Ban or Embrace? Colleges Wrestle With A.I.-Generated Admissions Essays.
News

Ban or Embrace? Colleges Wrestle With A.I.-Generated Admissions Essays.

Rick Clark, the executive director of undergraduate admission at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and his staff spent weeks this summer pretending to be high school students using A.I. chatbots to fill out college applications.The admissions officers each took on a different high school persona: swim team captain, Eagle Scout, musical theater performer. Then they fed personal details about the fictional students into ChatGPT, prompting the A.I. chatbot to produce the kind of extracurricular activity lists and personal essays commonly required on college applications.Mr. Clark said he wanted to get a handle on how A.I. chatbots might reshape the admissions process this fall — the start of the first full academic year that the tools will be widely available to high school seniors — and c...
Wearables Resurface at the Paris Shows of 3 Fashion Brands
Technology

Wearables Resurface at the Paris Shows of 3 Fashion Brands

In 2014 Jony Ive, then the chief design officer of Apple, came to Paris Fashion Week with his Big New Product, the Apple Watch, to convince the fashion crowd that wearables were the future of fashion. That turned out to be not exactly true (at least style-wise), but it hasn’t stopped two former Apple designers, Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, from returning nine years later to try again.This time around, the product is the Ai Pin — a stand-alone smart assistant that attaches to clothing via a magnet and so can be worn pretty much wherever you want it — which made its runway debut on the jackets and pant pockets at Coperni. The brand’s founders and designers, Sébastien Meyer and Arnaud Vaillant, have become known during fashion week for their technology-based stunts: spray-painting fa...
Steph Curry, golfer and entrepreneur, plots his second act
Sports

Steph Curry, golfer and entrepreneur, plots his second act

DALY CITY, Calif. — Bobby Bonilla is chilling.The baseball legend is in a golf cart, playing his background role to perfection on this mid-August afternoon at Lake Merced Golf Club. To his left, his good friend Barry Bonds chats away with a sports writer from his playing days. Bonilla, in sunglasses and a black T-shirt covering his rotund belly, leans right in lieu of a recline. One hand on the steering wheel of the cart as he puffs on a cigar behind the buzz of the festivities. He knows no one is here to see him or his superstar friend.“Look at this,” he says, lifting his stogie-free hand toward the majesty of the setting.Bay Area weather is showing out — 70-something degrees, hot enough to feel like California, but cool enough to not be overwhelmed — as the sun makes its way toward the P...
Wall Street’s Most Hated Regulator Faces a Fundamental Threat
Economy

Wall Street’s Most Hated Regulator Faces a Fundamental Threat

Rohit Chopra became one of the most powerful financial regulators by pairing bark with bite. As director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he has attacked — often with a hammer — the perpetrators of what he considers injustices against everyday Americans.When the bureau slapped Wells Fargo last year with $3.7 billion in fines and damages for transgressions, including wrongfully seizing some borrowers’ homes, Mr. Chopra accused the bank of a “rinse-repeat cycle of violating the law.” When it sued MoneyGram that same year over delays in transmitting customers’ funds, Mr. Chopra said he wanted to go beyond fines and impose a punishment that would cut deeply enough to “halt repeated lawbreaking.” And in litigation against TransUnion, again in 2022, about deceptive sales tactics, Mr....
They Ran for a Better Life, Straight Into a Wildfire
News

They Ran for a Better Life, Straight Into a Wildfire

As they traversed the harsh, wooded terrain in northeastern Greece, the 18 asylum seekers were presented with an agonizing dilemma: Take the safer route through villages and over highways, but into the arms of the Greek authorities, or travel through the forests and fields being ravaged by Europe’s largest recorded wildfire.They opted for the forests.On Aug. 21, around 9 p.m., the group of asylum seekers burned to death in Europe’s largest recorded wildfire. Their bodies, charred beyond recognition, were discovered the next day.Greek authorities assumed the victims were migrants because no one was looking for missing people locally. And for more than a month, their identities, and the circumstances of their deaths, remained a mystery.But over weeks of reporting, The New York Times was able...
A Tech Checklist for the Dark Side of Summer Weather
Technology

A Tech Checklist for the Dark Side of Summer Weather

Summer is in full swing now, but along with vacation trips, camp and lazy days, extreme weather has arrived for many parts of the country. If you live in an area that’s prone to such conditions, it helps to be ready. Here are some tips to help you use your tech through major meteorological moments — sometimes, even when power and cell service are shaky.Stay UpdatedGetting accurate local weather information helps you stay ahead of nearby threats like hurricanes, flash floods, tornadoes or wildfires. Setting up alerts on Apple’s default Weather app, the Google app or a specialized weather app keeps you notified. Bookmarking government web pages in your browser — like those for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Hurricane Center or the U.S. Air Quality Index — i...
They Shot at Her. They Forced Her From Her Home. She Won’t Stop Fighting for Girls.
Sports

They Shot at Her. They Forced Her From Her Home. She Won’t Stop Fighting for Girls.

Khalida Popal, the former captain of the Afghanistan women’s national soccer team, woke up on the floor of her apartment near Copenhagen, drenched in sweat and shaking.She had collapsed and couldn’t speak. An ambulance rushed to her.It was two years ago last month, and the Taliban were taking control of Afghanistan. Female soccer players on the national team Popal helped create in 2007 were desperate to leave the country, fearing that the Taliban would kill them for playing the sport.Players were deluging Popal with requests for help, and she felt smothered by guilt. For more than 15 years, much of that period spent in exile, she had encouraged Afghan girls to participate in all areas of society, including sports, jobs and education.The message was everything the Taliban despised.“I feel r...
U.S. Government Shutdown Could Delay Key Economic Data
Economy

U.S. Government Shutdown Could Delay Key Economic Data

A federal government shutdown would cut off access to key data on unemployment, inflation and spending just as policymakers are trying to guide the economy to a “soft landing” and avoid a recession.Federal statistical agencies, including the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Economic Analysis, will suspend operations unless Congress reaches a deal before Sunday to fund the government. Even a short shutdown would probably delay high-profile data releases — including the monthly jobs report, scheduled for Oct. 6, and the Consumer Price Index, scheduled for Oct. 12.This isn’t the first time government shutdowns have threatened economic data. The 16-day lapse in funding in 2013 delayed dozens of releases, including the September employment report. A longer but les...
A Nobel Prize Might Lower a Scientist’s Impact
Health

A Nobel Prize Might Lower a Scientist’s Impact

Winning a Nobel Prize can be a life-changing event. The winners are thrust onto a world stage, and for many scientists the recognition represents the pinnacle of their careers.But what is the effect of winning such a high-profile prize on science?John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University, wants to find out. Awards like the Nobel Prize are “a major reputational tool,” he said, but he questions “whether they really help scientists become more productive and more impactful.”In August, a team of researchers led by Dr. Ioannidis published a study in the journal Royal Society Open Science that attempted to quantify whether major awards push science forward. Using publication and citation patterns for scientists who won a Nobel Prize or a MacArthur Fellowship — the so-called genius...
Yale’s President Announces He Will Step Down
News

Yale’s President Announces He Will Step Down

Peter Salovey, the president of Yale, announced Thursday that he will step down in June after 11 years in office, during which he increased the university’s endowment, student enrollment, and its racial, ethnic and economic diversity.This month, the university announced that its entering class was one of its largest ever — 22 percent of students were eligible for federal Pell Grants for low-income students, and 21 percent were the first in their families to go to college. A decade ago, the number of first-generation students was 12 percent. This year, Black students made up 14 percent of the class, 18 percent were Latino, 42 percent were white and 30 percent were Asian American. (The numbers do not add up to 100 because some students indicated two or more races and ethnicities.)Peter Sa...