Commentary

Organizations across the country are grappling with how to deal with the headline-grabbing idea-generator known as ChatGPT, launched publicly for free in November as part of a research project by San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company, OpenAI. Most groups appear to fall into one of two camps: those who would ban it to avoid cheating, as Baltimore County Public Schools has done, and those who would embrace it as a limited — if flawed — tool, like the writers of a recent op-ed published in The Sun, who recommended it as a sort of thought organizer.

So the Battle of the Balloon is over — and, not surprisingly, America won. On Saturday, one of the most advanced U.S. weapons systems — an F-22 Raptor — shot down one of China’s most primitive surveillance systems: a balloon that had been traversing the United States during the previous week. The whole incident leaves me feeling unsettled and alarmed. Oh, I’m not worried about the spy balloon. The violation of U.S. airspace was unacceptable, but it did not pose any actual threat, and it’s doubtful that it gathered any intelligence that Chinese spy satellites cannot.

The recently concluded winter 2023 meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors focused on the many challenges facing the country’s large and medium-sized cities. Many of the concerns were those directly related to the continuing impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting economic dislocations. With city leaders gathered in Washington, D.C., the Brookings Institution organized a webinar titled “Governing the Post-Pandemic City.”  Hosted by Brookings’ interim President Amy Liu, the panel included as speakers Mayor Justin Bibb of Cleveland and Mayor Bruce Harrell of Seattle. In their discussion, I heard the recognition by these leaders that cities – and particularly their downtowns — are not going back to their pre-pandemic status as the public health threat lessens.

It's hard to believe. A program rehabilitating 3,476 apartments, almost all in quite visible high-rise buildings, has had so little public attention. The program is RAD, an acronym for the Rental Assistance Demonstration, conceived in the Obama administration and approved by Congress in 2012. Locally, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City was quick to act — and soon led a partnership with both private and nonprofit companies — and without any public relations fanfare. Developers who have not yet participated should now be aware that there's still opportunity to be involved in Baltimore and nationally. Just as importantly, developers should leverage RAD's momentum here by pursuing rehabilitation and new construction projects in the 16 neighborhoods where the RAD investment — $743 million to date — has already been made.

Last summer, a piece of artwork generated with artificial intelligence took a first prize at the Colorado State Fair. To me, the image looks like a view from the back of the stage at an opera. You see the backs of three singers, then, past them, vague squiggles and forms that may or may not be an audience, and all around, dominating everything, the fantastical Lord of the Rings-style palace where they are performing. The artwork looks cool at first glance, but after a second, it feels kind of lifeless. “As I came back to the image and sat with it for a while, I found that my efforts to engage it at depth were thwarted,” L.M. Sacasas wrote in his newsletter on technology and culture. “This happened when I began to inspect the image more closely. As I did so, my experience of the image began to devolve rather than deepen.”

The Archdiocese of Baltimore was involved in the gravest of betrayals for its historic failure to protect children from sexual predators and for the sinister and cowardly decisions of some individuals to cover their tracks. As long as I am the archbishop of Baltimore, the church will continue to apologize for the pain inflicted and to assist those in the lifelong process of healing. Scrutiny of our past is warranted. When the objective is to protect a child, half-measures are not acceptable.

The Maryland General Assembly, with the support of Gov. Wes Moore, is prioritizing bills this legislative session that would bolster the state’s already strict laws regulating firearms — and for good reason. More than 50 mass shootings (defined for this count as a minimum of four people shot in a single incident, excluding the gunperson), have already occurred in 19 states and the District of Columbia just since the start of this year, including the shooting of five teenagers in Baltimore City on Jan. 4, one of whom died. As of Thursday, 88 people have been killed in 2023 in this country through such broad attacks, and 219 wounded. Hundreds more have been victims of smaller-scale shootings.

It’s good to stand among the creative and the crafty, if only for an hour or two. It’s good to stand there while Gary Flowers steams a sheet of maple to form the curved sides of one of his fine guitars. It does some good to watch, in the same shop a few feet away, Jaime Miller sand the walnut on one of his beautiful handcrafted urns. You could walk down the hall of the old ball-bearing factory and find someone restoring furniture, gilding a frame or bringing new, shocking shine to old brass. You can walk until you land at Brubaker Musical Instruments, maker of electric guitars. It’s all there. It’s all happening on rainy days and sunny days behind the brick walls at Loch Raven Road and Exeter Hall, near the Cloverland Green Spring Dairy plant.