On a 5K screen in Kirkland, Washington, four terminals blur with activity as artificial intelligence generates thousands of lines of code. Steve Yegge, a veteran software engineer who previously worked at Google and AWS, sits back to watch. "This one is running some tests, that one is coming up with a plan. I am now coding on four different projects at once, although really I'm just burning tokens," Yegge says, referring to the cost of generating chunks of text with a large language model (LLM). Learning to code has long been seen as the ticket to a lucrative, secure career in tech.

Pneumonia is the leading infectious cause of infant death in the world. When identified early, it is possible to alter the prognosis of the patient, one could use imaging exams to help in the diagnostic confirmation. Performing and interpreting the exams as soon as possible is vital for a good treatment, with the most common exam for this pathology being chest X-ray. The objective of this study was to develop a software that identify the presence or absence of pneumonia in chest radiographs. The software was developed as a computational model based on machine learning using transfer learning technique. For the training process, images were collected from a database available online with children's chest X-rays images taken at a hospital in China. After training, the model was then exposed to new images, achieving relevant results on identifying such pathology, reaching 98% sensitivity and 97.3% specificity for the sample used for testing. It can be concluded that it is possible to develop a software that identifies pneumonia in chest X-ray images.

Amid major developments in the field of artificial intelligence, there's a question many of us have been asking ourselves: How long until machines replace us? New systems from Google and Microsoft -- plus a Microsoft partner called OpenAI -- are capable of doing things we used to think were uniquely human, like creating original art and generating original writing. But so are the fears -- about jobs and wages in particular. As artificial intelligence gets better, some expect job security will get worse. In reports like one in Gizmodo earlier this month, titled, "Here Are the Jobs Our New AI Overlords Plan to Kill," coding or computer programming is often on the list.

AI text generator ChatGPT, released to the public late last year, is so sophisticated that it has already demonstrated its ability to write coherent essays, generate sound legal documents and otherwise interact with humans in a convincingly conversational manner. One CEO even treats the tool from parent company OpenAI like a perennially available member of his executive team. "I ask ChatGPT to become aware of where my biases and blindspots might be, and the answers it gives are a really, really good starting point to check your thinking," Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO of online course provider Coursera, told CBS MoneyWatch. He said the tool helps him to be more thoughtful in his approach to business challenges, as well as look at topics from vantage points that differ from his own. For example, last week at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Maggioncalda entered the following prompt: "What should I consider when giving a speech to prime ministers at Davos?" Another useful entry for business leaders would be: "What should I consider when I am restructuring my company?"

For years, breakthroughs in automation have led to increasing instability for blue collar workers -- particularly those in manufacturing -- while those in white collar positions have remained mostly unfazed by the same anxieties. Until generative AI's breakthrough, that is. In what appears to be the first major, technology-driven shakeup to the white collar marketplace, artificial intelligence could well be poised to replace human workers in higher-paying, college-degree-requiring jobs. "Before, progress was linear and predictable. You figured out the steps and the computer followed them," MIT professor David Autor, an expert on employment and technological change, told The Atlantic's Annie Lowery.

In the next five years, it is likely that AI will begin to reduce employment for college-educated workers. As the technology continues to advance, it will be able to perform tasks that were previously thought to require a high level of education and skill. This could lead to a displacement of workers in certain industries, as companies look to cut costs by automating processes. While it is difficult to predict the exact extent of this trend, it is clear that AI will have a significant impact on the job market for college-educated workers. It will be important for individuals to stay up to date on the latest developments in AI and to consider how their skills and expertise can be leveraged in a world where machines are increasingly able to perform many tasks.

Even as the economic pressures that drove millions of white working-class voters to the right are moderating, the hostility this key segment of the electorate feels toward the Democratic Party has deepened and is less and less amenable to change. "You cannot really understand the working-class rightward shift without discussing what the Democratic Party is doing," Daron Acemoglu, an economist at M.I.T., wrote by email: Many of the trends that negatively impacted workers, especially non-college workers, including rapid automation and trade with China, were advocated and supported by Democratic politicians. Perhaps worse from a political point of view, when these politicians were advocating such policies, they were also viewed as adopting a tone of indifference to the plight of non-college workers. Poll data suggest that Democratic struggles with the white working class are worsening. In "Elections and Demography: Democrats Lose Ground, Need Strong Turnout," an Oct. 22 American Enterprise institute report by Ruy Teixeira, Karlyn Bowman and Nate Moore write: The gap between non-college and college whites continues to grow. For the first time this cycle, the difference in margin between the two has surpassed an astounding 40 points, well above the 33-point gap in 2020's presidential contest.

This decoupling had baleful economic and social consequences: low paid, insecure jobs held by non-college workers; low participation rates in the labor force; weak upward mobility across generations; and festering earnings and employment disparities among races that have not substantially improved in decades. While new technologies have contributed to these poor results, these outcomes were not an inevitable consequence of technological change, nor of globalization, nor of market forces. Similar pressures from digitalization and globalization affected most industrialized countries, and yet their labor markets fared better."

At the start of the first Terminator movie, Sarah Connor, unknowingly the future mother of Earth's resistance movement, is working as a waitress when Arnold Schwarzenegger's Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 Terminator is sent back through time to kill her. But what if, instead of attempting to murder her, Skynet's android assassin instead approached the owner of Big Jeff's family restaurant, where Sarah worked, and offered to do her shifts for lower wages, while working faster and making fewer mistakes? The newly jobless Sarah, unable to support herself, drops out of college and decides that maybe starting a family in this economic climate just isn't smart. This, in a somewhat cyberbolic nutshell, is the biggest immediate threat many fear when it comes to automation: Not a robopocalypse brought on by superintelligence, but rather one that ushers in an age of technological unemployment. Some very smart people have been sounding the alarm for years. A 2013 study carried out by the Oxford Martin School suggested that some 47% of jobs in the U.S. could be automated within the next two decades -- only 12 years of which now remain following the publishing of the study.

Some people are fearful the coming revolution in AI and robotics will take people's jobs. Satya Nadella sees a way forward. Speaking at the Nov. 18 MIT AI and Work of the Future Congress, the Microsoft CEO envisioned a near future where jobs are "enriched by productivity." "Computing is getting embedded in the real world, in a manufacturing plant, in a retail setting, in a hospital, in a farm," Nadella said. "Now we're transcending beyond knowledge work to help people who are on the construction site, in care management in hospitals, on manufacturing shop floors, to all participate in being able to do digitized work. And obviously, hopefully the wages go up."