2025-09-16
23 分钟The economist.
Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from the economist.
I'm Rosie Blore.
And I'm Jason Palmer.
Every weekday, we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.
I've lost track of how many times I've discussed AI on the intelligence.
But this one is seriously Orwellian.
Amid concerns that chatbots reflect the biases of their creators.
Today we'll be asking if large language models can actually be woke.
And plenty of signs suggest the very act of reading is in decline.
More than that, though, writing is itself getting less complex.
And that in turn is leading to a slip in measures of comprehension.
When reading goes, so too, it seems, goes clear thinking.
But first, For a population to remain stable, women have to have about 2.1 children.
Well, on average, no fractional babies required.
In Turkey, that mean number is just under one and a half.
In South Korea, it dipped below one seven years ago.
Colombia, China, Mexico, Japan, America, rich or poor, East or West, it's a growing problem, or a shrinking one, I guess.
All over the world.
So what happens when global headcount goes through contractions?