essay about learning to drive

The Yale Wave

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Why You Should Learn to Drive – The Benefits of Driving

Transport is a large part of our lives. Even if you live in a remote area, you still have to head out of the house for supplies once or twice a week. For people who study or work, commuting is most likely a daily affair. A driver’s license is a sought-after qualification that offers the freedom of driving. But, aside from getting someone from A to B, are there other benefits of learning to drive?

The Benefits of Driving

Driving grows your brain.

Managing multiple tasks during driving helps develop neuroplasticity. Basic driving involves coordinating your hands and feet to simultaneously steer and work the pedals. Add to that listening to music, watching other cars, following navigation instructions, or drinking coffee, and your brain is being trained to process large amounts of information at once.

As you learn new driving routes, visualize how various roads connect, and figure out the fastest route to take, you also improve your memory and your ability to interpret and retain visual information. A study of trainee taxi drivers found that learning the streets of London resulted in hippocampus development and higher cognitive functions including spatial memory.

Driving offers mobility and convenience.

The main reason why most people learn to drive is that it offers mobility. After a long day at work, instead of waiting for public transport in the cold and rain, you can simply hop into your car and be on the way home. Daily commutes aside, driving makes it more convenient for you to make quick trips like popping out to the store or taking your dog to the vet.

Your car also comes with more space. It can fit several people and a large amount of shopping. Instead of having to lug bulky grocery bags to the bus stop or take the train with kids in tow, you can load everyone and everything into the car. In addition, you have the freedom to make multiple stops and pick up the shopping, the kids, and dinner all in one trip.

Driving offers independence, privacy, and security.

There is a reason why obtaining a driver’s license is a rite of passage for many young adults. Driving fosters a sense of responsibility and independence from having to rely on busy parents or family members. Learning to maintain a vehicle and manage vehicle expenses is good practice for the responsibilities of adulthood.

When you take public transport, common riders can easily learn your daily schedules. In hire cars, drivers know where you live and can listen in on your conversations. For people who value their privacy, driving is a better option. Moreover, having a private car can also provide a stronger sense of security for those who have to travel at night or on isolated routes.

You could save money.

With the current gas prices, owning and maintaining a car may seem costly. But for many people who live in areas with limited public transport options, driving can be much more affordable than hiring private taxis. Furthermore, there are numerous ways where you can have a car without breaking the bank such as buying second-hand or sharing the family car.

You could get a job.

Once you have passed your driving test, you have your license for life. This license can come in handy when you are looking for employment. Many companies prefer to hire people who are licensed drivers in case they need to make an urgent delivery or meet a client in a hurry. Besides, you always have the option of becoming a ride-hail driver in your spare time.

How to Learn to Drive

Driver’s licenses are required by law for anyone operating a motor vehicle in the United States. Licenses are issued by the state in which you live and the processes and regulations vary from state to state. Typically, you can start your driver’s education at 14. Download or purchase the relevant driver’s handbook for your state from your local DMV.

You can generally apply for your learner’s permit between the age of 14 and 16. Most states, such as California, will require you to complete a state-approved driver’s education course or basic knowledge test before you can apply for a learner’s license. It is recommended that you find a reputable driving school and online driver’s ed resource to help you from this stage onwards.

With a learner’s license, you can take driving lessons and accumulate the minimum required number of supervised driving hours. Some states also have mandatory auxiliary programs such as the Impact Texas Drivers Program. When you have completed the requirements and reached the minimum age for your state, you can apply for your provisional driver’s license.

To receive your provisional driver’s license, you will need to pass a comprehensive written exam and a driving skills test. The provisional driver’s license comes with certain restrictions such as passenger numbers and driving hours. In some states, you can upgrade to a full license as young as 16 and 6 months while you have to be 18 in others. Once you have your full license, you are good to go!

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Learning to Drive

By Katha Pollitt

“Over there, the red Jeep. Park!” Ben, my gentle Filipino driving instructor, has suddenly become severe, abrupt, commanding. A slight man, he now looms in his seat; his usually soft voice has acquired a threatening edge. In a scenario that we have repeated dozens of times, and that has kinky overtones I don’t even want to think about, he is pretending to be the test examiner, barking out orders as we tool along the streets above Columbia University in the early morning. “Pull out when you are ready!” “Right turn!” “Left turn!” “Straight!” “All right, Ms. Pollitt, pull over.” He doesn’t even need to say the words. From the rueful look on his once again kindly face, I know that I have failed.

What did I do this time? Did I run a red light, miss a stop sign, fail to notice one of the many bicyclists who sneak up into my blind spot whenever I go into reverse? Each of these mistakes means automatic failure. Or did I fail on points? Five for parallel-parking more than fourteen inches from the curb, ten for rolling when I paused for the woman with the stroller (but at least I saw her! I saw her!), fifteen for hesitating in the intersection so that a driver in a car with New Jersey plates honked and gave me the finger? This time it was points, Ben tells me: in our five-minute practice test, I racked up sixty. New York State allows you thirty. “Observation, Kahta, observation! This is your weakness.” This truth hangs in the air like mystical advice from a sage in a martial-arts movie. “That and lining up too far away when you go to park.” The clock on the dashboard reads seven-forty-seven. We will role-play the test repeatedly during my two-hour lesson. I will fail every time.

Observation is my weakness. I did not realize that my mother was a secret drinker. I did not realize that the man I lived with, my soul mate, made for me in Marxist heaven, was a dedicated philanderer, that the drab colleague he insinuated into our social life was his longstanding secret lover, or that the young art critic he mocked as silly and second-rate was being groomed as my replacement. I noticed that our apartment was becoming a grunge palace, with papers collecting dust on every surface and kitty litter crunching underfoot. I observed—very good, Kahta!—that I was spending many hours in my study, engaged in arcane e-mail debates with strangers, that I had gained twenty-five pounds in our seven years together and could not fit into many of my clothes. I realized it was not likely that the unfamiliar pink-and-black striped bikini panties in the clean-clothes basket were the result, as he claimed, of a simple laundry-room mixup. But all this awareness was like the impending danger in one of those slow-motion dreams of paralysis, information that could not be processed. It was like seeing the man with the suitcase step off the curb and driving forward anyway.

I am a fifty-two-year-old woman who has yet to get a driver’s license. I’m not the only older woman who can’t legally drive—Ben recently had a sixty-five-year-old student, who took the test four times before she passed—but perhaps I am the only fifty-two-year-old feminist writer in this situation. How did this happen to me? For decades, all around me women were laying claim to forbidden manly skills—how to fix the furnace, perform brain surgery, hunt seals, have sex without love. Only I, it seems, stood still, as the machines in my life increased in both number and complexity. When I was growing up, not driving had overtones of New York hipness. There was something beatnik, intellectual, European about being disconnected from the car culture: the rest of America might deliquesce into one big strip mall, but New York City would remain a little outpost of humane civilization, an enclave of ancient modes of transportation—the subway, the bus, the taxi, the bicycle, the foot. Still, my family always had a car—a Buick, a Rambler, some big, lumber-ing masculine make. My father would sit in it and smoke and listen to the ballgame in the soft summer evening, when he and my mother had had a fight.

“I am trying so hard to help you, Kahta,” Ben says. “I feel perhaps I am failing you as your teacher.” In a lifetime in and out of academia, I have never before heard a teacher suggest that his student’s difficulties might have something to do with him. The truth is, Ben is a natural pedagogue—organized, patient, engaged with his subject, and always looking for new ways to explain some tricky point. Sometimes he illustrates what I should have done by using a pair of toy cars, and I can see the little boy he once was—intent, happy, lost in play. Sometimes he makes up analogies:

“Kahta, how do you know if you’ve put in enough salt and pepper when you are making beef stew?”

“Um, you taste it?”

“Riiight, you taste it. So what do you do if you’ve lost track of which way the car is pointing when you parallel-park?”

“I dunno, Ben. You taste it?”

“You just let the car move back a tiny bit and see which way it goes! You taste the direction! Then you— ”

“Correct the seasonings?”

“Riiight . . . You adjust!”

Because it takes me a while to focus on the task at hand, Ben and I have fallen into the habit of long lessons—we drive for two hours, sometimes three. We go up to Washington Heights and drive around the winding, hilly roads of Fort Tryon Park and the narrow crooked Tudoresque streets near Castle Village. What a beautiful neighborhood! we exclaim. Look at that Art Deco subway-station entrance! Look at those Catholic schoolgirls in front of Mother Cabrini High, in those incredibly cute sexy plaid uniforms! I am careful to stop for the old rabbi, I pause and make eye contact with the mother herding her two little boys. It’s like another, secret New York up here, preserved from the forties, in which jogging yuppies in electric-blue spandex look like time travellers from the future among the staid elderly burghers walking their dogs along the leafy sidewalks overlooking the Hudson. In that New York, the one without road-raging New Jersey drivers or sneaky cyclists, in which life is lived at twenty miles an hour, I feel sure I could have got my license with no trouble. I could have been living here all along, coming out of the Art Deco entrance at dusk, with sweet-smelling creamy-pink magnolias all around me.

I spend more time with Ben than with any other man just now. There are days when, except for an exchange of smiles and hellos with Mohammed at the newsstand and my suppertime phone call with a man I am seeing who lives in London, Ben is the only man I talk to. In a way, he’s perfect—his use of the double brake is protective without being infantilizing, his corrections are firm but never condescending or judgmental, he spares my feelings but tells the truth if asked. (“Let’s say I took the test tomorrow, Ben. What are my chances?” “I’d say maybe fifty-fifty.” I must be pretty desperate—those don’t seem like such bad odds to me.) He’s a big improvement on my former lover, who told a mutual friend that he was leaving me because I didn’t have a driver’s license, spent too much time on e-mail, and had failed in seven years to read Anton Pannekoek’s “Workers’ Councils” and other classics of the ultra-left. Ben would never leave me because I don’t have a driver’s license. Quite the reverse. Sometimes I feel sad to think that these lessons must one day come to an end—will I ever see those little streets again, or drive around Fort Tryon Park in the spring? “Will you still be my teacher, Ben, after I get my license, so I can learn how to drive on the highway?” Ben promises that he will always be there for me, and I believe him.

In at least one way, I am like the other older women learning to drive: I am here because I have lost my man. Most women in my situation are widows or divorcées who spent their lives under Old World rules, in which driving was a male prerogative and being ferried about a female privilege. My lover’s mother lived in the wilds of Vermont for years with her Marxist-intellectual husband. With the puritanical zeal for which German Jews are famous, she kept the house spotless, grew all their fruits and vegetables, and raised her son to be a world-class womanizer—while earning a Ph.D. that would enable her to support her husband’s life of reading and writing, and, of course, driving. She didn’t learn to drive until after his death, when she was over sixty. To hear her tell it now, the whole process took five minutes. When she asked if I’d got my license yet—which she did every time we spoke—she adopted a tone of intense and invasive concern. It was as if she were asking me if the Thorazine had started to work.

Ben is not my first driving teacher. When I was twenty-seven, I took lessons from Mike, a young and rather obnoxious Italian-American. “That’s O.K., I can walk to the curb from here,” he would say when I parked too wide. After a month of lessons, I took the test in the Bronx and didn’t even notice that I’d hit a stop sign when I parked. Automatic failure. Mike drove me back to Manhattan in hostile silence and didn’t call to schedule a lesson again. Ben would never do that.

That was it for driving until four years ago, when I bought a house on the Connecticut shore and signed up for lessons with an instructor I’ll call Tom. He was Italian-American also, middle-aged, overweight, and rather sweet, but liable to spells of anger and gloom, as if he had raised too many sons like Mike. On bad days, as we drove around the back roads and shopping centers of Clinton and Madison and Guilford, Tom would seethe about the criminal propensities of the black inhabitants of New Haven. On good days, he liked to talk about religion. For example, he believed that Jesus Christ was a space alien, which would explain a lot—the Star of Bethlehem, the walking on water, the Resurrection. Besides, Tom said, “no human being could be that good.” He made me memorize his special method of sliding backward into a parking space, failed to impress upon me the existence of blind spots, and, like his predecessor, lost interest in me when I flunked the road test.

I should have taken the test again immediately, but instead I spent several years driving around the shoreline with my lover in the passenger seat, as Connecticut law permits. He had special methods, too—for instance, on tricky maneuvers at an intersection he would urge me to “be one car” with the car in front, which means just do what that car is doing. Ben looked a little puzzled when I told him about that. What if the car in front is doing something really stupid? “Listen to your inner voice,” he tells me when I continue going back as I parallel-park, even though I know I am about to go over the curb, which is an automatic failure on the test. “You are right, Kahta, you knew! Your inner voice is trying to help you!” You can’t listen to your inner voice and be one car, too, is what Ben is getting at.

What was my lover thinking, I wonder, when we cruised Route 1, shuttling between our little house and the bookstore, the movie theatre, Al Forno for pizza, the Clam Castle for lobster rolls, Hammonasset Beach to watch the twilight come over that long expanse of shining sand? Was he daydreaming about the young art critic, thinking about how later he would go off on his bicycle and call the drab colleague from the pay phone at the Stop & Shop? Was he thinking what a drag it was to have a girlfriend who couldn’t pass a simple road test, even in small-town Connecticut, who did not care about the value-price transformation problem, and who never once woke him up with a blow job, despite being told many times that this was what all men wanted? Perhaps the young art critic is a better girlfriend on these and other scores, and he no longer feels the need for other women. Or perhaps the deception was the exciting part for him, and he will betray her, too, which is, of course, what I hope.

Now as I drive around upper Manhattan with Ben I spend a lot of time ignoring the road and asking myself, “If I had got my driver’s license, would my lover have left me?” Perhaps my procrastination about the road test was symbolic to him of other resistances. “In the end,” he said as he was leaving, ostensibly to “be alone” but actually, as I soon discovered, to join the young art critic on Fire Island, “our relationship revolves around you.” “That’s not true!” I wept. He also said, “Every day you wake up happy and cheerful and I’m lonely and miserable.” “No, I don’t!” I stormed. He continued, “You never read the books I recommend.” I protested that I was reading one such book at that very moment—“A World Full of Gods: Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Roman Empire,” by Keith Hopkins. “I mean serious political books,” he said. “Books that are important to me.” O.K., point taken. Then came the coup de grâce: “I finally saw that you would never change.”

What can you say to that? Change what? If I had read Anton Pannekoek’s “Workers’ Councils,” if I had given up e-mail for blow jobs at dawn, if I had got my license, would we still be together, driving north to buy daylilies at White Flower Farm while learnedly analyzing the Spartacist revolution of 1919? Perhaps, it occurs to me, as a demented cabbie cuts me off on Riverside Drive, it’s a lucky thing I didn’t get my license. I would still be living with a womanizer, a liar, a cheat, a manipulator, a maniac, a psychopath. Maybe my incompetence protected me.

New York State puts out an official booklet of rules of the road, but there are no textbooks that teach the art of driving itself. The closest is a tattered test result, much passed about by teachers, from the days when examiners filled out a form by hand. “I know his mother!” I exclaim when Ben gives me a copy. The test result happens to belong to a young writer, sometimes written up in gossip columns as a member of an all-boy fast crowd. “You see, Kahta! He failed to anticipate the actions of others. He didn’t stop for pedestrians. And he forgot his turn signals, too.” Ben shakes his head sorrowfully over the young writer’s terrible score—seventy points off! I find this failure oddly cheering.

Mostly, though, driving is a skill transmitted by experience, one to one. In this, it resembles few activities, most of which can be learned from a book, or so we tell ourselves—think how many sex manuals are published every year, not to mention those educational sex videos advertised in high-toned literary publications aimed at people who were fantasizing about Mr. Rochester and Mr. Darcy while their classmates were steaming up the windows of their parents’ cars. That was another accusation my lover flung at me the day he left: “You bought ‘The Joy of Sex,’ but you just put it in a drawer!” “Why was it my job to improve our sex life?” I retorted. “You could have opened that book any time.” I suppose the truth was that, given his multiple exhausting commitments, he didn’t need to.

Sometimes when I am driving I become suddenly bewildered—it is as if I had never turned left or parallel-parked before. How many times have I turned the wheel while angling back into my parking space? I become hot and flushed and totally confused, and for some reason I keep turning the wheel until it’s maxed out, and then look frantically at Ben.

“What do I do now, Ben? How far back do I turn it? How do I know when it’s where it’s supposed to be?”

“Beef stew, Kahta! Remember?”

“You mean I should just let it go back a tiny bit to see where it will go?”

“Riiight. You see, you are learning! Beef-stew it!”

But what if I get my license and I have one of these episodes of befuddlement when I’m alone at the wheel? Ben often has to remind me not to zone out, as I so frequently do even while I’m telling myself to stay focussed. For example, I’ll be staring at the red light, determined not to let my mind wander, and then I start wondering why red means “stop” and green means “go.” Is there some optic science behind this color scheme? Is it arbitrary? Perhaps it derives from an ancient custom, the way the distance between railroad tracks is derived from the distance between the wheels on Roman carts. I think how sad and romantic street lights look when blurred in the rain, and how before electricity no one could experience that exact romantic sadness, because nothing could have looked like that. I savor the odd fact that a street scene that seems so old-fashioned now is actually a product of modernity, and then it hits me that this is the sort of idea my lover was always having, and I wonder if I will ever have my mind back wholly to myself or if I will always feel invaded, abandoned, bereft.

“Kahta,” Ben says gently, “the light has been green for some time now. Please, go!”

My lover used to joke that I had missed my chance to rid myself of my former husband forever by failing to run him over while an unlicensed, inexperienced driver. Actually, my ex and I get on very well. He’s an excellent father, and when I have a computer problem he helps me over the phone, although he refuses to come and fix the machine himself. Now when I am careering up Riverside Drive I sometimes fantasize that I see my lover and his new girlfriend in the crosswalk. I wave my arms helplessly as the car, taking on a life of its own, homes into them like a magnet smashing into a bar of iron. Sometimes I put the drab colleague in the crosswalk, too, and run all three of them down. No jury would believe it had been an accident, although Ben would surely testify in my favor. I’d go to jail for decades, and the case would be made into a movie for one of those cable channels for women—“Out of Control: The Katha Pollitt Story.” What a disappointing end to my struggle for personal growth! Yet one not without consolations: in jail, after all, I would not need to drive. I could settle into comfy middle age, reorganizing the prison library and becoming a lesbian.

Twelve years ago, I saw a therapist who urged me to learn to drive to set an example for my daughter, who was then a toddler. She pointed out that my mother had never learned to drive, and waited in silence, as they do, for me to see a connection. Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? My mother was a kind of professional helpless person. If she was alone in the house and couldn’t open a jar, she would take it to the corner bar and ask one of the drunks to open it for her. “Don’t be like your mother,” my father would say in exasperation when I displayed particular ineptitude in the face of the physical world. And, except for the matter of driving, I’m not. I’m meaner and stronger and I’m not drinking myself to death. I own a special tool for twisting recalcitrant lids. Unlike my mother, I can time a meal so that the rice, the meat, and the vegetables all come out ready together. But it’s true that my culinary skills deteriorated precipitously while I was living with my former lover, a fabulous cook who had once prepared dinner for the mayor of Bologna and who took over the kitchen the minute he moved in. Gradually, I forgot what I knew and lost the confidence to try new recipes, nor did I ever learn to use any of the numerous appliances he collected: the espresso machine with cappuccino attachment, the Cuisinart mini-prep, or the deep-fat fryer he bought the day after I said I was going on a diet.

My father made my mother sign up with a driving school. In fact, she was taking a lesson at the very moment word came over the car radio that President Kennedy had been shot. She claimed that this event so traumatized her that she could never get back behind the wheel. I didn’t believe her—she’d never liked J.F.K., who had invaded Cuba and brought the world to the brink of nuclear war with the missile crisis. I think she was just afraid, the way I am—afraid of killing myself, afraid of killing someone else. I was fourteen when my mother gave up on her license, the same age that my daughter is now, but I give myself bonus points, because I’m still taking lessons. “You can do it, Mom,” my daughter calls to me over her cereal when I dash out the door for my lesson. “Just keep your hands on the wheel.” In a weak moment, I mentioned to her that sometimes at a red light I forget and put my hands in my lap—that would earn a warning from the examiner right there. I am trying to set her a good example, as that long-ago therapist urged—the example of a woman who does not fall apart because the man she loved lied to her every single minute of their life together and then left her for a woman young enough to be his daughter. “I’m going to be a little obsessed for a while,” I told her. “I’m going to spend a lot of time talking on the phone with my friends and I may cry sometimes, but basically I’m fine. Also, I’m going on a huge diet, and I don’t want any teen-age anorexia from you.”

“Mom!” She gave me the parents-are-weird eye-roll. The truth is, though, she’s proud of me. When I do something new—figure out what’s wrong with the computer without having to call my ex-husband, or retake the big study I vacated for my lover when he moved in, or give away my schlumpy old fat clothes and buy a lot of beautiful velvet pants and tops in deep jewel colors—she pumps her arm and says, “Mujer de metal!”

Ben is not just a great driving instructor; he is an interesting conversationalist. On our long lessons, he tells me all about growing up in Manila: the beauty of going to Mass with his mother every day, and how sad it was to lose touch with his sisters when they married and became part of their husbands’ families. When he says that he prays for me to pass the driving test, I am so moved—I picture him surrounded by clouds of incense and tropical flowers, dressed in ornate robes, like the Infant of Prague. “Do you think I’m a weird Asian, Kahta?” Ben asks me. “Not at all,” I say firmly, although how could I tell? Ben is the only Asian I know. He tells me that Asians repress their anger—which makes me wonder if he is secretly angry at me for making so many mistakes—and that Westerners don’t understand their jokes. I tell him that mostly I know about Asians from reading ancient Chinese poetry and the novels of Shusako Endo. “What about the Kama Sutra?” he asks, and we laugh and insist we’ve never read it, never even looked at it, and then we laugh some more, because we know we are both lying. “See that pedestrian? He’s Bob Marley’s son,” Ben says, pointing to a handsome young black man with short dreadlocks who’s entering Riverside Church. And while I am wondering how Ben would know that—maybe Bob, Jr., took lessons from him?—he cracks up: “You believed me!” Ben can be quite a humorist. And yet sometimes I worry about him, going home after a long day to his studio in Floral Park, Long Island. He’s forty-four, and it will be years before he can marry his fiancée, who is forty and a schoolteacher back in the Philippines. When he gets home, he has three beers, which seems like a lot to drink alone. (“It used to be two, now three.”) If I believed in God, I would pray for him—to get his own driving school, and be able to bring his fiancée over and move with her to a nice apartment in Castle Village, on the side that looks out over the river.

Some mornings, I know I mystify Ben. “Did you notice that hazard, Kahta? That double-parked S.U.V.?” I admit I have no idea what he’s talking about. “Always look ahead, Kahta. Look at the big picture, not just what’s right in front of you. Observation!” Other days, though, I know I’m making progress. I zip up West End Avenue, enjoying the fresh green of the old plane trees and the early-morning quiet. I perform the physical work of driving, but with a kind of Zen dispersal of attention, so that as I am keeping an even pace and staying in my lane I am also noticing the bakery van signalling a right turn, and the dogwalker hesitating on the curb with his cluster of chows and retrievers. A block ahead, I see a school bus stopping in front of the same Italianate apartment building where my daughter, my lover, and I used to wait for the bus when she was in elementary school, and I am already preparing to be careful and cautious, because you never know when a little child might dart out into the street. At that moment, it seems possible that I will pass the driving test, if not this time, then the next. One morning soon, I will put my license in my pocket, I will get into the car, turn the key, and enjoy the rumbly throat-clearing sound of the engine starting up. I will flick the turn signal down, so it makes that satisfying, precise click. I will pull out when I am ready and drive—it doesn’t even matter where. I will make eye contact with pedestrians, I will be aware of cyclists coming up behind me; the smooth and confident trajectory of my vehicle will wordlessly convey to cabbies and Jersey drivers that they should keep at least three car lengths away, and more should it be raining. I will listen to my inner voice, I will look ahead to get the big picture, I will observe. I will beef-stew it. I will be mujer de metal.  ♦

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By Adam Gopnik

By Susan Faludi

By Ben McGrath

By Tessa Hadley

Why People Should Study Driving? Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Introduction

Works cited.

Driving plays a significant role in a person’s life. It is an act that allows people to move from one place to another with ease and convenience. In learning driving, a person is only able to move or drive a car, but other life important aspects such as attitude, efficiency, responsibility and risk management among others are earned.

South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles notes that a good driver has to own likable actions which can contribute to his or her driving experience. Perhaps having an accuracy of observation, attention, and apt use of a car control can increase his or contentment in driving.

Sobel and Nesbit argue that awareness of their personal limits and off the road and matching a car speed and the direction in the context can equally make driving a fulfilling undertaking (83). Driving skills are not meant for the road; a person who develops good driving can achieve success in ordinary life too. This is noted through their self-confidence, strong relationships with others, among other ethics. It is on this note that people should develop a habit of studying driving.

Effective drivers are efficient. Efficiency appoints maximum output for minimum input. Efficiency drivers ensure that whatever they do has a purpose and a reason hence there is no duplication of actions and their procedures are fulfilled with utmost economy. Besides, their engagements emerge to be smooth and stylish.

The drivers’ efficiency is extended to the vehicle. In this case, drivers show mechanical sympathy; they handle the vehicle’s controls carefully with coordination and feel that upholds tear and wear. They also complete their journeys at a considerably increased speed whereas using a reduced amount of gas than their counterparts with matching cars.

Texas Defensive Driving content that driving is a habit, a driver gains a habit when he or she continuously drives. However, ineffective driving can be a consequence because it leads to a crashing habit. The strength of a habit lies in what a driver does when he or she don’t consciously try to concentrate on what is supposed to be done. Texas Defensive Driving offers new insights into gaining driving habits. A driver should try to see and think about the familiar. This will construct new behavior of thinking.

Driving encourages responsibility. A person is the sole charge while driving hence all the decisions is perked on him or her. Drivers therefore accept responsibilities for everything they feel, think and do thus they are in control of their own actions. Drivers who avoid responsibility are always accompanied by guilt. This occurs because when they perform insufficiently they blame others or their car for their own failings. So, avoiding responsibility marries poor performance creating the feeling of being powerless and stressed.

Driving demands high awareness collected by a drivers’ senses. This awareness includes the emotions and other users of the road. According to Sobel and Nesbit (73) a driver should be aware of various stakeholders who use the roads. They include the pedestrians, a walker, individuals with disabilities on a wheelchair or on foot, a roller skater and a runner among others. The drivers need to be aware of these stakeholders.

The driver should be conscious to take all precautions or to be on a look-out not to harm these categories of people. It is the role of the driver to be cautious and be on a look-out not to harm these categories of people. Also, driving enables drivers to learn about various pedestrian victims such as the drinking public, small children and an older person Sobel and Nesbit (71).

These people, because of their circumstances and their position, can be vulnerable to risks connected to driving. A driver is therefore encouraged to be on alert and be on the lookout while driving to avoid risking the life of these stakeholders (South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles).

According to Industrial and Commercial Training, driving equips a person with great knowledge, to enable him or her succeed while moving and controlling a car (50). One important skill that drivers win is they know how to drive during various seasons of the year as in present times, weather patterns have become unpredictable. When it is supposed to be summer, we notice storms, when we believe it is cold, we see temperatures rising.

Hence, this situation has demanded new driving knowledge beyond the traditional learning skills acquired in a driving school. For example during the rainy season, a driver may go beyond the ordinary known driving skills learned, to a more creative or innovative approach. Skills which are acquired innovatively during this period are paying more attention when it rains after a long season of a dry spell.

Although this condition may seem a common sense issue, most people who have acquired driving skills seems to overlook it. Wells and Stacey (58) notes during a prolonged dry season, grease and engine oil heap and condense on the road surface. When it suddenly pours and the road or highway gets wet, the oil and grease mix hence making the road more unsafe than normal.

Another area of importance is the breaking system of the car. This is an important safety feature thus without it driving is almost impossible. It is therefore important for a person driving to guarantee his or her safety and that of others by clearly understanding the breaking system of his or her car (Industrial and Commercial Training, 49). Many things can happen or go wrong with the braking system of a car. To be on the safer side, regular inspection and preventive maintenance is important to avoid missing brakes while on the road.

The beauty of driving is stemmed from on defensive driving. Defensive driving allows a person to nurture good driving techniques. This includes; being able to manage time and space, proper planning and have the right attitude. This means using the available space a driver has to maneuver and time to react. Time works to the advantage of any apprentice to compensate for their inexperience and is worthless in reducing risk in traffic.

Kennedy (31) asserts that when driving defensively do it with the flow of other cars. Defensive drivers also should try to embrace anticipation. This is one of the most valuable arsenals for a defensive driver. The driver should anticipate the moves and needs of the neighboring drivers. Defensive driving is best utilized when the driver understands the road better. Knowing the road enables a driver to embrace defensive driving safer and better.

The change that a driver makes in driving largely influences other essential activities in his or her life. These activities are relationship with others, play and work among others. For example, by becoming a confident and competent driver will increase a person’s life esteem, being energy efficient will leave you with enough energy to do other activities. Besides, reducing anxiety from road relationship will have a positive effect in building strong relationship with others, and being judgmental on the road will support a person sporting activity.

Driving strengthens one’s effectiveness, responsibility and technical knowledge of a person. Rather than these skills being practiced in the driving field, they are part and parcel of a person’s life. They help a person to establish a healthy relationship with others and develop confidence. This is why driving is a must for everyone to learn.

Alexander, Don. Stock Car Driving Techniques . Minneapolis, Motor Books International, 2002. Print.

Industrial and Commercial Training. “Drivers Direct Reaches Training Milestone”, Industrial and Commercial Training , (2011); 46-69. Print.

Kennedy, Bill. The Most Complete Book on Advanced Defensive Driving , Kansas: Bill Kennedy Driving School, 2009. Print

Sobel, S Russell, Nesbit M Todd. Automobile Safety Regulation and the Incentive to Drive Recklessly: Evidence from NASCAR. Southern Economic Journal, (2007): 71-84. Print.

South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles. Important Driving Tips; Sharing the Road with Pedestrians , 2011. Web.

Texas Defensive Driving. The Importance of Driving, 2011. Web.

Wells, John, Stacey Margaret. Learn to Drive , London: Kogan Page Publishers, 2009. Print.

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94. learning to drive.

One of the greatest moments in a young person's life is the day when he or she starts learning to drive. Learning to drive is a rite of passage. It is one of the steps young people take to develop into adulthood. This is a wondrous time full of excitement and expectations. One of the most attractive things about learning to drive is the freedom that comes from operating a vehicle.

When Michael Allen first learned to drive, he was so excited. He was 16 years old, which in California means he can get a driver's permit. After six months with a permit, he could have a license to drive. Michael had been pestering his father to teach him how to drive for months and now came the big day. His father Edward was a big strong man, who insisted on teaching Michael on a standard transmission car. That meant Michael had to learn how to operate a clutch and gear shifter, which is not easy.

The two began their lessons. Edward was a difficult task-master, and Michael was having great difficulty at first. "Let the clutch out slowly," Edward began yelling every time Michael didn't do it correctly. "Ease it through. You can do it," said Edward to his son. "I'm trying, dad. I'm trying," said Michael. It was not pleasant at first, but soon Michael was driving up and down the block. He was very pleased, and so was his dad. Michael was now a driver.

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Essay on Driving

Students are often asked to write an essay on Driving in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Driving

What is driving.

Driving is the act of controlling a vehicle, like a car or a bike. It lets people go from one place to another faster than walking or biking. To drive, you need to learn the rules of the road and how to operate a vehicle safely.

The Importance of Learning to Drive

Learning to drive is important because it helps you become independent. You don’t have to rely on others to go places. But it’s a big responsibility. You must always pay attention and follow traffic laws.

Staying Safe on the Road

Safety is the most important part of driving. Always wear your seatbelt. Make sure your car is working well before you go anywhere. Never use your phone while driving because it can distract you and cause accidents.

Respecting Traffic Rules

Traffic rules are made to keep everyone safe. Stop at red lights, stay within speed limits, and use turn signals. If you break these rules, you could get fined or cause a crash.

Driving and the Environment

250 words essay on driving.

Driving is the act of controlling a vehicle, like a car, truck, or motorcycle. It’s a way for people to get from one place to another. To drive, you need to learn the rules of the road and how to handle the vehicle safely.

Learning to drive is important because it gives you freedom. Once you know how to drive, you can go to school, work, or anywhere else without waiting for a bus or a ride from someone else. It’s a big step towards becoming independent.

Rules of the Road

When you drive, you must follow the rules of the road. These rules help keep everyone safe. They tell you how fast you can go, where you can drive, and what signs like “STOP” and “YIELD” mean. If you don’t follow these rules, you could cause an accident or get a ticket.

Being Safe While Driving

Safety is the most important part of driving. Always wear your seatbelt and make sure your car is in good shape. Never use your phone while driving, and always pay attention to the road. Remember, when you’re driving, you’re responsible for your safety and the safety of others.

Cars can harm the environment, so it’s good to think about how often you drive. Walking, biking, or taking the bus can be better for the Earth. When you do drive, try to share rides with friends or family to help the planet.

500 Words Essay on Driving

Learning to drive is an important step towards becoming independent. It means that you don’t have to rely on others to take you places; you can go there yourself. For adults, driving can be essential for getting to work or taking care of their families. For younger people, it might be about exploring and enjoying the freedom of going wherever they want, whenever they want.

Road Safety Rules

When driving, it’s very important to follow road safety rules. These rules are like instructions that help keep everyone safe on the road. They tell you how fast you can go, where you can drive, and what signs and signals you need to pay attention to. For example, a red light means stop, and a green light means go. There are also rules about wearing seat belts to keep you safe in case of an accident.

Respecting Others on the Road

Cars and other vehicles can harm the environment because they produce pollution. This pollution can make the air dirty and harm plants and animals. That’s why it’s good to think about how often we use cars and if there are other ways to travel, like walking, biking, or taking the bus. Some cars are even made to be better for the environment by using electricity instead of gas.

The Fun of Driving

Driving can also be fun. It feels exciting to control a car and enjoy the scenery as you travel to new places. It’s like going on a mini-adventure every time you get behind the wheel. For many people, driving is a hobby, and they take great care of their vehicles, making sure they are clean and working well.

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How I Learned to Drive

Paula vogel, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

How I Learned to Drive tells the story of Li’l Bit , now a woman of around thirty-five years, coming to terms with the abusive and emotionally complex relationship that she had with her Uncle Peck . The play works in a non-linear way, using flashbacks, monologues and a heightened sense of the surreal to show how Li’l Bit relates to her memory and trauma. Other than the two characters already mentioned, the play employs three “Greek choruses”— teenage , female , and male —to jump between the roles of a wide range of people that populate Li’l Bit’s recollections. An official-sounding voice marks the transition between the scenes, using the kind of headings found in driving instruction.

The play opens with the present-day Li’l Bit setting the scene. Explaining that “sometimes to tell a secret, you first have to teach a lesson,” she introduces the first flashback, which takes place in 1969 when she is seventeen. She and Peck are in Peck’s car on a dark lane in Maryland. Peck touches and kisses Li’l Bit’s breasts, though she is reluctant and especially aware that she has an important day at school the following day. He does so as a “reward’ for being a “good boy”—based on the fact that he hasn’t drunk any alcohol for a week.

This scene breaks to show a typical family dinner in Li’l Bit’s household. Her grandfather , played by the male chorus, makes lewd jokes about the size of her breasts. Li’l Bit is determined to get a good education, which the male chorus says she isn’t going to need. As Li’l Bit storms outside, Peck comes out to comfort her. Present-day L’il Bit then reveals that she flunked out of school because she was drinking too much and spent the rest of that time period driving through the night.

The next flashback takes place in a fancy restaurant in 1968. Peck is treating Li’l Bit for passing her driving test first time. He orders her oysters and martinis, the latter of which she knocks back one after another despite being underage. The waiter looks on disapprovingly, but Peck pays him off with a big tip. Li’l Bit tries to get Peck to open up about his World War II experiences, but he resists. During this scene, the female chorus delivers a monologue as Li’l Bit’s mother , offering absurd advice on how women ought to consume alcohol. Li’l Bit drunkenly kisses Peck in the car afterwards, before freaking out about the inappropriateness of their relationship.

Next, the teenage chorus introduces a scene in which Peck takes Li’l Bit’s young cousin, BB (standing for “blue balls”; the entire family is nicknamed after their genitalia), fishing. In this, it is strongly implied that Peck sexually abuses his young relative.

Li’l Bit intervenes to describe a typical conversation between her fourteen-year-old self, her mother, and her grandmother (the last two played by the female and teenage choruses respectively). The grandmother describes her husband’s sexual behavior as that of a “bull,” wanting to have sex every morning and evening.

Li’l Bit then introduces another brief memory, in which, aged twenty-seven, she has a brief sexual encounter with a man who is ten years her junior. She lies in bed after having sex, wondering if she now understands something of the “allure” that Peck felt for her in her youth.

The story then returns to the previous conversation between Li’l Bit, her mother, and grandmother. Li’l Bit is a year older and asks whether sex hurts. Her mother wants to give her an honest account of the “facts of life,” but her god-fearing grandmother strongly disagrees. The mother and grandmother have an argument in which it is revealed that the mother is resentful for her grandmother’s unwillingness to provide guidance about sex to her when she was younger. The mother fell pregnant at an early age and had a bad relationship with the Li’l Bit’s father.

The action switches to a driving lesson given to Li’l Bit by Peck. He gives her good, solid advice on how to drive, though also insists that she needs to drive “like a man,” because women are too fatally hesitant. With her hands on the steering wheel, Li’l Bit quips that she won’t be able to “defend” herself; Peck vows never to touch her while she’s driving.

The audience is then given a sense of Li’l Bit’s time at high school. Her classmates make jokes on account of her big breasts. These, too, cause Li’l Bit confusion: she likens her breasts to hostile “alien life forces” and radio transmitters, sending out siren-like signals to men in order to attract them to “dash” themselves on “these rocks.” At the school dance, Li’l Bit refuses to join in any of the fast numbers, afraid that the boys just want to see her “jiggling.”

The official-sounding voice announces: “You and the Reverse Gear.” This takes the action back to 1965, in which a thirteen-year-old Li’l Bit is being photographed by Peck in his basement. He puts on the kind of music that she likes and gets her to dance for the camera. When he promises not to “cross the line ,” she naively states the line to be “frontal nudity.” He accidentally lets slip that he intends to build a portfolio to one day send to Playboy . Li’l Bit is hurt by this, again emphasizing that she wants to get a good education. To placate her, Peck tells Li’l Bit that he loves her.

At this point, the female chorus jumps in as Aunt Mary , Peck’s wife. She praises the virtues of her husband: how he does the chores round the house, helps out the neighbors, works overtime to buy her jewelry etc. She knows “what’s going on” but blames it on Li’l Bit for being “sly.”

The next scene presents the beginning of Li’l Bit and Peck’s relationship. It is Christmas in 1964. A moody Peck is doing the dishes in the kitchen, conversing with Li’l Bit. She is impressed with his willingness to do the chores, which he says is what women deserve from men. They touch on his drinking problem; Li’l Bit strikes a deal with Peck, saying they can meet up once a week if he avoids alcohol—as long as, when they do, he doesn’t “cross the line.” Peck is visibly moved and enthusiastically accepts.

Flash forward to 1969, towards the end of the relationship. Li’l Bit is at college, away from the family home. Every day brings another gift and note from Peck, which seem to be counting down to her eighteenth birthday (when it becomes legal for them to have sex). Soon after, they are in a fancy hotel room. Li’l Bit chastises Peck for sending the gifts, likening it to the behavior of a “serial killer.” She explains that she’s not be doing well in her education and is “confused.” Li’l Bit gulps down the champagne that Peck has bought for her and makes him drink some too. After some awkward small talk, they both have something important to say. Li’l Bit has come because she wants to tell Peck that she doesn’t want to see him anymore. Increasingly desperate, Peck asks that she lie down with him on the bed and that they just “hold one another.” Li’l Bit, “ half wanting to run, half wanting to get it over with, half wanting to be held by him ,” agrees to his suggestion. As they lie there, Li’l Bit feels conflicted and almost kisses Peck, drawing back at the last moment. Peck, in a frantic rush, pulls a ring out of his pocket and proposes to Li’l Bit. She cries out “this isn’t happening” before making a swift exit. Soon after she leaves, the male chorus plays the role of bartender as Peck knocks back shot after shot of liquor.

Present-day Li’l Bit explains to the audience that this was the last she ever saw her Uncle Peck. It took him seven years to drink himself to death, she says, losing his job, wife, and driving license along the way. One day he fell down his basement stairs and died. Now that she’s old enough, says Lil Bit, she wishes she could ask him: “who did it to you, Uncle Peck? How old were you? Were you eleven?” She imagines his spirit as a “kind of Flying Dutchman,” driving the Carolina backroads “looking for a young girl who, of her own free will, will love him. Release him.”

The play then shows a brief exchange between Li’l Bit in the Summer of 1962, in which she convinces her mother/the female chorus to let her go and stay with Uncle Peck. Her mother is resistant to the idea, not trusting Peck’s motives, but Li’l Bit insists she can handle him. Her mother relents but tells her that if anything does happen it will be Li’l Bit’s fault.

The audience then witnesses Peck’s first abuse of Li’l Bit. The teenage chorus member speaks Li’l Bit’s lines, though the actions remain Li’l Bit’s. Peck is driving but offers Li’l Bit a try. Excited and nervous, she takes up the driver’s seat but can’t reach the pedals. Peck suggests she sits on her lap and just steers. As she does so, he rubs her breasts and brings himself to orgasm; Li’l Bit is horrified, shouting (via the teenage chorus) “this isn’t happening.”

Li’l Bit then gets out of the car, restored to the present. She describes that moment as the “last day I lived in my body.” Now almost thirty-five, she is glad to believe in things that her younger self didn’t, “like family and forgiveness.” She still doesn’t do anything that “jiggles”; the closest thing she feels to “flight in the body” is to drive. She gets in the car and tunes the radio , which initially plays back some of the lines from earlier on in the play, such as her grandfather saying, “how is Shakespeare gonna help her lie on her back.” Settling on the music that she loves—something like Roy Orbison—she checks the back mirror. The spirit of Peck seems to be sitting in the back. She smiles at him, and floors it.

How I Learned to Drive

48 pages • 1 hour read

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Summary and Study Guide

How I Learned to Drive,  a play written by Paula Vogel, premiered Off-Broadway in 1997 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1998. It addresses pedophilia, victim blaming, and misogyny, as well as the complexities of love and family. Through non-chronological flashbacks, Li’l Bit, now in her forties, uses learning to drive as a metaphor for her learning about sex, and about life, from her aunt’s husband, Peck, with whom she has a sexual relationship. Each scene is designated a driving rule that also reflects the life lesson Li’l Bit learns therein. Well-received by critics as well as survivors of sexual assault, the play addresses sexual double standards women face and how women are often blamed for their own abuse. It also illuminates how women are molded and manipulated not only by their abusers but by society at-large. However, Peck is not cast wholly as a villain, nor does Li’l Bit always reject his advances. The play acknowledges both the immorality of Peck’s behavior and the complicated connection he shares with Li’l Bit. In doing so, it also addresses the issues of sympathy and forgiveness . The contrast between the play’s biting humor and the serious subject matter reflects the complicated relationship between Li’l Bit and Peck . Ultimately,  How I Learned to Drive  is about the effects one’s past has on one’s present and future, how people are flawed and their souls ambiguous, and how one can grow from trauma or succumb to it. 

In the opening scene, Li’l Bit, age 17, and her uncle, Peck, are sitting in the front seat of his car for their weekly get-together. Peck makes sexually-suggestive comments to Li’l Bit, but when she tells him to “[b]e good” (10), he feigns innocence. By the end of the scene, he is asking if he can kiss her breasts, at her hesitation, telling her, “Don’t make a grown man beg” (11). Li’l Bit relents.  

Li’l Bit explains to the audience that people in her family are named after their genitalia; her mother adds that when Li’l Bit was a baby, between her legs was “[j]ust a little bit” (12). Peck says he held her in his hand when she was one day old. During a family dinner in 1969, her mother, grandmother , and grandfather discuss the size of her breasts, her grandfather teasing her with crude, sexualizing comments. When Li’l Bit leaves the table, Peck comforts her.  

In 1968, Peck and Li’l Bit are out to dinner, and Peck encourages her to order a cocktail. Li’l Bit is hesitant because she’s underage but eventually drinks until she’s intoxicated. When Peck and Li’l Bit return to Peck’s car, Li’l Bit alludes to Peck’s wife, Aunt Mary; Peck insists they are only having an innocent dinner and that “nothing is going to happen between us until you want it to” (23). Li’l Bit falls asleep, and Peck tucks her into a blanket. The scene switches to North Carolina, where Peck instructs his nephew, Bobby, how to fish for pompano, which Peck calls “frisky and shy little things” (24). When Bobby begins to cry thinking of the fish’s pain, Peck comforts him, inviting him to join him for a secret meeting in a treehouse. 

In 1979, on a long bus trip, Li’l Bit meets an underage boy; the two go out to dinner and then have sex in her room. The scene turns to when she is 15 years old and is asking her grandmother and mother whether sex hurts for the first time. She once again retreats to Peck when an argument erupts. 

During a driving lesson in 1967, Peck tells Li’l Bit he wants her to know the car well and helps her adjust the seat and mirrors. When Li’l Bit makes playful, flirtatious comments, Peck insists she remain serious, for she holds her life in her hands when she’s driving. He tells her that men are confident drivers and that he wants to teach her to drive like a man.  

In school, Li’l Bit is frequently teased and targeted for her large chest. In one incident, while girls laugh in the background, a male classmate grabs her breasts and tells her he’s allergic to “[f]oam rubber” (36). At a sock hop, a boy whose gaze is fixated on her chest continues to ask her to dance. Li’l Bit tells a female classmate she feels that her breasts are sending out radio signals “to men who get mesmerized, like sirens” (38). The classmate says she wishes she had her problems and that she should go easy on the boy. 

When Li’l Bit is 13, Peck takes photos of her as she poses. When he says he wants to send the photos to  Playboy  once she turns 18, Li’l Bit objects, saying she thought the photos were just for him. He promises not to show them to anyone and that he loves her. Li’l Bit, somewhat assured, continues the shoot. In a monologue , Aunt Mary explains that Peck is a good man who never recovered fully from the trauma of World War II. She says she knows about Peck and Li’l Bit’s relationship and that Li’l Bit has “twisted Peck around her little finger” (45). At Christmas that year, Li’l Bit, sensing Peck’s melancholy and worried over his drinking, suggests they meet once a week so they can talk. 

When Li’l Bit goes to college, Peck frequently sends her gifts and flowers. The packages contain notes in which he counts down the days until she returns. In a hotel room, over champagne, Peck and Li’l Bit celebrate her eighteenth birthday. Li’l Bit tells Peck she is struggling in school, that she knows why he’s excited for her eighteenth birthday, and that she can’t see him anymore. When Peck proposes to her, Li’l Bit reiterates that she can’t see him. 

Li’l Bit tells the audience she never saw Peck again and that he drank himself to death seven years later. Now that she’s grown, she sometimes wants to ask him, “Who did it to you?” (54). She then flashes back to when, at 11 years old, she took a long car ride with Uncle Peck. In their first driving lesson, she sat on his lap and steered while he pushed the petals. Peck molested her for the first time, confusing her and bringing her to tears. Li’l Bit says “[t]hat was the last day I lived in my body” (57) and that as an adult, she has begun to believe in forgiveness. Explaining that she feels free when she’s driving, she climbs into the front seat of the car, repeating instructions Peck taught her. As she adjusts the rearview mirror, his spirit is in the back seat, and the two exchange a sympathetic look before Li’l Bit floors it and the stage goes black. 

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I am delighted that @theatlantic now has a strategic content & product partnership with @openai . Our stories will be discoverable in their new products and we'll be working with them to figure out new ways that AI can help serious, independent media : https://t.co/nfSVXW9KpB — nxthompson (@nxthompson) May 29, 2024

OpenAI signs 100K PwC workers to ChatGPT’s enterprise tier

OpenAI announced a new deal with management consulting giant PwC . The company will become OpenAI’s biggest customer to date, covering 100,000 users, and will become OpenAI’s first partner for selling its enterprise offerings to other businesses.

OpenAI says it is training its GPT-4 successor

OpenAI announced in a blog post that it has recently begun training its next flagship model to succeed GPT-4. The news came in an announcement of its new safety and security committee, which is responsible for informing safety and security decisions across OpenAI’s products.

Former OpenAI director claims the board found out about ChatGPT on Twitter

On the The TED AI Show podcast, former OpenAI board member Helen Toner revealed that the board did not know about ChatGPT until its launch in November 2022. Toner also said that Sam Altman gave the board inaccurate information about the safety processes the company had in place and that he didn’t disclose his involvement in the OpenAI Startup Fund.

Sharing this, recorded a few weeks ago. Most of the episode is about AI policy more broadly, but this was my first longform interview since the OpenAI investigation closed, so we also talked a bit about November. Thanks to @bilawalsidhu for a fun conversation! https://t.co/h0PtK06T0K — Helen Toner (@hlntnr) May 28, 2024

ChatGPT’s mobile app revenue saw biggest spike yet following GPT-4o launch

The launch of GPT-4o has driven the company’s biggest-ever spike in revenue on mobile , despite the model being freely available on the web. Mobile users are being pushed to upgrade to its $19.99 monthly subscription, ChatGPT Plus, if they want to experiment with OpenAI’s most recent launch.

OpenAI to remove ChatGPT’s Scarlett Johansson-like voice

After demoing its new GPT-4o model last week, OpenAI announced it is pausing one of its voices , Sky, after users found that it sounded similar to Scarlett Johansson in “Her.”

OpenAI explained in a blog post that Sky’s voice is “not an imitation” of the actress and that AI voices should not intentionally mimic the voice of a celebrity. The blog post went on to explain how the company chose its voices: Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky.

We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky. We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them. Read more about how we chose these voices: https://t.co/R8wwZjU36L — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 20, 2024

ChatGPT lets you add files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive

OpenAI announced new updates for easier data analysis within ChatGPT . Users can now upload files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, interact with tables and charts, and export customized charts for presentations. The company says these improvements will be added to GPT-4o in the coming weeks.

We're rolling out interactive tables and charts along with the ability to add files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive into ChatGPT. Available to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise users over the coming weeks. https://t.co/Fu2bgMChXt pic.twitter.com/M9AHLx5BKr — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 16, 2024

OpenAI inks deal to train AI on Reddit data

OpenAI announced a partnership with Reddit that will give the company access to “real-time, structured and unique content” from the social network. Content from Reddit will be incorporated into ChatGPT, and the companies will work together to bring new AI-powered features to Reddit users and moderators.

We’re partnering with Reddit to bring its content to ChatGPT and new products: https://t.co/xHgBZ8ptOE — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 16, 2024

OpenAI debuts GPT-4o “omni” model now powering ChatGPT

OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new omni model, GPT-4o, which has a black hole-like interface , as well as voice and vision capabilities that feel eerily like something out of “Her.” GPT-4o is set to roll out “iteratively” across its developer and consumer-facing products over the next few weeks.

OpenAI demos real-time language translation with its latest GPT-4o model. pic.twitter.com/pXtHQ9mKGc — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) May 13, 2024

OpenAI to build a tool that lets content creators opt out of AI training

The company announced it’s building a tool, Media Manager, that will allow creators to better control how their content is being used to train generative AI models — and give them an option to opt out. The goal is to have the new tool in place and ready to use by 2025.

OpenAI explores allowing AI porn

In a new peek behind the curtain of its AI’s secret instructions , OpenAI also released a new NSFW policy . Though it’s intended to start a conversation about how it might allow explicit images and text in its AI products, it raises questions about whether OpenAI — or any generative AI vendor — can be trusted to handle sensitive content ethically.

OpenAI and Stack Overflow announce partnership

In a new partnership, OpenAI will get access to developer platform Stack Overflow’s API and will get feedback from developers to improve the performance of their AI models. In return, OpenAI will include attributions to Stack Overflow in ChatGPT. However, the deal was not favorable to some Stack Overflow users — leading to some sabotaging their answer in protest .

U.S. newspapers file copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft

Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers, including the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Denver Post, are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges that the companies stole millions of copyrighted articles “without permission and without payment” to bolster ChatGPT and Copilot.

OpenAI inks content licensing deal with Financial Times

OpenAI has partnered with another news publisher in Europe, London’s Financial Times , that the company will be paying for content access. “Through the partnership, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and rich links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries,” the FT wrote in a press release.

OpenAI opens Tokyo hub, adds GPT-4 model optimized for Japanese

OpenAI is opening a new office in Tokyo and has plans for a GPT-4 model optimized specifically for the Japanese language. The move underscores how OpenAI will likely need to localize its technology to different languages as it expands.

Sam Altman pitches ChatGPT Enterprise to Fortune 500 companies

According to Reuters, OpenAI’s Sam Altman hosted hundreds of executives from Fortune 500 companies across several cities in April, pitching versions of its AI services intended for corporate use.

OpenAI releases “more direct, less verbose” version of GPT-4 Turbo

Premium ChatGPT users — customers paying for ChatGPT Plus, Team or Enterprise — can now use an updated and enhanced version of GPT-4 Turbo . The new model brings with it improvements in writing, math, logical reasoning and coding, OpenAI claims, as well as a more up-to-date knowledge base.

Our new GPT-4 Turbo is now available to paid ChatGPT users. We’ve improved capabilities in writing, math, logical reasoning, and coding. Source: https://t.co/fjoXDCOnPr pic.twitter.com/I4fg4aDq1T — OpenAI (@OpenAI) April 12, 2024

ChatGPT no longer requires an account — but there’s a catch

You can now use ChatGPT without signing up for an account , but it won’t be quite the same experience. You won’t be able to save or share chats, use custom instructions, or other features associated with a persistent account. This version of ChatGPT will have “slightly more restrictive content policies,” according to OpenAI. When TechCrunch asked for more details, however, the response was unclear:

“The signed out experience will benefit from the existing safety mitigations that are already built into the model, such as refusing to generate harmful content. In addition to these existing mitigations, we are also implementing additional safeguards specifically designed to address other forms of content that may be inappropriate for a signed out experience,” a spokesperson said.

OpenAI’s chatbot store is filling up with spam

TechCrunch found that the OpenAI’s GPT Store is flooded with bizarre, potentially copyright-infringing GPTs . A cursory search pulls up GPTs that claim to generate art in the style of Disney and Marvel properties, but serve as little more than funnels to third-party paid services and advertise themselves as being able to bypass AI content detection tools.

The New York Times responds to OpenAI’s claims that it “hacked” ChatGPT for its copyright lawsuit

In a court filing opposing OpenAI’s motion to dismiss The New York Times’ lawsuit alleging copyright infringement, the newspaper asserted that “OpenAI’s attention-grabbing claim that The Times ‘hacked’ its products is as irrelevant as it is false.” The New York Times also claimed that some users of ChatGPT used the tool to bypass its paywalls.

OpenAI VP doesn’t say whether artists should be paid for training data

At a SXSW 2024 panel, Peter Deng, OpenAI’s VP of consumer product dodged a question on whether artists whose work was used to train generative AI models should be compensated . While OpenAI lets artists “opt out” of and remove their work from the datasets that the company uses to train its image-generating models, some artists have described the tool as onerous.

A new report estimates that ChatGPT uses more than half a million kilowatt-hours of electricity per day

ChatGPT’s environmental impact appears to be massive. According to a report from The New Yorker , ChatGPT uses an estimated 17,000 times the amount of electricity than the average U.S. household to respond to roughly 200 million requests each day.

ChatGPT can now read its answers aloud

OpenAI released a new Read Aloud feature for the web version of ChatGPT as well as the iOS and Android apps. The feature allows ChatGPT to read its responses to queries in one of five voice options and can speak 37 languages, according to the company. Read aloud is available on both GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 models.

ChatGPT can now read responses to you. On iOS or Android, tap and hold the message and then tap “Read Aloud”. We’ve also started rolling on web – click the "Read Aloud" button below the message. pic.twitter.com/KevIkgAFbG — OpenAI (@OpenAI) March 4, 2024

OpenAI partners with Dublin City Council to use GPT-4 for tourism

As part of a new partnership with OpenAI, the Dublin City Council will use GPT-4 to craft personalized itineraries for travelers, including recommendations of unique and cultural destinations, in an effort to support tourism across Europe.

A law firm used ChatGPT to justify a six-figure bill for legal services

New York-based law firm Cuddy Law was criticized by a judge for using ChatGPT to calculate their hourly billing rate . The firm submitted a $113,500 bill to the court, which was then halved by District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who called the figure “well above” reasonable demands.

ChatGPT experienced a bizarre bug for several hours

ChatGPT users found that ChatGPT was giving nonsensical answers for several hours , prompting OpenAI to investigate the issue. Incidents varied from repetitive phrases to confusing and incorrect answers to queries. The issue was resolved by OpenAI the following morning.

Match Group announced deal with OpenAI with a press release co-written by ChatGPT

The dating app giant home to Tinder, Match and OkCupid announced an enterprise agreement with OpenAI in an enthusiastic press release written with the help of ChatGPT . The AI tech will be used to help employees with work-related tasks and come as part of Match’s $20 million-plus bet on AI in 2024.

ChatGPT will now remember — and forget — things you tell it to

As part of a test, OpenAI began rolling out new “memory” controls for a small portion of ChatGPT free and paid users, with a broader rollout to follow. The controls let you tell ChatGPT explicitly to remember something, see what it remembers or turn off its memory altogether. Note that deleting a chat from chat history won’t erase ChatGPT’s or a custom GPT’s memories — you must delete the memory itself.

We’re testing ChatGPT's ability to remember things you discuss to make future chats more helpful. This feature is being rolled out to a small portion of Free and Plus users, and it's easy to turn on or off. https://t.co/1Tv355oa7V pic.twitter.com/BsFinBSTbs — OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 13, 2024

OpenAI begins rolling out “Temporary Chat” feature

Initially limited to a small subset of free and subscription users, Temporary Chat lets you have a dialogue with a blank slate. With Temporary Chat, ChatGPT won’t be aware of previous conversations or access memories but will follow custom instructions if they’re enabled.

But, OpenAI says it may keep a copy of Temporary Chat conversations for up to 30 days for “safety reasons.”

Use temporary chat for conversations in which you don’t want to use memory or appear in history. pic.twitter.com/H1U82zoXyC — OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 13, 2024

ChatGPT users can now invoke GPTs directly in chats

Paid users of ChatGPT can now bring GPTs into a conversation by typing “@” and selecting a GPT from the list. The chosen GPT will have an understanding of the full conversation, and different GPTs can be “tagged in” for different use cases and needs.

You can now bring GPTs into any conversation in ChatGPT – simply type @ and select the GPT. This allows you to add relevant GPTs with the full context of the conversation. pic.twitter.com/Pjn5uIy9NF — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 30, 2024

ChatGPT is reportedly leaking usernames and passwords from users’ private conversations

Screenshots provided to Ars Technica found that ChatGPT is potentially leaking unpublished research papers, login credentials and private information from its users. An OpenAI representative told Ars Technica that the company was investigating the report.

ChatGPT is violating Europe’s privacy laws, Italian DPA tells OpenAI

OpenAI has been told it’s suspected of violating European Union privacy , following a multi-month investigation of ChatGPT by Italy’s data protection authority. Details of the draft findings haven’t been disclosed, but in a response, OpenAI said: “We want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals.”

OpenAI partners with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines

In an effort to win the trust of parents and policymakers, OpenAI announced it’s partnering with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines and education materials for parents, educators and young adults. The organization works to identify and minimize tech harms to young people and previously flagged ChatGPT as lacking in transparency and privacy .

OpenAI responds to Congressional Black Caucus about lack of diversity on its board

After a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus questioned the lack of diversity in OpenAI’s board, the company responded . The response, signed by CEO Sam Altman and Chairman of the Board Bret Taylor, said building a complete and diverse board was one of the company’s top priorities and that it was working with an executive search firm to assist it in finding talent. 

OpenAI drops prices and fixes ‘lazy’ GPT-4 that refused to work

In a blog post , OpenAI announced price drops for GPT-3.5’s API, with input prices dropping to 50% and output by 25%, to $0.0005 per thousand tokens in, and $0.0015 per thousand tokens out. GPT-4 Turbo also got a new preview model for API use, which includes an interesting fix that aims to reduce “laziness” that users have experienced.

Expanding the platform for @OpenAIDevs : new generation of embedding models, updated GPT-4 Turbo, and lower pricing on GPT-3.5 Turbo. https://t.co/7wzCLwB1ax — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 25, 2024

OpenAI bans developer of a bot impersonating a presidential candidate

OpenAI has suspended AI startup Delphi, which developed a bot impersonating Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) to help bolster his presidential campaign. The ban comes just weeks after OpenAI published a plan to combat election misinformation, which listed “chatbots impersonating candidates” as against its policy.

OpenAI announces partnership with Arizona State University

Beginning in February, Arizona State University will have full access to ChatGPT’s Enterprise tier , which the university plans to use to build a personalized AI tutor, develop AI avatars, bolster their prompt engineering course and more. It marks OpenAI’s first partnership with a higher education institution.

Winner of a literary prize reveals around 5% her novel was written by ChatGPT

After receiving the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for her novel The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy, author Rie Kudan admitted that around 5% of the book quoted ChatGPT-generated sentences “verbatim.” Interestingly enough, the novel revolves around a futuristic world with a pervasive presence of AI.

Sam Altman teases video capabilities for ChatGPT and the release of GPT-5

In a conversation with Bill Gates on the Unconfuse Me podcast, Sam Altman confirmed an upcoming release of GPT-5 that will be “fully multimodal with speech, image, code, and video support.” Altman said users can expect to see GPT-5 drop sometime in 2024.

OpenAI announces team to build ‘crowdsourced’ governance ideas into its models

OpenAI is forming a Collective Alignment team of researchers and engineers to create a system for collecting and “encoding” public input on its models’ behaviors into OpenAI products and services. This comes as a part of OpenAI’s public program to award grants to fund experiments in setting up a “democratic process” for determining the rules AI systems follow.

OpenAI unveils plan to combat election misinformation

In a blog post, OpenAI announced users will not be allowed to build applications for political campaigning and lobbying until the company works out how effective their tools are for “personalized persuasion.”

Users will also be banned from creating chatbots that impersonate candidates or government institutions, and from using OpenAI tools to misrepresent the voting process or otherwise discourage voting.

The company is also testing out a tool that detects DALL-E generated images and will incorporate access to real-time news, with attribution, in ChatGPT.

Snapshot of how we’re preparing for 2024’s worldwide elections: • Working to prevent abuse, including misleading deepfakes • Providing transparency on AI-generated content • Improving access to authoritative voting information https://t.co/qsysYy5l0L — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 15, 2024

OpenAI changes policy to allow military applications

In an unannounced update to its usage policy , OpenAI removed language previously prohibiting the use of its products for the purposes of “military and warfare.” In an additional statement, OpenAI confirmed that the language was changed in order to accommodate military customers and projects that do not violate their ban on efforts to use their tools to “harm people, develop weapons, for communications surveillance, or to injure others or destroy property.”

ChatGPT subscription aimed at small teams debuts

Aptly called ChatGPT Team , the new plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams of up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management. In addition to gaining access to GPT-4, GPT-4 with Vision and DALL-E3, ChatGPT Team lets teams build and share GPTs for their business needs.

OpenAI’s GPT store officially launches

After some back and forth over the last few months, OpenAI’s GPT Store is finally here . The feature lives in a new tab in the ChatGPT web client, and includes a range of GPTs developed both by OpenAI’s partners and the wider dev community.

To access the GPT Store, users must be subscribed to one of OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT plans — ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Enterprise or the newly launched ChatGPT Team.

the GPT store is live! https://t.co/AKg1mjlvo2 fun speculation last night about which GPTs will be doing the best by the end of today. — Sam Altman (@sama) January 10, 2024

Developing AI models would be “impossible” without copyrighted materials, OpenAI claims

Following a proposed ban on using news publications and books to train AI chatbots in the U.K., OpenAI submitted a plea to the House of Lords communications and digital committee. OpenAI argued that it would be “impossible” to train AI models without using copyrighted materials, and that they believe copyright law “does not forbid training.”

OpenAI claims The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit is without merit

OpenAI published a public response to The New York Times’s lawsuit against them and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law, claiming that the case is without merit.

In the response , OpenAI reiterates its view that training AI models using publicly available data from the web is fair use. It also makes the case that regurgitation is less likely to occur with training data from a single source and places the onus on users to “act responsibly.”

We build AI to empower people, including journalists. Our position on the @nytimes lawsuit: • Training is fair use, but we provide an opt-out • "Regurgitation" is a rare bug we're driving to zero • The New York Times is not telling the full story https://t.co/S6fSaDsfKb — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 8, 2024

OpenAI’s app store for GPTs planned to launch next week

After being delayed in December , OpenAI plans to launch its GPT Store sometime in the coming week, according to an email viewed by TechCrunch. OpenAI says developers building GPTs will have to review the company’s updated usage policies and GPT brand guidelines to ensure their GPTs are compliant before they’re eligible for listing in the GPT Store. OpenAI’s update notably didn’t include any information on the expected monetization opportunities for developers listing their apps on the storefront.

GPT Store launching next week – OpenAI pic.twitter.com/I6mkZKtgZG — Manish Singh (@refsrc) January 4, 2024

OpenAI moves to shrink regulatory risk in EU around data privacy

In an email, OpenAI detailed an incoming update to its terms, including changing the OpenAI entity providing services to EEA and Swiss residents to OpenAI Ireland Limited. The move appears to be intended to shrink its regulatory risk in the European Union, where the company has been under scrutiny over ChatGPT’s impact on people’s privacy.

What is ChatGPT? How does it work?

ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to generate text after a user enters a prompt, developed by tech startup OpenAI . The chatbot uses GPT-4, a large language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.

When did ChatGPT get released?

November 30, 2022 is when ChatGPT was released for public use.

What is the latest version of ChatGPT?

Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. The most recent model is GPT-4o .

Can I use ChatGPT for free?

There is a free version of ChatGPT that only requires a sign-in in addition to the paid version, ChatGPT Plus .

Who uses ChatGPT?

Anyone can use ChatGPT! More and more tech companies and search engines are utilizing the chatbot to automate text or quickly answer user questions/concerns.

What companies use ChatGPT?

Multiple enterprises utilize ChatGPT, although others may limit the use of the AI-powered tool .

Most recently, Microsoft announced at it’s 2023 Build conference that it is integrating it ChatGPT-based Bing experience into Windows 11. A Brooklyn-based 3D display startup Looking Glass utilizes ChatGPT to produce holograms you can communicate with by using ChatGPT.  And nonprofit organization Solana officially integrated the chatbot into its network with a ChatGPT plug-in geared toward end users to help onboard into the web3 space.

What does GPT mean in ChatGPT?

GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer.

What is the difference between ChatGPT and a chatbot?

A chatbot can be any software/system that holds dialogue with you/a person but doesn’t necessarily have to be AI-powered. For example, there are chatbots that are rules-based in the sense that they’ll give canned responses to questions.

ChatGPT is AI-powered and utilizes LLM technology to generate text after a prompt.

Can ChatGPT write essays?

Can chatgpt commit libel.

Due to the nature of how these models work , they don’t know or care whether something is true, only that it looks true. That’s a problem when you’re using it to do your homework, sure, but when it accuses you of a crime you didn’t commit, that may well at this point be libel.

We will see how handling troubling statements produced by ChatGPT will play out over the next few months as tech and legal experts attempt to tackle the fastest moving target in the industry.

Does ChatGPT have an app?

Yes, there is a free ChatGPT mobile app for iOS and Android users.

What is the ChatGPT character limit?

It’s not documented anywhere that ChatGPT has a character limit. However, users have noted that there are some character limitations after around 500 words.

Does ChatGPT have an API?

Yes, it was released March 1, 2023.

What are some sample everyday uses for ChatGPT?

Everyday examples include programing, scripts, email replies, listicles, blog ideas, summarization, etc.

What are some advanced uses for ChatGPT?

Advanced use examples include debugging code, programming languages, scientific concepts, complex problem solving, etc.

How good is ChatGPT at writing code?

It depends on the nature of the program. While ChatGPT can write workable Python code, it can’t necessarily program an entire app’s worth of code. That’s because ChatGPT lacks context awareness — in other words, the generated code isn’t always appropriate for the specific context in which it’s being used.

Can you save a ChatGPT chat?

Yes. OpenAI allows users to save chats in the ChatGPT interface, stored in the sidebar of the screen. There are no built-in sharing features yet.

Are there alternatives to ChatGPT?

Yes. There are multiple AI-powered chatbot competitors such as Together , Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude , and developers are creating open source alternatives .

How does ChatGPT handle data privacy?

OpenAI has said that individuals in “certain jurisdictions” (such as the EU) can object to the processing of their personal information by its AI models by filling out  this form . This includes the ability to make requests for deletion of AI-generated references about you. Although OpenAI notes it may not grant every request since it must balance privacy requests against freedom of expression “in accordance with applicable laws”.

The web form for making a deletion of data about you request is entitled “ OpenAI Personal Data Removal Request ”.

In its privacy policy, the ChatGPT maker makes a passing acknowledgement of the objection requirements attached to relying on “legitimate interest” (LI), pointing users towards more information about requesting an opt out — when it writes: “See here  for instructions on how you can opt out of our use of your information to train our models.”

What controversies have surrounded ChatGPT?

Recently, Discord announced that it had integrated OpenAI’s technology into its bot named Clyde where two users tricked Clyde into providing them with instructions for making the illegal drug methamphetamine (meth) and the incendiary mixture napalm.

An Australian mayor has publicly announced he may sue OpenAI for defamation due to ChatGPT’s false claims that he had served time in prison for bribery. This would be the first defamation lawsuit against the text-generating service.

CNET found itself in the midst of controversy after Futurism reported the publication was publishing articles under a mysterious byline completely generated by AI. The private equity company that owns CNET, Red Ventures, was accused of using ChatGPT for SEO farming, even if the information was incorrect.

Several major school systems and colleges, including New York City Public Schools , have banned ChatGPT from their networks and devices. They claim that the AI impedes the learning process by promoting plagiarism and misinformation, a claim that not every educator agrees with .

There have also been cases of ChatGPT accusing individuals of false crimes .

Where can I find examples of ChatGPT prompts?

Several marketplaces host and provide ChatGPT prompts, either for free or for a nominal fee. One is PromptBase . Another is ChatX . More launch every day.

Can ChatGPT be detected?

Poorly. Several tools claim to detect ChatGPT-generated text, but in our tests , they’re inconsistent at best.

Are ChatGPT chats public?

No. But OpenAI recently disclosed a bug, since fixed, that exposed the titles of some users’ conversations to other people on the service.

What lawsuits are there surrounding ChatGPT?

None specifically targeting ChatGPT. But OpenAI is involved in at least one lawsuit that has implications for AI systems trained on publicly available data, which would touch on ChatGPT.

Are there issues regarding plagiarism with ChatGPT?

Yes. Text-generating AI models like ChatGPT have a tendency to regurgitate content from their training data.

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MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics Launches New Intelligent Logistics Systems Lab Supported by Seed Funding from Mecalux

Innovative lab to transform logistics with advanced AI and machine learning technologies

The MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (MIT CTL) is excited to announce the launch of the Intelligent Logistics Systems Lab (ILS) , a pioneering research initiative designed to revolutionize logistics operations through cutting-edge research at the intersection of operations research (OR), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) technologies. This innovative lab is made possible by the foundational support and collaboration with Mecalux, a global leader in intralogistics.

Under the leadership of Dr. Matthias Winkenbach, Director of Research at MIT CTL, the lab intends to explore several key research streams:

• Predictive intelligence: The ILS Lab will explore high-impact predictive models powerd by AI and ML, including the development of highly accurate, near-term predictive capabilities essential for highly responsive logistics services such as same-day and sub-same-day delivery.
• Prescriptive intelligence: The ILS Lab will develop new methods and models that combine OR with ML and AI to solve complex combinatorial optimization problems critical for logistics operations, such as vehicle routing, inventory planning, and network design, in a richer context of non-trivial real-world objectives, constraints, and uncertainties. 
• Autonomous intelligence: The ILS Lab aims to explore the role, control, and impact of advanced logistics systems and technologies that can independently perform tasks, make decisions, and learn from their environments without continuous human intervention. For instance, this includes mobile robots that assist or replace human warehouse or delivery activities and that operate autonomously in complex and dynamic settings.
• Collective intelligence: The ILS Lab lab will study the collective behavior and coordination of autonomous systems or entities working together to solve a common problem. This stream of work often draws inspiration from natural systems, such as insect colonies or bird flocks, where individual agents follow learned policies, leading to complex and efficient group behavior. In the context of intelligent logistics systems, this involves the synchronization and cooperation of multiple agents such as autonomous robots or crowd-sourced carriers to optimize system performance.
• Augmented intelligence: The ILS Lab aims to study how human decision-making can be enhanced by combining human intelligence with AI. Specifically, the lab intends to explore how decision support systems and operations management software can effectively combine human expertise with AI-driven insights.

“We aim to harness the power of AI and machine learning in combination with state-of-the-art optimization methods to tackle the most significant real-world challenges facing the logistics industry today,” adds Matthias Winkenbach.

The establishment of the Intelligent Logistics Systems Lab marks the beginning of a strategic research partnership between MIT CTL and Mecalux. This collaboration combines MIT’s academic excellence with Mecalux’s extensive industry experience, promising a collaborative approach to solving complex logistics problems. The seed funding received from Mecalux will enable the new lab to attract some of MIT’s most talented students and build a strong interdisciplinary research team early on, giving it a head start in uncovering the vast potential of research at the intersection of operations research and artificial intelligence in transforming the supply chain and logistics industry toward a smart, sustainable, and customer-centric future.

“We are thrilled to support MIT CTL in this new research venture, as it aligns with our vision of integrating autonomous technologies and smart systems into logistics processes,” says Javier Carrillo, CEO of Mecalux. “This partnership will drive research-based innovation into practice and set new standards for operational excellence in the industry.”

Prof. Yossi Sheffi, Director of MIT CTL, added, “This new lab represents a significant step forward in our mission to innovate and improve global logistics systems. With the support of Mecalux, we are confident that our research will lead to groundbreaking advancements in the field.”

For more details about the new lab, visit intelligent.mit.edu .

About the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics (CTL)

Founded in 1973, the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics is a dynamic environment where industry leaders, professors, and students pool their knowledge and experience to advance supply chain education and research. MIT CTL’s more than 80 researchers and faculty members from multiple disciplines seek to deliver solutions that help organizations and societies to thrive. ctl.mit.edu

About Mecalux

The Mecalux Group is a warehouse technology and intralogistics software enterprise. With over 55 years of experience, Mecalux develops automated storage solutions, warehouse management software, and metal racking systems for all sectors. The Mecalux Group has an extensive worldwide distribution network, 11 manufacturing plants, seven R&D centers for technological development, and a workforce of more than 5,000 employees. www.interlakemecalux.com

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32 years after his death, we’re still learning so much from sam walton.

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Michelle Huff is Chief Marketing Officer at UserTesting , a leader in experience research and insights.

Sam Walton died on April 5, 1992 , in Little Rock, Arkansas, a week after his 74th birthday and three months shy of Walmart’s 30th anniversary. However, Walton’s approach to building Walmart from a single store in Rogers, Arkansas , to a retail empire now with 10,500 stores in 19 countries continues to inspire business leaders and entrepreneurs today.

As Stephen Caldwell wrote in a 2021 article for the Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, Walton “earned a place among America’s top business titans, ranking right up there with John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Warren Buffett, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates.” Jeff Bezos has been described as obsessed with Walton and cited as a significant influence on Amazon’s focus on a customer-centric approach, low prices and efficient operations.

I’ve long been drawn to Walton’s story and recently finished listening to a podcast about his empire, The Complete History and Strategy of Walmart . I walked away with a slew of observations about Walton’s lasting relevance and how his key philosophies and obsession with continuous learning and customer-centricity can continue to guide businesses today.

What would his tech stack look like if some of today’s technology existed in the 1950s and 60s? In many ways, I believe Walton’s philosophies and business practices inspired many modern-day CX technologies and focus on data. How would this emphasis play out in his first stores?

Best High-Yield Savings Accounts Of 2024

Best 5% interest savings accounts of 2024, a drive for real-time customer data.

Data was critical to Walton. He was consumed with getting numbers as fast as possible. For example, he wanted to pore over sales figures ASAP so he could immediately give them to managers and make any necessary changes in store operations. He established a mandatory Saturday morning meeting for all store managers—over a proprietary satellite network Walton had built for this purpose—during which they’d share what was working. He even got a pilot’s license to travel among stores faster and scout new locations.

We can learn from Walton how he would have embraced technology and innovation to swiftly incorporate valuable insights across the chain. Walton’s insatiable hunger for customer data suggests he would have used established CRM platforms, customer experience management tools, and innovative startups offering location intelligence and analytics like Nearmap and Placer.ai.

Although Walton didn’t live to see it, Walmart is now the United States’ second-largest online retailer, with $82 billion , or 13% of total revenue, coming from online sales last year.

An Obsession With Firsthand Customer Insight

Walton couldn’t just conceive or hear about an idea; he had to see for himself. Some refer to this as anecdotal data or human insight.

Walton was famous for visiting stores and walking the aisles to observe customer behavior. He’d also speak to truck drivers in the loading docks and encourage his employees to visit the competition—not to see what they are doing wrong but to see what they are doing right.

Observing customer behavior has changed in today’s digital world, of course. How do you watch customers shop your digital aisles firsthand? How do you gain human insight and learn from these experiences at all the stores worldwide?

Given how devoted Walton was to learning from his own or the competition’s firsthand experiences and talking to real customers, suppliers and other stakeholders, it’s safe to say Walton would still be popping into his stores.

However, I think he would also embrace experience research software that allows companies to quickly and at a global scale see digital and real-world experiences from a customer or user’s perspective. At the same time, they share their thoughts out loud. I think he’d also fully embrace behavioral and web analytics and session replay tools to understand digital customer behaviors and trends—what customers browse and explore in a digital store, moments of friction and trends, etc.

Continuous Improvement Is A Key Cog

Walton focused on experimenting: try something, expect some things to fail and scale successes rapidly across as many stores as possible. However, Walmart’s success wasn’t just one person (Walton) being obsessed with experimentation, customer behavior and competition. He built relentless and continuous learning into the company’s operating model. It was baked into how the entire company worked (those Saturday morning meetings, for instance) and helped Walmart navigate decades of market and customer behavioral changes.

Walton had an intense appetite for perpetual improvement. Looking for ways to make Walmart more efficient and serve customers better drove him every day. So, his tech stack preferences back then would’ve likely included experimentation platforms, A/B testing tools and continuous software testing platforms.

Embracing Innovations

Walton first heard about computers in 1966 and was intrigued by their potential. These would have been the room-size mainframe computers that large companies, government agencies and universities used for data processing and business applications. Walton wanted to avoid getting disrupted by tech, so he enrolled in a seminar at IBM on using computing technology in business. “Sam didn’t understand technology well. But he understood the benefits of technology,” David Rosenthal explains in The Complete History and Strategy of Walmart podcast.

Thus, it’s safe to say that if today’s tech was available back then, Walton would be a big supporter of exploring and investing in artificial intelligence. He’d find AI, generative AI products and AI-powered features very appealing in his quest to constantly lower costs and improve margins to pass on lower prices to customers and edge out competitors.

In today’s competitive and rapidly evolving digital world, investing in innovative technologies, customer and experience data, and embedding experimentation and continuous learning into organizational culture and processes has become crucial. It’s about seeing trends in the data, gleaning human insight from observations and forming hypotheses to test, iterate and learn quickly, ultimately delivering great customer experiences faster and more uniquely than the competition.

I think Walton would have understood this and used today’s technology to achieve it. He would have championed unlocking innovation as you go—developing and iterating on concepts that touch every part of the customer journey. Thirty-two years after his passing, Walton’s status as one of the 20th century’s most influential people remains strong, and his approaches continue to guide American business well into the 21st century.

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‘Costco, Don’t Give Up on America As a Nation of Readers’: The Week 1 Winner of Our Summer Reading Contest

Read the work of the winning writer, Daphne Nguyen, 16 — and take a look at three favorite video responses, too.

By The Learning Network

For 15 years, our Summer Reading Contest has been inviting teenagers around the world to tell us what New York Times pieces get their attention and why. Up until now, students could only enter by posting short written comments, but this year we’re also allowing 90-second video responses.

That’s why this week , the first of our 10-week challenge, we’re featuring both the winning essay by Daphne Nguyen as well as our three favorite videos. Though the vast majority of the 509 submissions this time around were written, we hope to encourage more students to experiment with video.

Scroll down to see this work, along with a list of runners-up and honorable mentions. As you go, note the variety of topics that caught the eyes of these teens, including pieces about A.I., Alzheimer’s, Asian grocery chains, gardening, cockroaches, rom-coms and the saga of J. Lo and Ben Affleck.

You can read the work of all of our winners since 2017 in this column . And remember that you can participate any or every week this summer until Aug. 16. Just check the top of our contest announcement to find the right place to submit your response.

Daphne Nguyen, 16, from San Jose, Calif., responded to a June news item, “ Costco Plans to Stop Selling Books Year-Round ,” by writing:

I like books, and I also like Costco. Like many of us, I spend time with both of them regularly. I carry a paperback so I can stop looking at my phone, even during our weekly Costco run. So I was genuinely disconcerted to read that “Costco Plans to Stop Selling Books Year-Round” and offer them only during the holiday season. I guess books are a nice gift for someone else, but not something you’d want for yourself? Or for your children? In fact, the Costco book section is thoughtfully curated for the entire shopping family. There are “My Busy Book” play sets, special C.S. Lewis box sets, and best sellers like “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yaros. The aisle feels fun and inviting, not dated or out of place. Costco says that books are inconvenient to sell because they have to be specially unpacked off the pallet and changed out weekly for new releases. That seems like the “it’s not you, it’s me” break-up routine. And it seems like a cop-out. They’ve got plenty of people buzzing around doing all kinds of things — what about the staffers constantly refolding clothes? Costco’s ingenuity shines with the $6 rotisserie chicken. Why not get creative with books? Put Oprah’s top picks at the check-out lines! Surprise us with cookbooks around the food aisles! What Costco stocks is what America buys. So Costco, don’t give up on America as a nation of readers, educated citizens of a democracy. And please don’t give up on books.

Three Favorite Video Responses

Andrew Han on “ Don’t Call It an ‘Ethnic’ Grocery Store ”

Chrisel Roche on “ How 3 Texas Teenagers Grew Up to Be Broadway Stars (and Stayed Friends) ”

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June 30, 2024

Practice social wellness this July — perfect it year-round

Social wellness means nurturing your mind, body and relationships. It can be defined in many ways and encompass different qualities depending on the individual. For some, social wellness may mean cultivating relationships with themselves or with others. For others, it may entail both providing and receiving social support.

Practicing social wellness can be emotional, physical or informational. However you do it, the practice can enhance quality of life for those on both the giving and receiving ends. Developing positive social habits and a social wellness toolkit can ultimately help you stay healthier mentally, physically and emotionally.

Several studies have found that individuals with a strong social network live longer lives, cope better with stress and maintain good health. A foundational 1905 study by Dr. Joseph Pratt on the effects of support groups on tuberculosis patients established that psychological support has a profound impact on physical health and well-being.

Positive relationships with our selves and with others are vital to everyone’s lives. And there are many ways to initiate and nurture them, whether by starting a new hobby, taking a class, joining a club, starting a new routine, volunteering or spending quality time with friends and family.

If you would like to increase your social wellness, there are a million ways you can do it. Here are just a few ideas:

Read “ Fully Connected ” by Julia Hobsbawm, “ The Art of Gathering ” by Priya Parker, “ Belong ” by Radha Agrawal and “ Connected ” by James H. Fowler & Nicholas A. Christakis.

Listen to NPR’s Life Kit: Health or Spotify’s The Health Code Daily podcasts.

Volunteer for a good cause. It will make you feel good and help you meet people with similar interests and passions. Explore opportunities to invest your time, energy and expertise in your local community through the UW Combined Fund Drive .

Exercise socially, to create or strengthen personal connections while doing good things for your mind and body. Check out the many opportunities to connect with others through the joy of movement and mindfulness through The Whole U .

Get engaged in improving your community by giving to one of the UWCFD’s member organizations actively working to improve the social wellness of impacted communities:

Chad’s Legacy Project is committed to the advancement of mental health education and innovations in the evaluation and treatment of mental illness (code:

Community House Mental Health Agency provides mental health services and low-income housing to residents of King County.

Creating Healthier Communities strives to create powerful connections between American workplaces, their employees and the trusted health charities of their choice to improve the lives of people living with a disability or chronic disease.

UPOWER provides free fitness, health and wellness classes to underserved youth in King County who lack access to other organized sports and fitness opportunities.

Donate, search for charities or manage your current pledges.

• Practice social wellness this July — perfect it year-round June 30, 2024
• Solving summer hunger: keeping kids nourished when schools are closed June 29, 2024
• Juneteenth: A celebration of freedom, a call to action June 5, 2024
• Recreate responsibly: Summer water safety June 5, 2024
• Volunteer to be a UWCFD Campaign Coordinator! June 2, 2024

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