Opinion While You Were Sleeping

Donald Trump poses a huge dilemma for commentators: to ignore his daily outrages is to normalize his behavior, but to constantly write about them is to stop learning. Like others, I struggle to get this balance right, which is why I pause today to point out some incredible technological changes happening while Trump has kept us focused on him -- changes that will pose as big an adaptation challenge to American workers as transitioning from farms to factories once did. Two and half years ago I was researching a book that included a section on IBM's cognitive computer, "Watson," which had perfected the use of artificial intelligence enough to defeat the two all-time "Jeopardy!" After my IBM hosts had shown me Watson at its Yorktown Heights, N.Y., lab, they took me through a room where a small group of IBM scientists were experimenting with something futuristic called "quantum computing." They left me thinking this was Star Wars stuff -- a galaxy and many years far away.