Happy New Year, everyone!

1. Here’s another academic’s take on ChatGPT: Tony Bates’s Playing with ChatGPT: now I’m scared (a little) https://www.tonybates.ca/2023/01/02/playing-with-chatgpt-now-im-scared/

There’s a growing (sensible) consensus that ChatGPT is not going to go away, so we’d better find a way of working with it rather than attempting – in vain – to ban it.

2. Two ‘gift’ articles from The New York Times:

a quiz, How Strong Are Your Relationships? https://tinyurl.com/ybdd8nb3

which is the first day of the NYT’s Seven Day Happiness Challenge, which is explained more fully here https://tinyurl.com/4mwmuwsw

I’ll aim to share all seven days if I can, and we shall see how New York specific their notion of happiness is!

3. Here’s McKinsey’s well-put-together review of 2022, What just happened? https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/2022-year-in-review

The cynic in me was expecting it to be more USA-centred.

4. And, finally, if you’re going to tell a lie, tell a whopper – or several – like Republican politician George Santos did recently https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-27-2022

Letters from an American is the name of Heather Cox Richardson’s blog. Richardson is “a history professor interested in the contrast between image and reality in American politics. (She) believe(s) in American democracy, despite its frequent failures”. I thought that her 30th December post was a good overview of the war in Ukraine https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-30-2022