Gov. Gavin Newsom is asking synthetic intelligence corporations to assist resolve the state’s most urgent challenges — housing and homelessness.
On Thursday, Newsom introduced the state will search proposals from AI builders, reminiscent of Bay Space tech giants Google and Open AI, to assist officers join homeless folks with shelter or therapy and pace up the native allowing course of for reasonably priced housing.
“Because the birthplace of the tech business and the fifth largest financial system on this planet, California isn’t afraid of progress,” Newsom stated in an announcement. “We’ll deploy each instrument to handle a few of the most vexing problems with our time, together with the housing and homelessness disaster.”
Ultimately depend, California had an estimated 181,000 homeless residents, accounting for almost one in three unhoused folks nationwide. Regardless of spending $24 billion on homelessness packages since 2019, the state nonetheless lacks anyplace close to sufficient shelter and therapy beds for everybody on the road.
California has additionally set a aim of constructing 2.5 million new houses for folks of all revenue ranges by 2031, although development has stalled over the previous two years, largely as a result of hovering rates of interest.
Precisely how the brand new AI packages might function is unclear. Firms will define potential options and prices of their proposals. State officers couldn’t instantly present a timeline for after they might begin accepting proposals. However they plan to host a gathering with AI builders later this month to debate how the “massive language mannequin” know-how could possibly be utilized.
As a part of the trouble, the state additionally plans to ask AI corporations for methods to assist analyze the fiscal and coverage impacts of the state price range.
Final September, Newsom signed an government order directing state companies to determine tips for utilizing AI instruments, in addition to examine how the know-how may gain advantage them. Some companies are already lining up contracts for instruments they hope will scale back visitors, help lecturers and enhance authorities processes. The state tax division, for instance, goals to make use of an AI program to assist name heart brokers reply to questions in regards to the state tax code.
The identical corporations that Newsom is courting to construct these instruments are additionally lobbying him to veto what could be one of the crucial complete legal guidelines regulating AI within the nation. That laws, S.B. 1047 from state Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat, would pressure AI corporations to take security measures to stop cyberattacks on essential infrastructure or automated crime, and maintain AI corporations answerable for hurt.
Employees author Kate Talerico contributed to this report.
Initially Printed:
