Jay Casbon: Pope Leo XIV, Artificial Intelligence and Santa Barbara’s Future

Jay Casbon: Pope Leo XIV, Artificial Intelligence and Santa Barbara’s Future

The future, as we like to say in Santa Barbara, often arrives wearing flip-flops. It wanders in from the shoreline, unhurried, sun-dazed and slightly behind schedule. We’re a place accustomed to slow arrivals — fog lifting when it feels like it, avocados ripening on their own timetable, civic projects taking the scenic route. So it’s no surprise that artificial intelligence, that great global accelerant, has entered our local imagination in a wa…