2024-08-01
5 分钟The Economist Hello, this is Alok Jha,
host of Babbage, our weekly podcast on science and technology.
Welcome to Editor's Picks.
We've chosen an unmissable article from the latest edition of The Economist.
Please do have a listen.
July 19th was a day for help desk heroes and support superstars.
A routine software update by CrowdStrike, a cyber security company,
caused computer outages in offices, hospitals and airports worldwide.
Most white-collar workers looked disconsolately at their screens and realised just how useless they are
if they cannot log in.
People in IT came to the rescue of helpless colleagues and stranded passengers.
Their work that day was full of stress, but also full of meaning.
If machines can add purpose to some jobs when they fail,
what about when they work properly?
This is not an idle question.
Discussions about artificial intelligence, or AI in particular,
easily get lost in hypothetical debates about wholesale job losses,
or worse, the nature of consciousness.
But technologies tend to spread in less dramatic ways,
task by task rather than role by role.