Commuters walk on a platform after disembarking from a suburban train at a railway station in Mumbai, India, on Jan. 21, 2023. (Niharika Kulkarni/Reuters)
(MV) — For the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent think tank, India’s surpassing of China as the world’s most populous country is one of the year’s most significant world events.
“For the last century, if not longer, China has had the world’s largest population. That ended in 2023. India now does. Its population is estimated to be 1.43 billion people. India will likely remain the most populous country for decades to come.
China’s population is both shrinking and aging. Demographers project that the Chinese population will fall by 100 million people by mid-century, or more than the population of all but fifteen countries in the world today. Over the same time period, China’s median age will rise from thirty-nine years-old to fifty-one.
India’s population, meanwhile, should reach nearly 1.7 billion by mid-century with a median age of thirty-nine. While demography isn’t destiny, it does constrain and enable every country’s opportunities. Countries with younger, growing populations tend to have more vibrant workforces that consume more, and as a result, enjoy higher economic growth rates.
The Chinese government is facing increased pressure to invest in the country’s social safety net, an expensive proposition that could take resources away from other priorities.”
CHATGPT
FILE PHOTO: ChatGPT logo is seen in this illustration taken March 31, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration
The release of ChatGPT was another major news event of 2023. An artificial intelligence or AI chatbot, ChatGPT is reportedly 10 times more advanced than its predecessor — and is getting better as you read this. As “governments, companies, and individuals moved quickly to exploit its potential,” there has been “heated debates over whether AI is unleashing a new era of human creativity and prosperity, or opening a Pandora’s box that will produce a nightmarish future,” the Council on Foreign Relations said.
“Optimists pointed to how AI was unleashing scientific breakthroughs at an unprecedented pace across a range of fields, enabling rapid drug design, unlocking medical mysteries, and solving seemingly unsolvable mathematical problems. Pessimists warned that the technology is developing faster than the ability of humans to assess and mitigate the harm it might cause, whether that is creating mass unemployment, hardening existing societal inequalities, or triggering humanity’s extinction.” But skeptics believe that “much of AI’s promise will be derailed because the models will soon begin training on their own outputs, leading them to become divorced from actual human behavior.”
GAZA
A view shows houses and buildings destroyed in Israeli strikes, in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 11, 2023. REUTERS
The year’s biggest news, however, is the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, which is an acronym of its official name, “the Islamic Resistance Movement.” As the Council on Foreign Relations has pointed out, the Middle East looked promising in late September 2023. “The Abraham Accords were deepening ties between Israel and Arab countries. Speculation abounded that Saudi Arabia might soon establish diplomatic relations with Israel. A ceasefire in Yemen’s bitter civil war was holding. These trends prompted National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to declare: ‘The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades now.’ That changed just eight days later, on October 7, when Hamas attacked Israel. Roughly 1,200 Israelis were killed, the deadliest day in Israel’s history. Some 240 people were taken hostage. Vowing to eradicate Hamas, Israel launched airstrikes against Gaza and then invaded northern Gaza.
An Israeli battle tank unit regroups near the border of Gaza, in the southern part of Israel, on Oct. 14, 2023. (Marcus Yam/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
A negotiated pause in the fighting at the end of November secured the release of roughly one hundred hostages. But fighting soon resumed with Israeli troops moving into southern Gaza. The soaring death toll for Palestinian civilians, most of them women and children, fueled worldwide complaints that Israel was committing war crimes. Israel denied the charge, arguing that Hamas was using Palestinian civilians as human shields. [President] Joe Biden unequivocally backed Israel’s right to retaliate and traveled to Israel early in the conflict to show his support. By early December, however, U.S. officials were publicly urging Israel to do more to protect civilians or risk ‘strategic defeat.’ Initial fears that the conflict with Gaza might lead to a broader Middle East war eased by year’s end but did not disappear.”
How — and when — will the conflict end? What will follow?
<p style=”text-align: center;”><strong><em>AI’S PROMISE AND PERIL. CONFLAGRATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST.</em></strong>