artificial intelligence

As talk of a possible AI bubble grows, so does uncertainty around an important source of California tax money.

Proliferating AI is overloading our already overloaded power grids that are now buckling beneath skyrocketing computational demands to process all those bits and bytes so that we can have AI-generated pictures of Donald Trump hugging a kitten or riding astride a majestic lion as well as entirely AI-generated short films with thoughtful titles like Broccoligeddon and Drinking Gasoline.

California showed it was serious about regulating Big Tech in 2025 — and Big Tech showed it was serious about coming to the statehouse and fighting back.

Since 2016, California enacted more AI regulations than any other state. The president’s new order against such laws worries state officials.

A new report estimates that California’s data centers are driving increases in electricity use, water demand and pollution even as lawmakers stall on oversight.

The company behind ChatGPT is converting to a for-profit company and settling an investigation by California’s attorney general. Experts and advocates say the company could still exploit its charitable roots.

Many of today’s most popular generative AI systems like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude still utilize WIMP for interaction with users typing prompts into a GUI. But that’s rapidly being replaced by humans interacting with AI systems using spoken language.

The court of appeals said 21 of 23 quotes in an opening brief were fake. State authorities are scrambling to grapple with widespread use of artificial intelligence.

A secretive appropriations process killed or reined in three bills regulating the use of pricing algorithms. A bill to monitor data center electricity use was also culled.

Several bills in the California Legislature would regulate how companies use AI to make employment decisions such as compensation, hiring, firing, or promotions, but they may be in jeopardy because of their associated costs.

‘We cannot ignore the rapid growth of AI in our lives,’ Gov. Tina Kotek said in a statement Friday. The state is working with InnovateUS, a nonprofit organization that has partnered with government agencies to provide no-cost AI training for public sector employees.

The bot fails at some basic questions about fires. Cal Fire says it is working on fixes.