California explores how to put AI to work in state government

Good morning. It’s Monday, Nov. 27. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

• California explores how to put AI to work in state government
• A debate over housing roils Cal Poly Humboldt
• 32 places across SoCal to score the perfect Christmas tree
• And here’s today’s e-newspaper

Putting AI to work in state government

Could artificial intelligence help make government better? California is exploring that question. State officials released a report last week examining the benefits and risk of putting generative AI to work in the state’s massive bureaucracy.

“With the proper guardrails in place … (GenAI) can be responsibly used to spur innovation, support the State workforce, and improve Californians’ lives,” the report authors stated.

Times reporter Queenie Wong wrote that the technology “could help quickly translate government materials into multiple languages, analyze tax claims to detect fraud, summarize public comments and answer questions about state services.”

“Still, deploying the technology, the analysis warned, also comes with concerns around data privacy, misinformation, equity and bias,” she noted.

One example the report notes: some residents may wish to scrub their online personal data, but removing it from AI models “may become difficult or administratively unsustainable.”

And there are specific risks that come with GenAI that officials would have to address, like when the technology creates misleading or false information and presents it as fact — known as “hallucinating.”

Some AI models have also struggled to summarize real-world information in text form, such as when media giant Gannett used AI to generate high school sports reports. The experiment was short-lived, as articles published with strange phrases and placeholder language quickly went viral.

And because GenAI is more complex, it’s also “more susceptible to model degradation and collapse, where the AI model’s performance will worsen over time as the data used to teach it becomes more outdated,” the report states.

Tech leaders are also split on the issue of AI safety.

“Leaders such as billionaire Elon Musk have sounded the alarm that the technology could lead to the destruction of civilization,” Queenie wrote. “Other tech executives have a more optimistic view about AI’s potential to help save humanity by making it easier to fight climate change and diseases.”

GenAI could also become a major economic engine in California, which is already home to nearly three dozen of the world’s top 50 AI companies. The report cites projections from Pitchbook that the global GenAI market could reach $42.6 billion by the end of this year.

California’s leaders hope to attract a considerable chunk of that market, but also said the state should lead the way on training workers to adapt to a technology that could also generate job loss.

The report was an “important first step,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement, as California looks to develop guidelines that strike a balance between safety and innovation.

“We’re taking a nuanced, measured approach — understanding the risks this transformative technology poses while examining how to leverage its benefits,” Newsom said.

You can read more about the GenAI issue in Queenie’s story.

Today’s top stories

Brad Butterfield walks his dog on the Cal Poly Humboldt campus. The university recently issued an eviction notice for students who sleep in their vehicles.

(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Housing

• A group of Cal Poly Humboldt students live in vehicles to afford college. They were ordered off campus, providing an up-close look at how low-income students struggle to meet their basic needs amid the state’s student affordable-housing crisis.
• A month after the Highland fire, the Riverside County families who lost their homes are still trying to reclaim some sense of normalcy and searching for bright spots during the holidays.
• Many in Los Angeles and California support a legal right to housing. Here’s how that works in Scotland.
• A new tool to reduce homeless camps: L.A. County leases apartment building for former RV dwellers.
  

Law enforcement

• A woman was jailed for shoplifting. Weeks later, her mother got back a decaying corpse, raising questions about how Los Angeles County authorities handled her death.
• For the first time in 30 years, the California prison system plans to nearly double most hourly wages for incarcerated workers, a proposal that comes amid a broader debate over prison labor. Pay would still be under $1 an hour.
• A convicted drug trafficker linked to the Sinaloa cartel who worked for the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was gunned down Thursday morning in Willowbrook, according to authorities and court records.
• Citibank discriminated against customers with Armenian names, a lawsuit alleges.

Politics

• What’s the fate of California’s pandemic preparedness ballot measure backed by Sam Bankman-Fried?
• Righteous mother or right-wing zealot? The soccer mom leading California’s parental rights movement.

Health

• Many parents were relieved the Food and Drug Administration approved an RSV shot for infants and toddlers, but it remains hard to come by. Here’s what to know.
• Los Angeles County public health officials are investigating a mysterious respiratory illness affecting a rising number of dogs, with cases reported in Los Angeles.
• California vs. Florida: The surprising answer to which handled COVID better.

More big stories

• A man was arrested in the shooting of three college students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vt.
• A Jewish professor at USC confronted pro-Palestinian students. He’s now barred from campus.
• Among the crowds on Black Friday, bargain-hunting shoppers shared stories of tight budgets and inflation strain.
• In the South Bay, e-bikes are restricted along the beach. But residents say some cyclists are still riding at unsafe speeds and flouting local rules.
• Sean Hannity and Gavin Newsom have formed an unlikely cable news bromance — their relationship represents a rarity in a polarized media and political landscape.
• Sean “Diddy” Combs is facing a lawsuit accusing him of sexual and physical abuse, the third filed in a week.
• SAG-AFTRA has released the full draft agreement it reached with the major studios that ended the 118-day actors’ strike earlier this month as members vote on whether to adopt it.
• UCLA has a new disability studies major — the first of its kind at any public university in California.

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Commentary and opinions

• Anita Chabria: The scariest part of the Paul Pelosi attack is what it revealed about the alarmingly mainstream pedophile panic.
• Gustavo Arellano: What I learned from watching a 24-hour police pursuit channel.
• Sammy Roth: Climate change is scary, but here’s what gives people hope.
• Opinion: How the culture war demonized comedy and convinced America we’re more polarized than ever.
• Opinion: The Black Los Angeles I grew up with is slipping away.
• Opinion: Who gets to live in L.A? A bold plan to create affordable housing has a serious flaw.
• Opinion: Palestinian and Israeli children are endangered by ‘us vs. them’ narratives.

Today’s great reads

High school senior Sam Srikanth, 17, has applied to elite East Coast schools but feels anxious about the competition among applicants.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Post-affirmative action, Asian American families are more stressed than ever about college admissions. Race-conscious admissions were widely seen to have disadvantaged them, as borne out by disparities in the test scores of admitted students — but many feel that race will still be a hidden factor and that standards are even more opaque than before.

Other great reads

• Two Manhattan Beaches? Yes — but they couldn’t be more different.
• The movies are back. But we’re still learning how to love going to theaters again.

How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@latimes.com.

For your downtime

(Casey Beifuss / For The Times)

Going out

• 🎄 32 places across SoCal to score the perfect Christmas tree (and make Santa proud.)
• 📽️ Catch a film at one of the 27 best movie theaters in Los Angeles.
• 🪩 Get ready for “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.” Here’s what our critic had to say about its premiere.
• 🎬 Review: “The Boy and the Heron” — Hayao Miyazaki’s latest and perhaps last film — is the master animator at his most beautifully elegiac.

Staying in

• 📺 Review: David Tennant makes a glorious return in the first of “Doctor Who” 60th-anniversary specials.
• 🧑‍🍳 Hanukkah is the season for frying the way Jewish Romans do. Try these mele fritte (apple fritters with vanilla sugar).
• ✏️ Get our free daily crossword puzzle, sudoku, word search and arcade games.

And finally ... a great photo

Show us your favorite place in California! Send us photos you have taken of spots in California that are special — natural or human-made — and tell us why they’re important to you.

An oasis in Red Rock Canyon State Park.

(Rick Balian)

Today’s great photo is from Rick Balian of Tehachapi, Calif.: Red Rock Canyon State Park. Rick writes: “The Japanese have a term called shinrin-yoku (‘forest bathing’). It’s a gentle wellness therapy of immersing yourself in nature. I’ve got my own twist on it that I call ‘desert bathing.’ I love the solitude of desert hiking. And one of my favorite places to go is Red Rock Canyon State Park, about half an hour north of Mojave on State Route 14. I always discover something remarkable there, such as this random oasis a couple of miles from the Red Cliffs parking area.”

Have a great day, from the Essential California team

Ryan Fonseca, reporter
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
Laura Blasey, assistant editor

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