Natasha Singer

And finally, I went to an English class where the teacher gave the students a choice.

They could do the lesson on paper or they could write it in their Chromebooks, but most of the kids decided to use paper.

Most of the students I talked to said it felt kind of good not to be on the devices all the time.

I had students tell me that they're talking more to their peers because they're not burying their faces in Chromebooks anymore.

They're collaborating more.

And so we're not talking about a school that is like returning.

It's like the new Luddism.

It's not right.

It's like they are moving to what they call more intentional, more purposeful tech use.

And so it's no longer sort of this knee jerk.

Oh, we have to write something.

Let's get out to Chromebooks.

There was what I would say is kind of a magic beans jobs narrative that the tech industry campaigned on.

Computer science is interesting and important, but it came with this promise of learn to code and you'll be rich and powerful.

You'll be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

You know, it's not just...

that there are new AI tools that can do some human tasks that tech companies are encouraging employees to use.

It's that big companies like Microsoft and Google are shifting their priorities to build more and more of these huge data centers, which they're pouring billions of dollars into and moving teams to focus on AI products.

And so it's also that there's much more spending on AI, which may mean there's going to be less spending on human capital.

And then on top of that, Stanford recently did a study called Canaries in the Coal Mine, looking at the jobs that were most vulnerable to being replaced by AI or reduced by AI.