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.

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and collapse, where the AI model’s performance will worsen over time as the data used to teach it becomes more outdated,” the report states.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

Politics

Health

More big stories

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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

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

For your downtime

(Casey Beifuss / For The Times)

Going out

Staying in

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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