To use AI’s power, teach the children
Having just read the editorial in Saturday’s Sentinel (“Florida needs guardrails for AI in classrooms”), I was caught up in my own reaction, which is, please let the teachers teach.
AI can be dangerous. That’s why we need to teach the children about it and how to use it. If schools ban these things and tie teachers’ hands with restrictive guidelines, they are going to create a greater interest in doing all the things with AI that kids hear about on the street.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we taught them to use AI and how to check its sources, verify the information, question the accuracy? Its answers may contain opinions, not facts.
There’s no reason to abandon critical thinking, all the more reason to use AI as a tool to teach critical thinking. Wouldn’t it have been nice if we had done that with media back in the day? Could that knowledge have been transferred to social media? Maybe.
Maybe now we should not ignore the opportunity to begin to understand AI. Knowledge is power. It will not help to put our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t affect us. We all must deal with it, and it wouldn’t hurt all the adults in the world to learn more about it.
Kathy Kennedy Orlando
Shutdown eclipses bigger issues
As the Trump administration’s chief mouthpiece Karoline Leavitt said, the construction of an unnecessary, garish ballroom is the commander-in-chief’s “main priority.”
Rarely has the administration’s penchant for base flippancy so luridly clashed with reality. Because of their unwillingness to have an honest conversation about health-care affordability — a prerogative of any rational government subscribing to the social contract — the federal government is shut down. Patriotic troops patronize food banks, their ailing children bereft of medication. Civil servants not yet purged by Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought’s callous evisceration of funding for everything from cancer research to work to combat anti-Semitism know not how they will pay rent. Those depending on SNAP lie discarded in the gutter.
Of course, these aren’t main priorities. Only in Administration 47 does intemperate decadence rule the day. As for the other priorities of the incumbent president — well, just look. Why address millions of ill-housed, ill-clad Americans when the embodiment of DOGE that is Javier Milei, the president of Argentina who once gifted a chainsaw to Elon Musk, demands $40 billion to prop up the economy his neoliberal policies have eviscerated? Now, Argentina has cornered the global soybean market while the administration in Washington sells our farmers a bill of goods. Caveat emptor!
Charles Horowitz Weston
A pleasure no more
Shopping at Publix will definitely no longer be a pleasure, due to its corporate decision to allow open carrying of guns with no questions asked.
The corporate rationale that it is now the law in Florida disregards the fact that Publix, like other businesses, can opt out of open carry simply by posting notices at store entrances.
Does Publix fully understand the state appeals court decision? Apparently not.
This flawed decision makes police officers’ jobs much harder. Publix will allow people without any vetting or gun safety training to enter its stores, solely to intimidate others or for their own self-aggrandizement.
Where is Publix’s commitment that its customers come first?
Publix has made a terrible decision that some day will come back to haunt the company, ethically, morally and legally. What is next? Will Publix now allow firearms or ammunition to be sold in their stores, maybe from vending machines, no questions asked?
Enough is enough, Publix.
Charles Miller Port St. Lucie
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