Can CA Help Its Workers Survive AI Disruption?

Planning note: WhatMatters is taking Memorial Day off and will be back in your inboxes on Tuesday.

Is artificial intelligence here to save us or destroy us?

Like you, we still don’t. But we heard from some smart people at our Festival of Ideas Thursday in downtown Sacramento, where an AI advocate tried to assuage public anxiety and a labor leader argued that California isn’t doing enough to protect workers.

Cesar Fernandez, head of state and local government relations for AI company Anthropic, said that while AI’s potential to undermine “democratic values” is something the company takes seriously, it can also be useful when used safely and responsibly.

Fernandez pointed to Anthropic’s engagement with policymakers to explore how “overworked and underpaid” government officials can use AI, citing how the California Department of Taxation and Fees uses Anthropic’s AI tool, Claude, to answer tax questions.

• Fernandez: “This is an agency that receives more than 800,000 calls each year. … By using Claude in particular, the agency is seeing faster response times for residents seeking information, calls are even shorter, the quality of information is getting better. It allows the same officers to do more.”

Anthropic is approaching a $1 trillion valuation, according to Financial Times.

Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing state agencies to revise California’s workforce policies in anticipation of technology eliminating more jobs. The order calls on agencies to review policies that support laid-off workers, create a dashboard on AI-related job losses, and examine how unions treat AI in their labor contracts.

But Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, at Ideas Fest called the order “lacklustre” because it did not mention handrails to regulate AI’s effect on the workforce.

Gonzalez noted various bills proposed by the federation that Newsom vetoedand said that accepting massive AI-related job losses as inevitable was a “political decision”.

• Gonzalez: “Whether it’s in health care, behavioral health, journalism, teaching — there are some things that we as a society can say that we would never want those jobs to be replaced and done by a computer. … It’s not only an acceptable thing to do, it’s something we need to do for humanity.”

Overheard at Ideas Fest: Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid has made a pre-election prediction: Democrats will pick up at least 25 seats in the US House of Representatives this fall and take a majority in the Senate. In his reading, the economy and President Donald Trump’s approval rating are insurmountable for the GOP, even with all the fraud unfolding across the country.

And former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano sounded like she wanted to go to court in various California lawsuits with the Trump administration during an appearance with Attorney General Rob Bonta. Napolitano said, “It’s a great time to be attorney general. These are really, really important battles.”

The Assembly passed a bill Thursday that lifts some restrictions on devices that allow conventional gasoline cars to run on cheaper, mostly ethanol fuel mixtureAlejandro Lazo and Yue Stella Yu of CalMatters write.

Lawmakers moved the bill forward in response to rising gas prices in the state. The bill would exempt manufacturers of these devices, known as E85 converter kits, from an approval process by state regulators. The bill does not affect a separate federal approval process.

About 1.3 million vehicles in California use an ethanol fuel blend. It is sold at about 640 stations statewide, or 3 percent of the more than 15,000 gas stations across California.

Although the fuel has been rated as environmentally cleaner than regular gas by the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard, critics have said its benefits are likely overstated.

The bill now heads to the state Senate.

Read more.

There are four data brokers changing their data collection practices after an investigation by CalMatters and The Markup revealed that dozens of companies are making it difficult for customers to request that their data be deleted despite state law, CalMatters’ Colin Lecher reports.

To help Californians protect their privacy, in 2023 lawmakers passed the Erasure Act, requiring data brokers to allow customers a way to request that their data be erased. But 35 companies had such a code hid their deletion instructions from appearing in Google searches.

The investigation prompted U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, the top minority Democrat on the Senate Joint Economic Committee, to question five data brokers about their practices.

Four of these companies agreed to make their pages visible in search. A Senate committee report also estimated that broker data breaches were responsible for consumers losing more than $20 billion to fraud and identity theft.

Read more.