Similar to you, I found Church's discussion of how most parents in the U.S. choose to have girls particularly interesting and surprising. Your research sheds some light on why this may be the case; some of my female friends do express that they want at least one daughter. It may be that women are likely to take on most of the burden of raising the children and therefore have stronger preferences about their children's genders. I agree that much of my prior conception of genomics has been shaped by science fiction. As this genre explores, genomics raises a host of potential ethical issues that would have been interesting to hear more about in the interview – I thought that the ethics section of the video was surprisingly short.

Many of the articles I have seen about new advancements in AI technology – including the NYT AI series from earlier this month – argue that AI chatbots like GPT-4 are very impressive, but still fundamentally flawed. This article from The Atlantic (https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-openai-artificial-intelligence-writing-ethics/672386/) advises readers to treat ChatGPT “like a toy, not a tool.” But at the same time, influential figures like Elon Musk are taking a public stand against further advancement in AI beyond that already developed for GPT-4. Different sources express different opinions about how powerful AI technology is and the threat it potentially poses to the dissemination of true information and to jobs in a variety of sectors. Interestingly, ChatGPT’s faults such as its tendency to “hallucinate” and make up false information make it problematic, but many people find its potential capabilities to take over human jobs equally threatening. When considering the future effect of AI on jobs, I think it is helpful to look to the past. For hundreds of years, humans have worried that increased automation and access to new technology will replace jobs, leaving large swaths of the population unemployed. However, thus far these predictions have been incorrect. While we as humans may be predisposed to believe that we are living in unprecedented times, I am optimistic that we will find a way to adapt to new AI technology and use it to become more efficient and improve living standards, just as we have since the dawn of mankind.

I also found Professor Dan Kammen's point that performance contracts incentivize greener building very promising. Like you, I would love to see such measures implemented in more cities in the US. It seems that many American governmental officials have passed very expensive and potentially inefficient laws in order to create greener cities, but performance contracts are a great way to internalize externalities and make contractors accountable. I also really enjoyed reading your second paragraph and agree that climate change deniers pose a threat to many potentially beneficial measures such as those you covered in your first paragraph.