There’s a book in my bathroom. Not in the bathroom in the sense that someone reads it there regularly — I put it there on purpose, adjusted its position three times over several weeks, and waited. My daughter is seven. She hadn’t shown much interest in this particular book. I’d mentioned it once, which is to say I made the mistake of recommending it, which of course meant she’d now rather read anything else.

There’s a peculiar torture humans have inflicted on machines lately: show an AI a stick figure of a running person drawn by a four-year-old, and ask it why those three wobbly lines mean “running.” The machine, which can identify a golden retriever from 2,000 pixels with 99.7% confidence, suddenly stammers.

Xiao Ran recently started using AI tools to assist with homework. Whether it’s writing reflections for a language arts class or researching historical events, she turns to ChatGPT for instant answers. If the results aren’t satisfactory, she switches to DeepSeek for additional materials from different angles. At first, she thought these tools were “learning miracles”—no more flipping through books or browsing endless web pages, and answers appeared to be at her fingertips.

A step-by-step beginner’s guide to creating a personal website and blog using Jekyll and hosting it for free using GitHub Pages.