

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