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"content": "\u003cp>Longtime tech worker Ben Kovitz grew up far from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/siliconvalley\">Silicon Valley\u003c/a> — in Appleton, Wisconsin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If fewer than 26 inches of snow fell in a night, they wouldn’t close school, because they had the plows to clear those streets by morning,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jobs pulled him to sunny California first in the 1980s, where he spent about 15 years in tech. His first full-time programming job was at a small company in Encino called Information Management Systems, where he learned, as he puts it, “most of what I know.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps his most prestigious gig was at Palm, Inc., the consumer electronics and software pioneer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The perks weren’t as lavish as at Google during the “glory days” of Silicon Valley employment, but there was a ping pong table, and the cafeteria was “fantastic,” which meant a lot to the young foodie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually pivoted to academia, feeling he could be “paid to indulge my curiosity and teach, which are two things that I would do all the time if I could,” pursued a Ph.D. in cognitive science and computer science at Indiana University, and became a\u003ca href=\"https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor/3045066\"> computer science professor\u003c/a> at Cal Poly Humboldt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12088445\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12088445\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00297_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00297_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00297_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00297_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Kovitz poses for a portrait at his place of work at Impulse Labs in San Francisco on June 19, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But when Kovitz decided last year to return to full-time work in Silicon Valley, he discovered a labor market \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084655/after-meta-layoffs-newsom-signs-ai-order-to-protect-workers-and-jobs\">dramatically reshaped\u003c/a> by artificial intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’d reinvented himself before. The question was whether the industry would let him do it again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out, yes. For all of Silicon Valley’s recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11939910/a-layoff-spree-at-bay-area-tech-companies\">mass layoffs\u003c/a> and historic \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/perspectives/201503250643/older-and-out-of-work-in-silicon-valley\">ageism\u003c/a>, experienced engineers like Kovitz who can confidently work with AI may have a better chance of riding tech’s next wave than the news headlines suggest. But to survive the brutal hiring gauntlet, they just might need to invest in help — both human and AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Is the market leaning in favor of experience?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Overall, tech jobs are surging. Online employment marketplace ZipRecruiter, which tracks job postings in IT and computer science, reports they were up 16.7% year-over-year nationally in May.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that rosy picture looks different depending on your experience level. The share of senior-level job postings has risen to 43.1%, up from 38.8% a year ago. At the same time, the share of entry-level job postings has fallen slightly, from 8.1% to 7.4%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A key challenge within this job market is a distinct preference for senior or highly-skilled talent over entry-level hires,” ZipRecruiter labor economist Nicole Bachaud wrote to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10987745\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-10987745 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/06/gettyimages-186125057-e35bb49a8d56f4c7fe56263444f7b0703ecaede7-e1465833964313.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">LinkedIn logos are displayed on laptop computers \u003ccite>(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg-Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That’s not great news for newly minted college graduates, but it is a hopeful sign for Kovitz and others with decades of experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, more than a quarter of employers now ask for AI skills. That’s nearly double the share a year ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This surge is primarily fueled by businesses expanding their AI integrations, products, and services, creating high demand for workers to implement and deploy these new tools,” Bachaud wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fastest-growing roles in software engineering aren’t traditional coding jobs, according to Kory Kantenga, head of economics for the Americas at LinkedIn. They’re positions like “forward-deployed engineer,” a title \u003ca href=\"https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/forward-deployed-engineers\">pioneered\u003c/a> by companies like Palantir to describe engineers who embed directly with clients to install, customize and troubleshoot AI tools on-site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>LinkedIn has seen an 18-fold increase in such roles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those are the roles that we see have a lot of momentum,” Kantenga said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How Ben Did It\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While shy about sharing his exact age, Kovitz will say he’s old enough “to have watched\u003ca href=\"https://www.nasa.gov/history/apollo-16-launches-to-the-moon/\"> moon shots\u003c/a> on television” as a boy in the early 1970s, and to have programmed computers with \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2M4ttzBnY\">punch cards\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s also old enough to know the Silicon Valley job market is vastly different from the one he learned to navigate at the start of his career. Today, AI defines not only the jobs, but the job search as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Applicants use AI to fire off applications while employers use AI to screen them. The impacts are especially acute in Silicon Valley, where the internet has turned many job openings into a worldwide competition with thousands of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12085049/even-some-tech-workers-cant-afford-to-stay-when-the-bay-is-this-expensive\">well-qualified applicants\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11985952\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11985952 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/AP24134775174210-scaled-e1770337042768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023. \u003ccite>(Michael Dwyer/Associated Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I watched a friend struggle for a year after he finished his master’s degree,” he said, “and filling out applications every single day, hours a day. It took him a year to get a job.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kovitz decided he needed to pay for professional help to reduce the strength and duration of the struggle ahead of him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Reducing that by a few months and also reducing the sheer pain of it, that is easily worth it,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He signed up with two companies that offer job search support:\u003ca href=\"https://www.applypass.com\"> ApplyPass\u003c/a> and Resume Wizard 101, which has recently rebranded to \u003ca href=\"https://careerlander.com\">Career Lander\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Resume Wizard assigned Kovitz a “reverse recruiter” who sent him new prospects daily, including many that Kovitz might never have considered on his own. The recruiter then filled out about 100 applications a month on his behalf.[aside postID=news_12089434 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/CAT-%E2%80%94-The-Bay-Feed-Drop.img_.png']ApplyPass used an AI agent to fire off applications at industrial volume — 400 a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given the volume of “cold applications” coming at employers, it’s essential job seekers — or agents acting on their behalf — reach out to the relevant person at the company who has some influence over the hiring process, according to Neil Bhatt, Career Lander’s founder and CEO. “The conversion rate (from application to interview) skyrockets when you actually do some sort of networking.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kovitz said Resume Wizard 101’s human touch led to a higher rate of employer responses. But ApplyPass isn’t solely automated. The company provided a coach to help navigate “some of the weird things they do in software engineering interviews today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After every interview, Kovitz shared how he responded to certain questions, and the ApplyPass coach suggested alternative approaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We talked about what went right and what went badly,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These services aren’t cheap. ApplyPass’s auto-apply plans range from free to about $199 a month, while Resume Wizard 101’s human-run packages range from roughly $300 for a single résumé revision to $10,000 for full ‘career search management.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12088446\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12088446\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00353_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00353_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00353_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00353_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Kovitz poses for a portrait at his place of work at Impulse Labs in San Francisco on June 19, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But senior software engineers in San Francisco earn a median total compensation north of $270,000 a year, according to Glassdoor, so Kovitz figured the math was likely to pencil out for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was also surprised to find some prospective employers that want proof a software engineer can work with AI. “Go at it with AI,” he was instructed in one memorable interview. “Just throw everything you’ve got at it. Let’s see how you do it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was new to Kovitz, but he dove in with gusto. “I blasted out 2,000 lines of code and solved the problem,” Kovitz said. “But I also saw that the solution wasn’t that great.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kovitz said he thinks getting useful work out of an AI coding agent takes judgment that only comes with experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a senior engineer, Kovitz argued, he was able to look at those 2,000 machine-generated lines of code, recognize their shortcomings, and then know what to do about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of what you do with AI is you work out a plan, a little conversation with the AI, because if you just tell the AI ‘Do this thing,’ with no plan, it is going to make a gigantic mess, and you are going to spend a week debugging it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Effective prompts require understanding the code and what the company wants from it at a granular level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You need to know how all kinds of things can go wrong. Junior programmers don’t have that. They haven’t seen the development of code over a long period of time,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s really a game of marketing at the end of the day,” said Bhatt at Career Lander. He said any employer is going to choose the person who can best explain how they use their experience to help this company. “The better job you’re doing at articulating how you can solve their problems, the easier it becomes to land that position.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a survey of 400 engineering leaders in the \u003ca href=\"https://karat.com/engineering-interview-trends-2026/\">U.S., India and China\u003c/a> by Karat, a company that runs technical interviews for hire, 73% said a strong engineer is worth at least three times their total compensation, something they specifically attributed to AI’s impact on productivity. The same survey found that AI is widening the gap between strong and weaker engineers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So where did Ben land?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Kovitz landed a job after a six-month hunt — slightly less than average for the information sector, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat32.htm\">Bureau of Labor Statistics\u003c/a>, which tracks tech workers as part of that larger group. After submitting what he estimates was around 3,000 job applications, Kovitz got a software engineering job at\u003ca href=\"https://www.impulselabs.com/the-difference?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23532288434&gbraid=0AAAAA9ieg0kwGUYoidiYsGrH1-yL_JMGl&gclid=Cj0KCQjwlqTRBhCBARIsANrkrxht1bbHUuOgRW2K2gBHBaZH3ZkB4H3XN_j9DNhIQ9zIVy-CdAhvtWEaAjBKEALw_wcB\"> Impulse Labs\u003c/a>, a San Francisco company that makes \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/impulse-cooktop-review/\">high-end induction stoves\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s happy with the job and turned other offers down to take it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Their engineering culture makes quality paramount even as they move fast,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, as a foodie, Kovitz loves sitting with a stovetop next to his desk for hands-on testing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12088888\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12088888 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260625-Too-Old-for-a-New-Job-in-Silicon-Valley-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260625-Too-Old-for-a-New-Job-in-Silicon-Valley-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260625-Too-Old-for-a-New-Job-in-Silicon-Valley-01-KQED-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260625-Too-Old-for-a-New-Job-in-Silicon-Valley-01-KQED-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An induction stovetop in the kitchen at San Francisco-based Impulse Labs. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ben Kovitz)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Does he work with AI on the new job?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes. Most of the day, every day,” he said, for a wide variety of things that would otherwise take him much longer. They range from finding the relevant parts of a large program to work on, to writing small bits of code in a language he doesn’t know well, to reviewing code for errors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“AI is both amazing when it works well, and amazingly unreliable, so I have to keep a close eye on it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s glad the job hunt is finally in his rearview mirror, but Kovitz is philosophical about the effort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While it was grueling, it was also a great adventure,” he said. “I learned all kinds of stuff about industries that I’d never known anything about before.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he applied for a job with a robotaxi company, he taught himself the basics of motion planning, the math behind how a self-driving car navigates. For another set of interviews, he picked up some basics about satellites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kovitz’s facility with math and science, not to mention his natural curiosity and enthusiasm for intellectual challenges, gave him the kind of career flexibility only the most elite coders have enjoyed in recent decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090182\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090182\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/260619-benkovitz00441_TV_qed-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/260619-benkovitz00441_TV_qed-2.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/260619-benkovitz00441_TV_qed-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/260619-benkovitz00441_TV_qed-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Kovitz poses for a portrait at his place of work at Impulse Labs in San Francisco on June 19, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But he also maintained a positive attitude by consciously framing the search as a good thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was an exciting learning experience,” Kovitz said. “It was part of life’s adventure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His advice for others still looking?\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>Get help if you can afford it.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Treat the search like an eight-hour job and knock off afterward, so the rejection doesn’t grind you down: “You need to protect your morale.”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Don’t go into job interviews with an attitude of desperation. “I’m not there to get the job,” Kovitz said. “I’m there to find out if I want the job.” He added, “It’s wise to be fussy,” and hold out for an employer “that has a culture that you like, where the work is meaningful to you.”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Treat this as a numbers game: “You know, you are probably going to roll the dice 50 or 100, 150 times before you actually get a good [position].”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as the saying goes: “There are plenty of perfectly good jobs out there for lots of people.”\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\n\u003cp>https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdk3i2DjzVyovGlneUjqudUOXk1699l6Ea-xE4ZgFEi2ApRIQ/viewform?usp=dialog\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Longtime tech worker Ben Kovitz grew up far from \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/siliconvalley\">Silicon Valley\u003c/a> — in Appleton, Wisconsin.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If fewer than 26 inches of snow fell in a night, they wouldn’t close school, because they had the plows to clear those streets by morning,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Jobs pulled him to sunny California first in the 1980s, where he spent about 15 years in tech. His first full-time programming job was at a small company in Encino called Information Management Systems, where he learned, as he puts it, “most of what I know.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Perhaps his most prestigious gig was at Palm, Inc., the consumer electronics and software pioneer.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The perks weren’t as lavish as at Google during the “glory days” of Silicon Valley employment, but there was a ping pong table, and the cafeteria was “fantastic,” which meant a lot to the young foodie.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He eventually pivoted to academia, feeling he could be “paid to indulge my curiosity and teach, which are two things that I would do all the time if I could,” pursued a Ph.D. in cognitive science and computer science at Indiana University, and became a\u003ca href=\"https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor/3045066\"> computer science professor\u003c/a> at Cal Poly Humboldt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12088445\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12088445\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00297_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00297_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00297_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00297_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Kovitz poses for a portrait at his place of work at Impulse Labs in San Francisco on June 19, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But when Kovitz decided last year to return to full-time work in Silicon Valley, he discovered a labor market \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084655/after-meta-layoffs-newsom-signs-ai-order-to-protect-workers-and-jobs\">dramatically reshaped\u003c/a> by artificial intelligence.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’d reinvented himself before. The question was whether the industry would let him do it again.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It turns out, yes. For all of Silicon Valley’s recent \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11939910/a-layoff-spree-at-bay-area-tech-companies\">mass layoffs\u003c/a> and historic \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/perspectives/201503250643/older-and-out-of-work-in-silicon-valley\">ageism\u003c/a>, experienced engineers like Kovitz who can confidently work with AI may have a better chance of riding tech’s next wave than the news headlines suggest. But to survive the brutal hiring gauntlet, they just might need to invest in help — both human and AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Is the market leaning in favor of experience?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Overall, tech jobs are surging. Online employment marketplace ZipRecruiter, which tracks job postings in IT and computer science, reports they were up 16.7% year-over-year nationally in May.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But that rosy picture looks different depending on your experience level. The share of senior-level job postings has risen to 43.1%, up from 38.8% a year ago. At the same time, the share of entry-level job postings has fallen slightly, from 8.1% to 7.4%.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A key challenge within this job market is a distinct preference for senior or highly-skilled talent over entry-level hires,” ZipRecruiter labor economist Nicole Bachaud wrote to KQED.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_10987745\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-10987745 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2016/06/gettyimages-186125057-e35bb49a8d56f4c7fe56263444f7b0703ecaede7-e1465833964313.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1440\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">LinkedIn logos are displayed on laptop computers \u003ccite>(Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg-Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That’s not great news for newly minted college graduates, but it is a hopeful sign for Kovitz and others with decades of experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, more than a quarter of employers now ask for AI skills. That’s nearly double the share a year ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This surge is primarily fueled by businesses expanding their AI integrations, products, and services, creating high demand for workers to implement and deploy these new tools,” Bachaud wrote.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The fastest-growing roles in software engineering aren’t traditional coding jobs, according to Kory Kantenga, head of economics for the Americas at LinkedIn. They’re positions like “forward-deployed engineer,” a title \u003ca href=\"https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/forward-deployed-engineers\">pioneered\u003c/a> by companies like Palantir to describe engineers who embed directly with clients to install, customize and troubleshoot AI tools on-site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>LinkedIn has seen an 18-fold increase in such roles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Those are the roles that we see have a lot of momentum,” Kantenga said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>How Ben Did It\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While shy about sharing his exact age, Kovitz will say he’s old enough “to have watched\u003ca href=\"https://www.nasa.gov/history/apollo-16-launches-to-the-moon/\"> moon shots\u003c/a> on television” as a boy in the early 1970s, and to have programmed computers with \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG2M4ttzBnY\">punch cards\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s also old enough to know the Silicon Valley job market is vastly different from the one he learned to navigate at the start of his career. Today, AI defines not only the jobs, but the job search as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Applicants use AI to fire off applications while employers use AI to screen them. The impacts are especially acute in Silicon Valley, where the internet has turned many job openings into a worldwide competition with thousands of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12085049/even-some-tech-workers-cant-afford-to-stay-when-the-bay-is-this-expensive\">well-qualified applicants\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11985952\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-11985952 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/05/AP24134775174210-scaled-e1770337042768.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen displaying output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023. \u003ccite>(Michael Dwyer/Associated Press)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“I watched a friend struggle for a year after he finished his master’s degree,” he said, “and filling out applications every single day, hours a day. It took him a year to get a job.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kovitz decided he needed to pay for professional help to reduce the strength and duration of the struggle ahead of him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Reducing that by a few months and also reducing the sheer pain of it, that is easily worth it,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He signed up with two companies that offer job search support:\u003ca href=\"https://www.applypass.com\"> ApplyPass\u003c/a> and Resume Wizard 101, which has recently rebranded to \u003ca href=\"https://careerlander.com\">Career Lander\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Resume Wizard assigned Kovitz a “reverse recruiter” who sent him new prospects daily, including many that Kovitz might never have considered on his own. The recruiter then filled out about 100 applications a month on his behalf.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>ApplyPass used an AI agent to fire off applications at industrial volume — 400 a week.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given the volume of “cold applications” coming at employers, it’s essential job seekers — or agents acting on their behalf — reach out to the relevant person at the company who has some influence over the hiring process, according to Neil Bhatt, Career Lander’s founder and CEO. “The conversion rate (from application to interview) skyrockets when you actually do some sort of networking.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kovitz said Resume Wizard 101’s human touch led to a higher rate of employer responses. But ApplyPass isn’t solely automated. The company provided a coach to help navigate “some of the weird things they do in software engineering interviews today.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After every interview, Kovitz shared how he responded to certain questions, and the ApplyPass coach suggested alternative approaches.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We talked about what went right and what went badly,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>These services aren’t cheap. ApplyPass’s auto-apply plans range from free to about $199 a month, while Resume Wizard 101’s human-run packages range from roughly $300 for a single résumé revision to $10,000 for full ‘career search management.’\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12088446\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12088446\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00353_TV-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00353_TV-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00353_TV-KQED-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260619-benkovitz00353_TV-KQED-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Kovitz poses for a portrait at his place of work at Impulse Labs in San Francisco on June 19, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But senior software engineers in San Francisco earn a median total compensation north of $270,000 a year, according to Glassdoor, so Kovitz figured the math was likely to pencil out for him.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He was also surprised to find some prospective employers that want proof a software engineer can work with AI. “Go at it with AI,” he was instructed in one memorable interview. “Just throw everything you’ve got at it. Let’s see how you do it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This was new to Kovitz, but he dove in with gusto. “I blasted out 2,000 lines of code and solved the problem,” Kovitz said. “But I also saw that the solution wasn’t that great.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kovitz said he thinks getting useful work out of an AI coding agent takes judgment that only comes with experience.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a senior engineer, Kovitz argued, he was able to look at those 2,000 machine-generated lines of code, recognize their shortcomings, and then know what to do about it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“A lot of what you do with AI is you work out a plan, a little conversation with the AI, because if you just tell the AI ‘Do this thing,’ with no plan, it is going to make a gigantic mess, and you are going to spend a week debugging it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Effective prompts require understanding the code and what the company wants from it at a granular level.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“You need to know how all kinds of things can go wrong. Junior programmers don’t have that. They haven’t seen the development of code over a long period of time,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s really a game of marketing at the end of the day,” said Bhatt at Career Lander. He said any employer is going to choose the person who can best explain how they use their experience to help this company. “The better job you’re doing at articulating how you can solve their problems, the easier it becomes to land that position.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In a survey of 400 engineering leaders in the \u003ca href=\"https://karat.com/engineering-interview-trends-2026/\">U.S., India and China\u003c/a> by Karat, a company that runs technical interviews for hire, 73% said a strong engineer is worth at least three times their total compensation, something they specifically attributed to AI’s impact on productivity. The same survey found that AI is widening the gap between strong and weaker engineers.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>So where did Ben land?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Kovitz landed a job after a six-month hunt — slightly less than average for the information sector, according to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat32.htm\">Bureau of Labor Statistics\u003c/a>, which tracks tech workers as part of that larger group. After submitting what he estimates was around 3,000 job applications, Kovitz got a software engineering job at\u003ca href=\"https://www.impulselabs.com/the-difference?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23532288434&gbraid=0AAAAA9ieg0kwGUYoidiYsGrH1-yL_JMGl&gclid=Cj0KCQjwlqTRBhCBARIsANrkrxht1bbHUuOgRW2K2gBHBaZH3ZkB4H3XN_j9DNhIQ9zIVy-CdAhvtWEaAjBKEALw_wcB\"> Impulse Labs\u003c/a>, a San Francisco company that makes \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/impulse-cooktop-review/\">high-end induction stoves\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s happy with the job and turned other offers down to take it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Their engineering culture makes quality paramount even as they move fast,” Kovitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Also, as a foodie, Kovitz loves sitting with a stovetop next to his desk for hands-on testing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12088888\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12088888 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260625-Too-Old-for-a-New-Job-in-Silicon-Valley-01-KQED.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260625-Too-Old-for-a-New-Job-in-Silicon-Valley-01-KQED.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260625-Too-Old-for-a-New-Job-in-Silicon-Valley-01-KQED-160x120.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260625-Too-Old-for-a-New-Job-in-Silicon-Valley-01-KQED-1536x1152.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An induction stovetop in the kitchen at San Francisco-based Impulse Labs. \u003ccite>(Courtesy of Ben Kovitz)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Does he work with AI on the new job?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Yes. Most of the day, every day,” he said, for a wide variety of things that would otherwise take him much longer. They range from finding the relevant parts of a large program to work on, to writing small bits of code in a language he doesn’t know well, to reviewing code for errors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“AI is both amazing when it works well, and amazingly unreliable, so I have to keep a close eye on it,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He’s glad the job hunt is finally in his rearview mirror, but Kovitz is philosophical about the effort.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“While it was grueling, it was also a great adventure,” he said. “I learned all kinds of stuff about industries that I’d never known anything about before.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When he applied for a job with a robotaxi company, he taught himself the basics of motion planning, the math behind how a self-driving car navigates. For another set of interviews, he picked up some basics about satellites.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kovitz’s facility with math and science, not to mention his natural curiosity and enthusiasm for intellectual challenges, gave him the kind of career flexibility only the most elite coders have enjoyed in recent decades.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090182\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090182\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/260619-benkovitz00441_TV_qed-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/260619-benkovitz00441_TV_qed-2.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/260619-benkovitz00441_TV_qed-2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/260619-benkovitz00441_TV_qed-2-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ben Kovitz poses for a portrait at his place of work at Impulse Labs in San Francisco on June 19, 2026. \u003ccite>(Tâm Vũ / KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But he also maintained a positive attitude by consciously framing the search as a good thing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It was an exciting learning experience,” Kovitz said. “It was part of life’s adventure.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His advice for others still looking?\u003c/p>\n\u003col>\n\u003cli>Get help if you can afford it.\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Treat the search like an eight-hour job and knock off afterward, so the rejection doesn’t grind you down: “You need to protect your morale.”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Don’t go into job interviews with an attitude of desperation. “I’m not there to get the job,” Kovitz said. “I’m there to find out if I want the job.” He added, “It’s wise to be fussy,” and hold out for an employer “that has a culture that you like, where the work is meaningful to you.”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Treat this as a numbers game: “You know, you are probably going to roll the dice 50 or 100, 150 times before you actually get a good [position].”\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good, as the saying goes: “There are plenty of perfectly good jobs out there for lots of people.”\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ol>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cdiv class='utils-parseShortcode-shortcodes-__shortcodes__shortcodeWrapper'>\n \u003ciframe\n src='https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdk3i2DjzVyovGlneUjqudUOXk1699l6Ea-xE4ZgFEi2ApRIQ/viewform?usp=dialog?embedded=true'\n title='https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdk3i2DjzVyovGlneUjqudUOXk1699l6Ea-xE4ZgFEi2ApRIQ/viewform?usp=dialog'\n width='760' height='500'\n frameborder='0'\n marginheight='0' marginwidth='0'>\u003c/iframe>\u003c/div>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#transcript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Will AI actually take over every job ever? \u003ca href=\"https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/academics-research/faculty/jones_benjamin_f/\">Economist Ben Jones\u003c/a> doesn’t think so. Drawing from historical evidence around innovation, Jones argues that automation never conquers \u003cem>everything \u003c/em>— it inevitably creates operational bottlenecks that only humans can solve. By leaning into these bottlenecks, we can protect meaningful, well-paid work. But his optimism comes with a stark caveat: there is one nightmare scenario where this historical pattern breaks down entirely. And it doesn’t involve superintelligence. It involves mediocre AI.\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading: \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ai-frontiers.org/articles/how-ai-could-benefit-the-workers-it-displaces\">How AI Could Benefit Workers, Even If It Displaces Most Jobs\u003c/a> — Benjamin Jones, \u003cem>AI Frontiers\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I’m Jess Love. This is Life Automated. For generations of Americans, the question was, where were you when JFK was shot? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Breaking news bulletin announcing the death of John F. Kennedy]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll excuse the fact that I’m out of breath, but about 10 or 15 minutes ago, a tragic thing from all indications at this point has happened to this city.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio Clip of Neil Armstrong on the moon]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>That’s one small step for man, one giant- \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Or the towers fell on 9/11?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[News bulletin from September 11, 2001]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>There’s smoke \u003c/em>\u003cem>billowing out of the World Trade Center.\u003c/em>\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> These are moments seared into our collective psyche, and now we have a new moment, only this one arrived a bit differently, a browser at a time.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Where were you when you first used ChatGPT?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is Life, Automated. I’m Jess Love, and I can tell you exactly where I was. The year was 2022, and I was visiting my in-laws in Florida. It was that lazy week between Christmas and New Year’s that I usually spend in a food coma. I sat on my sister-in-law’s childhood bed and signed up for a free subscription to ChatGPT.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I started asking the machine questions, easy ones at first. What did it know about butterflies native to Chicago or the most common tourist attractions in Italy? But it wasn’t too long before I asked what I really wanted to know. Could it do my job? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>See, much of the work I’ve done over the past decade is in science communication, essentially translating original research written by and for experts into something comprehensible to most people.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, I asked ChatGPT to summarize some papers I was familiar with, and it did okay. But what it lacked in finesse, and especially in those earlier iterations, accurate citations, it more than made up for in sheer efficiency. In just seconds, it could do work that would take a human the better part of a day.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If I didn’t like the first draft that was conjured, I could just tell it to try again from a different perspective now. Write it shorter. Write it longer. Write it for a fifth grader. Write it with sports metaphors. I was stunned. It seemed clear we were entering a new era of science communication where all the world’s knowledge was not only available, but personally customizable on demand.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you wanted a given study to be relayed in the style of Mr. Darcy flirting with Elizabeth Bennet, you were now suddenly in luck. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[AI-generated summary of Pride and Prejudice in style of research article]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Darcy’s mouth tightened in a way that suggested the accusation had landed, but he proceeded anyway. My dear Miss Bennet, said Mr. Darcy with an air of careful restraint, I have been reading “AIG in Hindsight.” It is an instructive account of how a firm may appear a paragon of prudence until one… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> The thing I did to make my living that made me special, that made me employable, that I loved to do, was now available to anybody. How could I possibly compete? What did all of my expertise even mean anymore?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And the more I thought about ChatGPT, and the more its implications for a lot of other professions became clear, the more I started wondering about all of us. I have a seven-year-old daughter. What opportunities are gonna be available to her? I’m not alone here. The majority of Americans feel pretty anxious about AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And it’s not just jobs. Public polling data suggests Americans are really concerned about how AI will affect education, democracy, our environment, our information ecosystem, and just how we relate to each other. But even as I share all these concerns, I gotta say, over time, a big part of me did start rooting for this technology.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Partly, this is because I now work at a research institute, the Ryan Institute on Complexity. I use AI tools every day, and so do the people around me. I see firsthand how useful they can be. But there’s a bigger reason. I have another daughter, an 11-year-old. She was born with a rare neurological disorder, so rare that it doesn’t actually have a name.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You can currently count the number of people in the world with her specific genetic mutation on two fingers. And this genetic difference, it affects how she talks, how she moves, how she uses objects like forks and scissors, how she thinks and learns. My daughter lives in a world that wasn’t made for her, with a brain that science doesn’t really understand.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, technology that can harness the world’s cumulative knowledge in order to make her life a little easier sounds pretty incredible. AI that can predict which medications might be useful or offer step-by-step directions on how to operate household appliances, and then wait for her to finish each step.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of AI Microwave]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>First, press the button above the handle and open the door. Your food will go inside that box when it’s ready. Now close the door. Did it click? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Or AI that can adapt educational materials to her specifically, on demand, maybe in the voice of her favorite Moana character. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of Maui from Moana]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You’re welcome. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Sign me up. So yeah, that’s me. One person, one employee, one parent, reckoning with this technology. But of course, it isn’t just me. There are millions, billions of us wondering what AI and other kinds of automation really mean for our lives and our businesses and our communities, and what we should be doing to prepare. If you are one of these people, I’d like to invite you on a journey.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Because nobody can predict the future, nobody has all the answers about where we’re headed, but there are a lot of people with some answers, and I’ll be speaking with them on Life, Automated, a new podcast from Kellogg’s Ryan Institute on Complexity, distributed by KQED. I’ll talk with scientists and philosophers, business leaders and engineers and artists, all with unique insights into the world we’re collectively building.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m not gonna try to freak you out. I’m not gonna try to sell you anything. I am gonna get nerdy. I’m gonna try to understand, as best I can, where we’re headed. And you’re invited.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Shortly after I had my initial ChatGPT moment several years ago, I tracked down Ben Jones. He’s an economist and a co-director here at the Ryan Institute where he studies economic development, innovation, entrepreneurship, and the scientific process. And it turns out, Ben has been paying attention to new developments in generative AI for much longer than me.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When we talked three and a half years ago, I was kind of at peak anxiety; but Ben, he’d had a head start. Speaking with him helped me feel better about where we were headed, in part because he gave me a helpful way of thinking about AI. So, I wanted to bring him back for another conversation, this time in a recording studio. I started off by getting him talking about the first moment he realized AI had the potential to bring about big changes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Did you have an AI moment, kind of a single moment that sort of shook you to the core and made you think, wow, something about these newest models is really fundamentally different? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> I did. I’ve had several AI moments along the way. I think many people, you know, when you see what AI can do, it’s uncanny.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sometimes the hair stands up on the back of my neck. But my first AI moment where the hair stood up on the back of my neck was in 2017, and I was in Toronto for a conference that mixed economists and technologists, people from Geoff Hinton’s lab, who would go on to lead many of the top AI groups at the top companies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And we were shown over dinner, it was a very nice dinner, a video. The video was of an AI learning how to play a first-person shooter game. And as you may know, with first-person shooter games, the experience is if you’re looking through the eyes of the player. So, we’re sort of looking through the eyes of the AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And without any particular directives, except to sort of survive as long as possible, the AI was training itself to play this game better and better. And at first, you’re sitting there looking through the AI’s eyes, and you’re kind of like a drunken sailor. You’re, like, stumbling around, you’re banging into walls, you’re getting trapped in corners.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You never pick up health or a weapon. You just don’t last very long. The video showed us the AI’s progression kind of in a fast-forward, high speed over maybe 24 hours. And so around the middle of the training, over, maybe 12 hours, it started running around the maze extremely effectively, but it wasn’t always picking up things on the floor, and it was no longer falling off bridges.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By the end of the day, it was not only picking everything up and firing the weapons accurately, it was killing every single person in the game, all the real players. It didn’t miss. It didn’t miss in any way. And just watching this progression from this AI algorithm was a really uncanny moment, and to me, opened my mind to how powerful but also potentially worrisome AI is.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and I think, you know, on some level it’s not that surprising that a computer can learn to master a computer game. But what makes this story so incredible is just that the computer had no instructions that told us what it was supposed to be doing or what it was supposed to be optimizing other than just, like, live.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And it was able to just learn all of those techniques just via trial and error. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Right. Just the certain algorithms for training AI with fairly simple objectives lead to this incredible set of capabilities, which are truly uncanny. Many people have probably had that first moment now with AI, I think a lot with ChatGPT, where you ask it a question and you can’t believe the answer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You’re like, “How could it possibly be coming up with this?” And AI absolutely has that quality. So, for me, it kind of happened a bit earlier, and so I started writing about it a bit earlier than most because I’d had that experience a bit earlier than most. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, which was very convenient for me personally because it meant that, when I was still in my AI freak-out phase, you were somebody who had been doing research on this for years, and were able to kind of be this, calming presence, in order to give me some concrete information about this technology.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, you have kind of an interesting perspective, which is that AI, the current generative AI that we’re talking about with ChatGPT, it’s really just part of a long process of automation. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And it’s true that certain technologies for a long time, and AI is one of them, are just hands down amazing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>They do things that are just amazing. But that doesn’t mean that they disemploy everybody.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Phew.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And, how can those two things be true? Well, let me just give you another example. You know, obviously computers have been around for a long time now, and their capacity to do sort of certain kinds of calculations are just, more or less infinitely, virtually infinitely better than humans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You know, in my field and in many research fields, you use data and statistical regressions. If I were to run a regression by hand, with a large number of observations, it would take me literally my entire life. And I would make mistakes. You know, my computer can do a regression with a million data points in a minute.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so, we have these technologies that basically are infinitely better than us to do these tasks that are really important to what we do. And then you can ask, okay, well, has our understanding of economics or astronomy or physics multiplied by a similar factor? And you’d say no, because although we can do certain things really, really, really incredibly well, other things are holding us back.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have these other tasks, which I would call bottlenecks.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay, and this is the thing that I have thought about so often since our conversation. It kind of blew my mind. So, can you talk to us about what a bottleneck is and why it’s so important?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Well, of course, it’s a metaphor from a bottle, and what do we know about bottles? We know that the speed at which water or wine will flow from the bottle depends on the width of the neck. Doesn’t really depend on how big the bottle is otherwise, how much wine there is in it, how big the base is. It really just depends on the neck.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And in many processes in the economy and in the economy overall, it looks like there are certain things that have to happen that act as bottlenecks. Let’s say you’re going out to see your cousins for Thanksgiving dinner, and you’ve gotta get everyone in your house into the car, and you’ve gotta pack up the pies that you’re bringing and contributing to the festivities.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Well, everyone in the house could have gotten up early, gotten dressed, put on their Thanksgiving sweaters, gotten the pies into the car. But you’re not leaving the house until everyone has their shoes on and their socks. And maybe there’s someone in the family who just is getting real slow about getting their socks and their shoes on.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>How fast is it that you leave the house? It doesn’t really depend on how fast everyone is. It depends on how slow the slowest person is. That person becomes a bottleneck. Maybe an example we can all relate to. Much of the economy has that flavor, where it’s not how good you are at a lot of things. What’s really sort of determining the rate of the economy is the things we’re quite slow at, the things we’re not very good at.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So basically, it’s this task that is slowing down the speed with which the entire overall goal or objective can be met. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And the reason that’s important is because often in innovation, we get really focused on the shiny thing that’s going really fast, and we’re really excited about how fast it can compute things and these kinds of new technologies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But often what really matters is the thing we’re not looking at. It’s the things that we’re quite bad at. The things that we’re really bad at are actually going to slow down the whole system, and if we can’t improve those, the gains from these kind of shiny new objects and new technologies won’t be as great as we hope.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I thought about these bottlenecks a lot after our initial conversation. Like, whenever I heard a tech leader say AI was going to be ready to colonize the galaxy in five years, or whenever I started spiraling about whether AI was going to take over every job ever. Now, about that. Overall, Ben, like many economists, is bullish on AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>He says that automation is generally good for workers. Sure, it causes some job loss and dislocation in the short term. But in the long term, it raises the quality of life for everybody, in part because it lowers the price of things we need and want. But that doesn’t mean people don’t get harmed along the way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> So, one of the fears people have is that these automation technologies take jobs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And of course, this goes back to the early years of the Industrial Revolution and the Luddites. You know, when you have handcrafts people who are silversmiths and blacksmiths, and you’re making clothes by hand, and then suddenly you have, say, the loom, you’re going to put out of work a lot of hand clothes makers.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But they’re going to migrate into other jobs, right? Over the long run, we’re going to see people do many other things, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Think about the real economy. Think about farming. I don’t know if anyone in the audience has ever had a chance to ride around in a combine harvester.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But, that’s one of the most incredible pieces of machinery you can imagine. I think a single combine harvester with a bunch of trucks driving up and around it, was able to harvest something like four or five million pounds of corn in twelve hours. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> That’s insane. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Right? And certainly, agricultural technology is one of those areas where we’ve had massive productivity growth.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We have better seeds and irrigation systems. We have a lot more knowledge. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Fertilizer. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Fertilizers… All sorts of pesticides, depending how you feel about that. And those together have made for very high productivity, meaning, one hour of labor working with those machines can produce an enormous amount of food.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And the end result of that is that instead of having half our workforce in the US, you know, be in agriculture- \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> And that’s what it would have been, like- two hundred years ago.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And that’s what it is in many very low-income countries today, which still struggle to put in place even more basic agricultural technologies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, if fifty percent of the American workforce was in agriculture, now it’s, say, two percent of the American workforce working with an enormous amount of machines. But of course, that’s why many people have gone on to find other careers in other parts of the country. And overall, that process, while it’s not incidental, it can be quite painful. This process of what we call creative destruction, in the long run is what allows us to be far more productive, have higher standards of living.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Coming up, Ben Jones explains why he wants AI to be really good at every job it automates, and why the bigger risk is mediocre AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I do want to point out a very important difference that I think a lot of people are feeling, which is that what is happening with artificial intelligence right now, it’s that the most desirable jobs seem to be the ones that are most at risk. So, I don’t think many people grow up and think, “Boy, I really want to spend all day turning a knob again and again and again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But a lot of people really do want to do things like animate, or people want to become journalists. People are accepting giant salary reductions already, to position themselves in these fields. And it seems like those jobs are also at risk. So, there does almost seem to be an emotional difference with the jobs that are being lost right now, that puts kids growing up today in a really hard spot in terms of, follow your dreams.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Well, so, I mean, this is a bit too soon to tell, I think. But, you’re right that if you think of a job as not a task, but a bundle of tasks, that doesn’t mean that you don’t like some of the tasks more than others. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> If you’re a chef, I presume you think about the menu and, and some of the cooking is more fun than washing the dishes, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, that’s exactly right.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Maybe I’m wrong. And I don’t think people are the same. So, I think people have different preferences, even in the same job, about different kinds of tasks that they have to do. But to the extent that, you know, AI replaces, it’s just lower cost for how good it is at the tasks that you like, I think that’s not gonna feel so great.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You know, what if it’s really good at creativity and then all you’re doing is editing? But you’d rather do the creative part. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Exactly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> But on the other hand, you know, it’s also the case that when you bring in… Like, let’s go back to regressions. I like to do statistical analysis. I think it’s really interesting.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But I’m mostly interested in the output. I have no interest in the calculation, and it’s boring. So, this makes me get to the interesting part much faster. And maybe when you’re writing, it’s a collaborator, right? I mean, maybe it’s not a replacement. It’s like another voice on your team.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And suddenly you’re getting a higher quality product, and it could be that you’re making a screenplay or writing an article, you’re writing a song, and suddenly it’s better for your collaboration with the AI, but they’re not actually taking kind of full control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> That’s the optimistic version here.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That at least for a lot of jobs, some tasks will be automated, but other tasks won’t. And those tasks, those bottlenecks, will keep us humans busy and employed and maybe even fulfilled. And looking for these bottlenecks in our own jobs or industries, that is something that feels actionable. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Naturally, if there’s some bottleneck tasks that are slowing up the whole system, those are gonna have a lot of value.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you can continue to do those or do them relatively well, people will value that. You’ll get a lot of income, you’ll get a sustained job, based on those kinds of tasks. So, the question I think is, are there tasks that are bottleneck tasks that computers can’t do very well yet? That’s really where you should focus.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> And in Ben’s view, assuming there will always be some role for humans, we should actually be rooting for AI to get really, really good at whatever it automates. To understand why, we first need to understand two opposing forces. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> So, the first is automation. Automation would be when a machine starts doing a task that we used to do as labor, humans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and I think this is the force that a lot of people think of. They think about, okay, this machine can do more and more and more work, and so there’s obviously going to be just, like, less and less and less of the income or the share of the economy that’s going to be available to us non-machines.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. That’s the sort of obvious force that most people get. But there’s another force which is a little bit more subtle, and it has to do with the fact that if machines are taking over tasks, and they are really good at those tasks, right… And at some level they have to be good at those tasks, otherwise they wouldn’t be taking them over from labor.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But if they get very, very good at those tasks, then what happens is those tasks become very cheap, in the sense that whenever you flood a market with something, right? If I made anything abundant, its price will fall. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so what’s gonna happen if machines are really, really good at those tasks is the kinds of services they produce will become very inexpensive.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so, what we really want if AI is gonna take over a lot of tasks, it’s very important that it not just slightly beat labor at those tasks. We want AI, if it’s gonna take over those tasks, to be really great at it, because then we’re gonna have an abundance of that output, and actually the prices fall and people end up being much better off in a real income sense.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So, I was trying to come up with an example, and instead of it being, quite as theoretical, I was trying to think of something that maybe is already happening in the economy today so that we could sort of play out this idea, this thought experiment, and really understand why even us mere laborers really ought to be working, rooting for AI to get quite good at the tasks of ours that it takes over.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, I’m gonna read an example to you, and I am hoping that you can respond to it. Give me a sense of whether this is correct, and if so, what it means. If not, where I went wrong. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>‘Imagine that companies start replacing customer service professionals at call centers with AI. This is something that we already know is happening, like when you call your health insurance company to ask about coverage, or you ask your bank why a deposit hasn’t gone through, what have you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The person you talk to gets automated. They’re replaced by AI, and even if the AI isn’t cheap, they still cost a lot less than paying the salaries of fluent English speakers trained in customer service. So, one scenario is the AI is just ‘okay’ at this. It provides worse customer service than humans. People don’t always get their problems resolved.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Maybe they get frustrated, maybe they even get angry at the company. But the AI is still good enough that even though the company’s reputation might suffer a bit, the money they’re saving kind of makes it worth it. Maybe they come out a bit ahead. And this is your nightmare scenario as I understand it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, all these call center jobs get eliminated. Nobody really benefits except for the companies that might save a little money every year. Is that a fair depiction of the nightmare scenario?’\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Yes, because if the companies are only just saving a little bit of money, that’s a sign that the computers aren’t that much better at the task.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We get bad services. People lose their jobs. That’s an accurate version of the kind of nightmare scenario one would have in mind. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. Now, if the AI is really, really good at customer service, then eventually most of us do benefit. So, some people do lose their jobs, but they are able to move into others.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And meanwhile, the rest of us get our questions answered really quickly, really easily. We have more time in our day to do other things, and hopefully the products and the services from that company become less expensive because the firm is able to pass along those savings. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And as long as those workers who are displaced are able to find other kinds of jobs in this new economy, everyone’s income will eventually, be going up.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So, if I want to go back to this farming example, it’s very easy for me to see that, you know, in the last two hundred years, let’s say, since half of America was a farmer, it’s very easy for me to see that life is a lot better now. You’re gonna live if you are born — you stand a much higher likelihood, you’re just going to enjoy a lot of things that our ancestors would not have been able to. But I think right now, a lot of people are feeling like life in general is not getting better. They’re kind of feeling like, the chances that my kid is going to have a better life than me are not that great.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You know, houses are getting more expensive. It’s more expensive to go to college. Like, I think a lot of people are feeling like they are just treading water. And so how does that square with this idea of incremental progress? Is it just that we are imagining the past to be better than it was? Or is it that maybe some of the things that are real pain points are because of these bottlenecks or something else?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> I would say that’s more to do with inequality, and where the benefits have been felt in this economy. And this goes way before artificial intelligence. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Going back to the ’70s for quite a long time, the median real household income was kind of stagnating in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so, we had a lot of growth, but as I think people know, a lot of that increased value added in the economy every year has been captured by people who are pretty well off already. One of the concerns with AI, as we see, these billionaires, trillionaires starting to emerge, is that too much of the added value will be captured by those who own the companies or own the capital. So, I think that’s a real question. The other kind of inequality, which is actually the major kind of inequality that’s been at work in the United States, is within labor. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And what we’ve seen over time since the ’70s is a spreading where people who are in the upper educated professional classes have been capturing a lot of the growth, in income per capita\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>for themselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Oh, interesting.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Whereas the median household has been struggling. Compared to history, we’ve seen relatively slow growth in real standards of living among the median household. I think when you think about why, Americans maybe not necessarily fully seeing these facts, but feeling them right? Feeling that maybe they put it on globalization, but that’s maybe not the right… But there’s some globalization, there’s a lot of automation, there’s a lot of technological change within the country. But feeling that somehow, these advances or this participation in the world economy, doesn’t seem like it’s making their lives better. And I think for many people, at least going back to the ’70s, there’s some truth in that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> In Ben’s view, much of the pessimism Americans feel about technological progress comes not from the technology itself but from how its gains have been distributed. But he thinks that at least some of this inequality, not the kind driven by tech billionaires, but the inequality within workers might actually decrease as AI automates white collar work. 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And even if it were, I mean, just to be clear, I mean, if it were, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, let’s go there! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Then the amount of output would be enormous, right? So, if you actually replaced all human labor and you had these efficient machines that could do everything, the amount of consumption you could have would be incredibly high. It would at that point become entirely an issue of equity and access to that income. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Right. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And, you know, that’s where governments can step in, right? And we can have redistributive policies. I mean, do you wanna just let a few capitalists own everything? I doubt that is a political equilibrium- with everyone starving and, like, three people are, you know, quadrillionaires. Maybe, this gets into dystopian scenarios —\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, it does\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And it gets into various other things. And I’m not saying that’s not possible. We certainly see authoritarian behavior around the world that is problematic. It’s ultimately a question of our political process and the representation of voices who are being left out, or doing much worse because of technological change.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And, you know, if you’re making the pie much bigger through this kind of churn and technological advance, there’s more resources around. You should be able to compensate those who lost in some way and not have them live a life that is much harder for virtue of having been replaced by machines.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And I think, you know, in the United States, you have to be careful in both directions. Technological progress is inevitably about creative destruction, right? I mean, think of what Amazon has done, right? E-tail destroyed bricks-and-mortar bookstores first and a whole lot of other kinds of bricks and mortar, right?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But it is more efficient for a lot of people. Consumers like it. They get things delivered. It’s cheaper. You know, they get things faster. But if you owned a bookstore, it was terrible, right? And, so, how do we think about that as a society? Well, on one hand, if we let the people who are already kind of in charge resist creative destruction, then we don’t grow and we don’t advance, and then those people are kind of holding us back, right?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On the other hand, if you just let creative destruction go with no kind of willy-nilly, with no compensation, which is pretty close to the American model, right? You got a lotta progress. You got a lotta churn. You get a lotta technological advance, but you’re gonna displace a lotta people. And so, at that point, you definitely need a very, at minimum, a very flexible labor market which allows people to reallocate into other jobs, and there are ways to have policy to facilitate that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Retraining, et cetera. But that’s not to sugarcoat anything here. I mean, if you’re in a rural area and the main employer goes down, reallocating to a new job probably means reallocating to a new place, leaving your family, leaving the region you know and all the culture that goes with that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That’s an extraordinarily painful experience. And whether that’s because of technological change or trade, you know, I think it’s on all of us and as citizens in a country to take that extremely seriously.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I think this question of how we as a society deploy and adapt to automation is one of the most important questions today. But before we can adapt, we need to understand. That’s what this show is trying to do, help more people, including me, make sense of things. So we have a lot more great conversations coming up with economists, scientists, experts in design and media, people whose work can help us understand this moment and maybe even peek into the future.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m Jess Love. Life, Automated is a project of the Ryan Institute on Complexity at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. We’re distributed by KQED. Our show is produced by Jesse Dukes with help from Nathan Ray and Steven Jackson. Music by Steven Jackson, Q Shop, and Neutral Propulsion Laboratory.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recording help from Will Feeney and George Christensen. Administrative support, recording, and wise counsel from Stacia Sliger.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Will AI actually take over every job ever? \u003ca href=\"https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/academics-research/faculty/jones_benjamin_f/\">Economist Ben Jones\u003c/a> doesn’t think so. Drawing from historical evidence around innovation, Jones argues that automation never conquers \u003cem>everything \u003c/em>— it inevitably creates operational bottlenecks that only humans can solve. By leaning into these bottlenecks, we can protect meaningful, well-paid work. But his optimism comes with a stark caveat: there is one nightmare scenario where this historical pattern breaks down entirely. And it doesn’t involve superintelligence. It involves mediocre AI.\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I’m Jess Love. This is Life Automated. For generations of Americans, the question was, where were you when JFK was shot? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Breaking news bulletin announcing the death of John F. Kennedy]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll excuse the fact that I’m out of breath, but about 10 or 15 minutes ago, a tragic thing from all indications at this point has happened to this city.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll excuse the fact that I’m out of breath, but about 10 or 15 minutes ago, a tragic thing from all indications at this point has happened to this city.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon?\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>There’s smoke \u003c/em>\u003cem>billowing out of the World Trade Center.\u003c/em>\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> These are moments seared into our collective psyche, and now we have a new moment, only this one arrived a bit differently, a browser at a time.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>This is Life, Automated. I’m Jess Love, and I can tell you exactly where I was. The year was 2022, and I was visiting my in-laws in Florida. It was that lazy week between Christmas and New Year’s that I usually spend in a food coma. I sat on my sister-in-law’s childhood bed and signed up for a free subscription to ChatGPT.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I started asking the machine questions, easy ones at first. What did it know about butterflies native to Chicago or the most common tourist attractions in Italy? But it wasn’t too long before I asked what I really wanted to know. Could it do my job? \u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, I asked ChatGPT to summarize some papers I was familiar with, and it did okay. But what it lacked in finesse, and especially in those earlier iterations, accurate citations, it more than made up for in sheer efficiency. In just seconds, it could do work that would take a human the better part of a day.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Darcy’s mouth tightened in a way that suggested the accusation had landed, but he proceeded anyway. My dear Miss Bennet, said Mr. Darcy with an air of careful restraint, I have been reading “AIG in Hindsight.” It is an instructive account of how a firm may appear a paragon of prudence until one… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Darcy’s mouth tightened in a way that suggested the accusation had landed, but he proceeded anyway. My dear Miss Bennet, said Mr. Darcy with an air of careful restraint, I have been reading “AIG in Hindsight.” It is an instructive account of how a firm may appear a paragon of prudence until one… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> The thing I did to make my living that made me special, that made me employable, that I loved to do, was now available to anybody. How could I possibly compete? What did all of my expertise even mean anymore?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> The thing I did to make my living that made me special, that made me employable, that I loved to do, was now available to anybody. How could I possibly compete? What did all of my expertise even mean anymore?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And the more I thought about ChatGPT, and the more its implications for a lot of other professions became clear, the more I started wondering about all of us. I have a seven-year-old daughter. What opportunities are gonna be available to her? I’m not alone here. The majority of Americans feel pretty anxious about AI.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And the more I thought about ChatGPT, and the more its implications for a lot of other professions became clear, the more I started wondering about all of us. I have a seven-year-old daughter. What opportunities are gonna be available to her? I’m not alone here. The majority of Americans feel pretty anxious about AI.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And it’s not just jobs. Public polling data suggests Americans are really concerned about how AI will affect education, democracy, our environment, our information ecosystem, and just how we relate to each other. But even as I share all these concerns, I gotta say, over time, a big part of me did start rooting for this technology.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And it’s not just jobs. Public polling data suggests Americans are really concerned about how AI will affect education, democracy, our environment, our information ecosystem, and just how we relate to each other. But even as I share all these concerns, I gotta say, over time, a big part of me did start rooting for this technology.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Partly, this is because I now work at a research institute, the Ryan Institute on Complexity. I use AI tools every day, and so do the people around me. I see firsthand how useful they can be. But there’s a bigger reason. I have another daughter, an 11-year-old. She was born with a rare neurological disorder, so rare that it doesn’t actually have a name.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Partly, this is because I now work at a research institute, the Ryan Institute on Complexity. I use AI tools every day, and so do the people around me. I see firsthand how useful they can be. But there’s a bigger reason. I have another daughter, an 11-year-old. She was born with a rare neurological disorder, so rare that it doesn’t actually have a name.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You can currently count the number of people in the world with her specific genetic mutation on two fingers. And this genetic difference, it affects how she talks, how she moves, how she uses objects like forks and scissors, how she thinks and learns. My daughter lives in a world that wasn’t made for her, with a brain that science doesn’t really understand.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You can currently count the number of people in the world with her specific genetic mutation on two fingers. And this genetic difference, it affects how she talks, how she moves, how she uses objects like forks and scissors, how she thinks and learns. My daughter lives in a world that wasn’t made for her, with a brain that science doesn’t really understand.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, technology that can harness the world’s cumulative knowledge in order to make her life a little easier sounds pretty incredible. AI that can predict which medications might be useful or offer step-by-step directions on how to operate household appliances, and then wait for her to finish each step.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So, technology that can harness the world’s cumulative knowledge in order to make her life a little easier sounds pretty incredible. AI that can predict which medications might be useful or offer step-by-step directions on how to operate household appliances, and then wait for her to finish each step.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of AI Microwave]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of AI Microwave]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>First, press the button above the handle and open the door. Your food will go inside that box when it’s ready. Now close the door. Did it click? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>First, press the button above the handle and open the door. Your food will go inside that box when it’s ready. Now close the door. Did it click? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Or AI that can adapt educational materials to her specifically, on demand, maybe in the voice of her favorite Moana character. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Or AI that can adapt educational materials to her specifically, on demand, maybe in the voice of her favorite Moana character. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of Maui from Moana]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of Maui from Moana]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You’re welcome. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You’re welcome. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Sign me up. So yeah, that’s me. One person, one employee, one parent, reckoning with this technology. But of course, it isn’t just me. There are millions, billions of us wondering what AI and other kinds of automation really mean for our lives and our businesses and our communities, and what we should be doing to prepare. If you are one of these people, I’d like to invite you on a journey.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Sign me up. So yeah, that’s me. One person, one employee, one parent, reckoning with this technology. But of course, it isn’t just me. There are millions, billions of us wondering what AI and other kinds of automation really mean for our lives and our businesses and our communities, and what we should be doing to prepare. If you are one of these people, I’d like to invite you on a journey.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Because nobody can predict the future, nobody has all the answers about where we’re headed, but there are a lot of people with some answers, and I’ll be speaking with them on Life, Automated, a new podcast from Kellogg’s Ryan Institute on Complexity, distributed by KQED. I’ll talk with scientists and philosophers, business leaders and engineers and artists, all with unique insights into the world we’re collectively building.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Because nobody can predict the future, nobody has all the answers about where we’re headed, but there are a lot of people with some answers, and I’ll be speaking with them on Life, Automated, a new podcast from Kellogg’s Ryan Institute on Complexity, distributed by KQED. I’ll talk with scientists and philosophers, business leaders and engineers and artists, all with unique insights into the world we’re collectively building.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I’m not gonna try to freak you out. I’m not gonna try to sell you anything. I am gonna get nerdy. I’m gonna try to understand, as best I can, where we’re headed. And you’re invited.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I’m not gonna try to freak you out. I’m not gonna try to sell you anything. I am gonna get nerdy. I’m gonna try to understand, as best I can, where we’re headed. And you’re invited.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Shortly after I had my initial ChatGPT moment several years ago, I tracked down Ben Jones. He’s an economist and a co-director here at the Ryan Institute where he studies economic development, innovation, entrepreneurship, and the scientific process. And it turns out, Ben has been paying attention to new developments in generative AI for much longer than me.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Shortly after I had my initial ChatGPT moment several years ago, I tracked down Ben Jones. He’s an economist and a co-director here at the Ryan Institute where he studies economic development, innovation, entrepreneurship, and the scientific process. And it turns out, Ben has been paying attention to new developments in generative AI for much longer than me.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>When we talked three and a half years ago, I was kind of at peak anxiety; but Ben, he’d had a head start. Speaking with him helped me feel better about where we were headed, in part because he gave me a helpful way of thinking about AI. So, I wanted to bring him back for another conversation, this time in a recording studio. I started off by getting him talking about the first moment he realized AI had the potential to bring about big changes.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>When we talked three and a half years ago, I was kind of at peak anxiety; but Ben, he’d had a head start. Speaking with him helped me feel better about where we were headed, in part because he gave me a helpful way of thinking about AI. So, I wanted to bring him back for another conversation, this time in a recording studio. I started off by getting him talking about the first moment he realized AI had the potential to bring about big changes.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Did you have an AI moment, kind of a single moment that sort of shook you to the core and made you think, wow, something about these newest models is really fundamentally different? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Did you have an AI moment, kind of a single moment that sort of shook you to the core and made you think, wow, something about these newest models is really fundamentally different? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> I did. I’ve had several AI moments along the way. I think many people, you know, when you see what AI can do, it’s uncanny.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> I did. I’ve had several AI moments along the way. I think many people, you know, when you see what AI can do, it’s uncanny.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Sometimes the hair stands up on the back of my neck. But my first AI moment where the hair stood up on the back of my neck was in 2017, and I was in Toronto for a conference that mixed economists and technologists, people from Geoff Hinton’s lab, who would go on to lead many of the top AI groups at the top companies.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Sometimes the hair stands up on the back of my neck. But my first AI moment where the hair stood up on the back of my neck was in 2017, and I was in Toronto for a conference that mixed economists and technologists, people from Geoff Hinton’s lab, who would go on to lead many of the top AI groups at the top companies.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And we were shown over dinner, it was a very nice dinner, a video. The video was of an AI learning how to play a first-person shooter game. And as you may know, with first-person shooter games, the experience is if you’re looking through the eyes of the player. So, we’re sort of looking through the eyes of the AI.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And we were shown over dinner, it was a very nice dinner, a video. The video was of an AI learning how to play a first-person shooter game. And as you may know, with first-person shooter games, the experience is if you’re looking through the eyes of the player. So, we’re sort of looking through the eyes of the AI.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And without any particular directives, except to sort of survive as long as possible, the AI was training itself to play this game better and better. And at first, you’re sitting there looking through the AI’s eyes, and you’re kind of like a drunken sailor. You’re, like, stumbling around, you’re banging into walls, you’re getting trapped in corners.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And without any particular directives, except to sort of survive as long as possible, the AI was training itself to play this game better and better. And at first, you’re sitting there looking through the AI’s eyes, and you’re kind of like a drunken sailor. You’re, like, stumbling around, you’re banging into walls, you’re getting trapped in corners.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You never pick up health or a weapon. You just don’t last very long. The video showed us the AI’s progression kind of in a fast-forward, high speed over maybe 24 hours. And so around the middle of the training, over, maybe 12 hours, it started running around the maze extremely effectively, but it wasn’t always picking up things on the floor, and it was no longer falling off bridges.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You never pick up health or a weapon. You just don’t last very long. The video showed us the AI’s progression kind of in a fast-forward, high speed over maybe 24 hours. And so around the middle of the training, over, maybe 12 hours, it started running around the maze extremely effectively, but it wasn’t always picking up things on the floor, and it was no longer falling off bridges.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>By the end of the day, it was not only picking everything up and firing the weapons accurately, it was killing every single person in the game, all the real players. It didn’t miss. It didn’t miss in any way. And just watching this progression from this AI algorithm was a really uncanny moment, and to me, opened my mind to how powerful but also potentially worrisome AI is.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>By the end of the day, it was not only picking everything up and firing the weapons accurately, it was killing every single person in the game, all the real players. It didn’t miss. It didn’t miss in any way. And just watching this progression from this AI algorithm was a really uncanny moment, and to me, opened my mind to how powerful but also potentially worrisome AI is.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and I think, you know, on some level it’s not that surprising that a computer can learn to master a computer game. But what makes this story so incredible is just that the computer had no instructions that told us what it was supposed to be doing or what it was supposed to be optimizing other than just, like, live.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and I think, you know, on some level it’s not that surprising that a computer can learn to master a computer game. But what makes this story so incredible is just that the computer had no instructions that told us what it was supposed to be doing or what it was supposed to be optimizing other than just, like, live.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And it was able to just learn all of those techniques just via trial and error. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And it was able to just learn all of those techniques just via trial and error. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Right. Just the certain algorithms for training AI with fairly simple objectives lead to this incredible set of capabilities, which are truly uncanny. Many people have probably had that first moment now with AI, I think a lot with ChatGPT, where you ask it a question and you can’t believe the answer.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Right. Just the certain algorithms for training AI with fairly simple objectives lead to this incredible set of capabilities, which are truly uncanny. Many people have probably had that first moment now with AI, I think a lot with ChatGPT, where you ask it a question and you can’t believe the answer.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You’re like, “How could it possibly be coming up with this?” And AI absolutely has that quality. So, for me, it kind of happened a bit earlier, and so I started writing about it a bit earlier than most because I’d had that experience a bit earlier than most. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You’re like, “How could it possibly be coming up with this?” And AI absolutely has that quality. So, for me, it kind of happened a bit earlier, and so I started writing about it a bit earlier than most because I’d had that experience a bit earlier than most. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, which was very convenient for me personally because it meant that, when I was still in my AI freak-out phase, you were somebody who had been doing research on this for years, and were able to kind of be this, calming presence, in order to give me some concrete information about this technology.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, which was very convenient for me personally because it meant that, when I was still in my AI freak-out phase, you were somebody who had been doing research on this for years, and were able to kind of be this, calming presence, in order to give me some concrete information about this technology.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, you have kind of an interesting perspective, which is that AI, the current generative AI that we’re talking about with ChatGPT, it’s really just part of a long process of automation. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So, you have kind of an interesting perspective, which is that AI, the current generative AI that we’re talking about with ChatGPT, it’s really just part of a long process of automation. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And it’s true that certain technologies for a long time, and AI is one of them, are just hands down amazing.\u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And it’s true that certain technologies for a long time, and AI is one of them, are just hands down amazing.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>They do things that are just amazing. But that doesn’t mean that they disemploy everybody.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>They do things that are just amazing. But that doesn’t mean that they disemploy everybody.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Phew.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Phew.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And, how can those two things be true? Well, let me just give you another example. You know, obviously computers have been around for a long time now, and their capacity to do sort of certain kinds of calculations are just, more or less infinitely, virtually infinitely better than humans.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And, how can those two things be true? Well, let me just give you another example. You know, obviously computers have been around for a long time now, and their capacity to do sort of certain kinds of calculations are just, more or less infinitely, virtually infinitely better than humans.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You know, in my field and in many research fields, you use data and statistical regressions. If I were to run a regression by hand, with a large number of observations, it would take me literally my entire life. And I would make mistakes. You know, my computer can do a regression with a million data points in a minute.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You know, in my field and in many research fields, you use data and statistical regressions. If I were to run a regression by hand, with a large number of observations, it would take me literally my entire life. And I would make mistakes. You know, my computer can do a regression with a million data points in a minute.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And so, we have these technologies that basically are infinitely better than us to do these tasks that are really important to what we do. And then you can ask, okay, well, has our understanding of economics or astronomy or physics multiplied by a similar factor? And you’d say no, because although we can do certain things really, really, really incredibly well, other things are holding us back.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And so, we have these technologies that basically are infinitely better than us to do these tasks that are really important to what we do. And then you can ask, okay, well, has our understanding of economics or astronomy or physics multiplied by a similar factor? And you’d say no, because although we can do certain things really, really, really incredibly well, other things are holding us back.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have these other tasks, which I would call bottlenecks.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have these other tasks, which I would call bottlenecks.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay, and this is the thing that I have thought about so often since our conversation. It kind of blew my mind. So, can you talk to us about what a bottleneck is and why it’s so important?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay, and this is the thing that I have thought about so often since our conversation. It kind of blew my mind. So, can you talk to us about what a bottleneck is and why it’s so important?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Well, of course, it’s a metaphor from a bottle, and what do we know about bottles? We know that the speed at which water or wine will flow from the bottle depends on the width of the neck. Doesn’t really depend on how big the bottle is otherwise, how much wine there is in it, how big the base is. It really just depends on the neck.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Well, of course, it’s a metaphor from a bottle, and what do we know about bottles? We know that the speed at which water or wine will flow from the bottle depends on the width of the neck. Doesn’t really depend on how big the bottle is otherwise, how much wine there is in it, how big the base is. It really just depends on the neck.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And in many processes in the economy and in the economy overall, it looks like there are certain things that have to happen that act as bottlenecks. Let’s say you’re going out to see your cousins for Thanksgiving dinner, and you’ve gotta get everyone in your house into the car, and you’ve gotta pack up the pies that you’re bringing and contributing to the festivities.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And in many processes in the economy and in the economy overall, it looks like there are certain things that have to happen that act as bottlenecks. Let’s say you’re going out to see your cousins for Thanksgiving dinner, and you’ve gotta get everyone in your house into the car, and you’ve gotta pack up the pies that you’re bringing and contributing to the festivities.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Well, everyone in the house could have gotten up early, gotten dressed, put on their Thanksgiving sweaters, gotten the pies into the car. But you’re not leaving the house until everyone has their shoes on and their socks. And maybe there’s someone in the family who just is getting real slow about getting their socks and their shoes on.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Well, everyone in the house could have gotten up early, gotten dressed, put on their Thanksgiving sweaters, gotten the pies into the car. But you’re not leaving the house until everyone has their shoes on and their socks. And maybe there’s someone in the family who just is getting real slow about getting their socks and their shoes on.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>How fast is it that you leave the house? It doesn’t really depend on how fast everyone is. It depends on how slow the slowest person is. That person becomes a bottleneck. Maybe an example we can all relate to. Much of the economy has that flavor, where it’s not how good you are at a lot of things. What’s really sort of determining the rate of the economy is the things we’re quite slow at, the things we’re not very good at.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>How fast is it that you leave the house? It doesn’t really depend on how fast everyone is. It depends on how slow the slowest person is. That person becomes a bottleneck. Maybe an example we can all relate to. Much of the economy has that flavor, where it’s not how good you are at a lot of things. What’s really sort of determining the rate of the economy is the things we’re quite slow at, the things we’re not very good at.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So basically, it’s this task that is slowing down the speed with which the entire overall goal or objective can be met. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So basically, it’s this task that is slowing down the speed with which the entire overall goal or objective can be met. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And the reason that’s important is because often in innovation, we get really focused on the shiny thing that’s going really fast, and we’re really excited about how fast it can compute things and these kinds of new technologies.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And the reason that’s important is because often in innovation, we get really focused on the shiny thing that’s going really fast, and we’re really excited about how fast it can compute things and these kinds of new technologies.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But often what really matters is the thing we’re not looking at. It’s the things that we’re quite bad at. The things that we’re really bad at are actually going to slow down the whole system, and if we can’t improve those, the gains from these kind of shiny new objects and new technologies won’t be as great as we hope.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But often what really matters is the thing we’re not looking at. It’s the things that we’re quite bad at. The things that we’re really bad at are actually going to slow down the whole system, and if we can’t improve those, the gains from these kind of shiny new objects and new technologies won’t be as great as we hope.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I thought about these bottlenecks a lot after our initial conversation. Like, whenever I heard a tech leader say AI was going to be ready to colonize the galaxy in five years, or whenever I started spiraling about whether AI was going to take over every job ever. Now, about that. Overall, Ben, like many economists, is bullish on AI.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I thought about these bottlenecks a lot after our initial conversation. Like, whenever I heard a tech leader say AI was going to be ready to colonize the galaxy in five years, or whenever I started spiraling about whether AI was going to take over every job ever. Now, about that. Overall, Ben, like many economists, is bullish on AI.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>He says that automation is generally good for workers. Sure, it causes some job loss and dislocation in the short term. But in the long term, it raises the quality of life for everybody, in part because it lowers the price of things we need and want. But that doesn’t mean people don’t get harmed along the way.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>He says that automation is generally good for workers. Sure, it causes some job loss and dislocation in the short term. But in the long term, it raises the quality of life for everybody, in part because it lowers the price of things we need and want. But that doesn’t mean people don’t get harmed along the way.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> So, one of the fears people have is that these automation technologies take jobs.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> So, one of the fears people have is that these automation technologies take jobs.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And of course, this goes back to the early years of the Industrial Revolution and the Luddites. You know, when you have handcrafts people who are silversmiths and blacksmiths, and you’re making clothes by hand, and then suddenly you have, say, the loom, you’re going to put out of work a lot of hand clothes makers.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And of course, this goes back to the early years of the Industrial Revolution and the Luddites. You know, when you have handcrafts people who are silversmiths and blacksmiths, and you’re making clothes by hand, and then suddenly you have, say, the loom, you’re going to put out of work a lot of hand clothes makers.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But they’re going to migrate into other jobs, right? Over the long run, we’re going to see people do many other things, right? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But they’re going to migrate into other jobs, right? Over the long run, we’re going to see people do many other things, right? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Think about the real economy. Think about farming. I don’t know if anyone in the audience has ever had a chance to ride around in a combine harvester.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Think about the real economy. Think about farming. I don’t know if anyone in the audience has ever had a chance to ride around in a combine harvester.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But, that’s one of the most incredible pieces of machinery you can imagine. I think a single combine harvester with a bunch of trucks driving up and around it, was able to harvest something like four or five million pounds of corn in twelve hours. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But, that’s one of the most incredible pieces of machinery you can imagine. I think a single combine harvester with a bunch of trucks driving up and around it, was able to harvest something like four or five million pounds of corn in twelve hours. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> That’s insane. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> That’s insane. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Right? And certainly, agricultural technology is one of those areas where we’ve had massive productivity growth.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Right? And certainly, agricultural technology is one of those areas where we’ve had massive productivity growth.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We have better seeds and irrigation systems. We have a lot more knowledge. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We have better seeds and irrigation systems. We have a lot more knowledge. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Fertilizer. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Fertilizer. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Fertilizers… All sorts of pesticides, depending how you feel about that. And those together have made for very high productivity, meaning, one hour of labor working with those machines can produce an enormous amount of food.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Fertilizers… All sorts of pesticides, depending how you feel about that. And those together have made for very high productivity, meaning, one hour of labor working with those machines can produce an enormous amount of food.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And the end result of that is that instead of having half our workforce in the US, you know, be in agriculture- \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And the end result of that is that instead of having half our workforce in the US, you know, be in agriculture- \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> And that’s what it would have been, like- two hundred years ago.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> And that’s what it would have been, like- two hundred years ago.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And that’s what it is in many very low-income countries today, which still struggle to put in place even more basic agricultural technologies.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And that’s what it is in many very low-income countries today, which still struggle to put in place even more basic agricultural technologies.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, if fifty percent of the American workforce was in agriculture, now it’s, say, two percent of the American workforce working with an enormous amount of machines. But of course, that’s why many people have gone on to find other careers in other parts of the country. And overall, that process, while it’s not incidental, it can be quite painful. This process of what we call creative destruction, in the long run is what allows us to be far more productive, have higher standards of living.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So, if fifty percent of the American workforce was in agriculture, now it’s, say, two percent of the American workforce working with an enormous amount of machines. But of course, that’s why many people have gone on to find other careers in other parts of the country. And overall, that process, while it’s not incidental, it can be quite painful. This process of what we call creative destruction, in the long run is what allows us to be far more productive, have higher standards of living.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Coming up, Ben Jones explains why he wants AI to be really good at every job it automates, and why the bigger risk is mediocre AI.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Coming up, Ben Jones explains why he wants AI to be really good at every job it automates, and why the bigger risk is mediocre AI.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I do want to point out a very important difference that I think a lot of people are feeling, which is that what is happening with artificial intelligence right now, it’s that the most desirable jobs seem to be the ones that are most at risk. So, I don’t think many people grow up and think, “Boy, I really want to spend all day turning a knob again and again and again.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I do want to point out a very important difference that I think a lot of people are feeling, which is that what is happening with artificial intelligence right now, it’s that the most desirable jobs seem to be the ones that are most at risk. So, I don’t think many people grow up and think, “Boy, I really want to spend all day turning a knob again and again and again.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But a lot of people really do want to do things like animate, or people want to become journalists. People are accepting giant salary reductions already, to position themselves in these fields. And it seems like those jobs are also at risk. So, there does almost seem to be an emotional difference with the jobs that are being lost right now, that puts kids growing up today in a really hard spot in terms of, follow your dreams.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But a lot of people really do want to do things like animate, or people want to become journalists. People are accepting giant salary reductions already, to position themselves in these fields. And it seems like those jobs are also at risk. So, there does almost seem to be an emotional difference with the jobs that are being lost right now, that puts kids growing up today in a really hard spot in terms of, follow your dreams.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Well, so, I mean, this is a bit too soon to tell, I think. But, you’re right that if you think of a job as not a task, but a bundle of tasks, that doesn’t mean that you don’t like some of the tasks more than others. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Well, so, I mean, this is a bit too soon to tell, I think. But, you’re right that if you think of a job as not a task, but a bundle of tasks, that doesn’t mean that you don’t like some of the tasks more than others. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> If you’re a chef, I presume you think about the menu and, and some of the cooking is more fun than washing the dishes, right? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> If you’re a chef, I presume you think about the menu and, and some of the cooking is more fun than washing the dishes, right? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, that’s exactly right.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, that’s exactly right.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Maybe I’m wrong. And I don’t think people are the same. So, I think people have different preferences, even in the same job, about different kinds of tasks that they have to do. But to the extent that, you know, AI replaces, it’s just lower cost for how good it is at the tasks that you like, I think that’s not gonna feel so great.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Maybe I’m wrong. And I don’t think people are the same. So, I think people have different preferences, even in the same job, about different kinds of tasks that they have to do. But to the extent that, you know, AI replaces, it’s just lower cost for how good it is at the tasks that you like, I think that’s not gonna feel so great.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You know, what if it’s really good at creativity and then all you’re doing is editing? But you’d rather do the creative part. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You know, what if it’s really good at creativity and then all you’re doing is editing? But you’d rather do the creative part. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Exactly. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Exactly. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> But on the other hand, you know, it’s also the case that when you bring in… Like, let’s go back to regressions. I like to do statistical analysis. I think it’s really interesting.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> But on the other hand, you know, it’s also the case that when you bring in… Like, let’s go back to regressions. I like to do statistical analysis. I think it’s really interesting.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But I’m mostly interested in the output. I have no interest in the calculation, and it’s boring. So, this makes me get to the interesting part much faster. And maybe when you’re writing, it’s a collaborator, right? I mean, maybe it’s not a replacement. It’s like another voice on your team.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But I’m mostly interested in the output. I have no interest in the calculation, and it’s boring. So, this makes me get to the interesting part much faster. And maybe when you’re writing, it’s a collaborator, right? I mean, maybe it’s not a replacement. It’s like another voice on your team.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And suddenly you’re getting a higher quality product, and it could be that you’re making a screenplay or writing an article, you’re writing a song, and suddenly it’s better for your collaboration with the AI, but they’re not actually taking kind of full control. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And suddenly you’re getting a higher quality product, and it could be that you’re making a screenplay or writing an article, you’re writing a song, and suddenly it’s better for your collaboration with the AI, but they’re not actually taking kind of full control. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> That’s the optimistic version here.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> That’s the optimistic version here.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>That at least for a lot of jobs, some tasks will be automated, but other tasks won’t. And those tasks, those bottlenecks, will keep us humans busy and employed and maybe even fulfilled. And looking for these bottlenecks in our own jobs or industries, that is something that feels actionable. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>That at least for a lot of jobs, some tasks will be automated, but other tasks won’t. And those tasks, those bottlenecks, will keep us humans busy and employed and maybe even fulfilled. And looking for these bottlenecks in our own jobs or industries, that is something that feels actionable. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Naturally, if there’s some bottleneck tasks that are slowing up the whole system, those are gonna have a lot of value.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Naturally, if there’s some bottleneck tasks that are slowing up the whole system, those are gonna have a lot of value.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>If you can continue to do those or do them relatively well, people will value that. You’ll get a lot of income, you’ll get a sustained job, based on those kinds of tasks. So, the question I think is, are there tasks that are bottleneck tasks that computers can’t do very well yet? That’s really where you should focus.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>If you can continue to do those or do them relatively well, people will value that. You’ll get a lot of income, you’ll get a sustained job, based on those kinds of tasks. So, the question I think is, are there tasks that are bottleneck tasks that computers can’t do very well yet? That’s really where you should focus.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> And in Ben’s view, assuming there will always be some role for humans, we should actually be rooting for AI to get really, really good at whatever it automates. To understand why, we first need to understand two opposing forces. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> And in Ben’s view, assuming there will always be some role for humans, we should actually be rooting for AI to get really, really good at whatever it automates. To understand why, we first need to understand two opposing forces. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> So, the first is automation. Automation would be when a machine starts doing a task that we used to do as labor, humans.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> So, the first is automation. Automation would be when a machine starts doing a task that we used to do as labor, humans.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and I think this is the force that a lot of people think of. They think about, okay, this machine can do more and more and more work, and so there’s obviously going to be just, like, less and less and less of the income or the share of the economy that’s going to be available to us non-machines.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and I think this is the force that a lot of people think of. They think about, okay, this machine can do more and more and more work, and so there’s obviously going to be just, like, less and less and less of the income or the share of the economy that’s going to be available to us non-machines.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. That’s the sort of obvious force that most people get. But there’s another force which is a little bit more subtle, and it has to do with the fact that if machines are taking over tasks, and they are really good at those tasks, right… And at some level they have to be good at those tasks, otherwise they wouldn’t be taking them over from labor.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. That’s the sort of obvious force that most people get. But there’s another force which is a little bit more subtle, and it has to do with the fact that if machines are taking over tasks, and they are really good at those tasks, right… And at some level they have to be good at those tasks, otherwise they wouldn’t be taking them over from labor.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But if they get very, very good at those tasks, then what happens is those tasks become very cheap, in the sense that whenever you flood a market with something, right? If I made anything abundant, its price will fall. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But if they get very, very good at those tasks, then what happens is those tasks become very cheap, in the sense that whenever you flood a market with something, right? If I made anything abundant, its price will fall. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And so what’s gonna happen if machines are really, really good at those tasks is the kinds of services they produce will become very inexpensive.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And so what’s gonna happen if machines are really, really good at those tasks is the kinds of services they produce will become very inexpensive.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And so, what we really want if AI is gonna take over a lot of tasks, it’s very important that it not just slightly beat labor at those tasks. We want AI, if it’s gonna take over those tasks, to be really great at it, because then we’re gonna have an abundance of that output, and actually the prices fall and people end up being much better off in a real income sense.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And so, what we really want if AI is gonna take over a lot of tasks, it’s very important that it not just slightly beat labor at those tasks. We want AI, if it’s gonna take over those tasks, to be really great at it, because then we’re gonna have an abundance of that output, and actually the prices fall and people end up being much better off in a real income sense.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So, I was trying to come up with an example, and instead of it being, quite as theoretical, I was trying to think of something that maybe is already happening in the economy today so that we could sort of play out this idea, this thought experiment, and really understand why even us mere laborers really ought to be working, rooting for AI to get quite good at the tasks of ours that it takes over.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So, I was trying to come up with an example, and instead of it being, quite as theoretical, I was trying to think of something that maybe is already happening in the economy today so that we could sort of play out this idea, this thought experiment, and really understand why even us mere laborers really ought to be working, rooting for AI to get quite good at the tasks of ours that it takes over.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, I’m gonna read an example to you, and I am hoping that you can respond to it. Give me a sense of whether this is correct, and if so, what it means. If not, where I went wrong. \u003c/p>\n",
"innerContent": [
"\n\u003cp>So, I’m gonna read an example to you, and I am hoping that you can respond to it. Give me a sense of whether this is correct, and if so, what it means. If not, where I went wrong. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>‘Imagine that companies start replacing customer service professionals at call centers with AI. This is something that we already know is happening, like when you call your health insurance company to ask about coverage, or you ask your bank why a deposit hasn’t gone through, what have you.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>‘Imagine that companies start replacing customer service professionals at call centers with AI. This is something that we already know is happening, like when you call your health insurance company to ask about coverage, or you ask your bank why a deposit hasn’t gone through, what have you.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>The person you talk to gets automated. They’re replaced by AI, and even if the AI isn’t cheap, they still cost a lot less than paying the salaries of fluent English speakers trained in customer service. So, one scenario is the AI is just ‘okay’ at this. It provides worse customer service than humans. People don’t always get their problems resolved.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>The person you talk to gets automated. They’re replaced by AI, and even if the AI isn’t cheap, they still cost a lot less than paying the salaries of fluent English speakers trained in customer service. So, one scenario is the AI is just ‘okay’ at this. It provides worse customer service than humans. People don’t always get their problems resolved.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Maybe they get frustrated, maybe they even get angry at the company. But the AI is still good enough that even though the company’s reputation might suffer a bit, the money they’re saving kind of makes it worth it. Maybe they come out a bit ahead. And this is your nightmare scenario as I understand it.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Maybe they get frustrated, maybe they even get angry at the company. But the AI is still good enough that even though the company’s reputation might suffer a bit, the money they’re saving kind of makes it worth it. Maybe they come out a bit ahead. And this is your nightmare scenario as I understand it.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>So, all these call center jobs get eliminated. Nobody really benefits except for the companies that might save a little money every year. Is that a fair depiction of the nightmare scenario?’\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>So, all these call center jobs get eliminated. Nobody really benefits except for the companies that might save a little money every year. Is that a fair depiction of the nightmare scenario?’\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Yes, because if the companies are only just saving a little bit of money, that’s a sign that the computers aren’t that much better at the task.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Yes, because if the companies are only just saving a little bit of money, that’s a sign that the computers aren’t that much better at the task.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>We get bad services. People lose their jobs. That’s an accurate version of the kind of nightmare scenario one would have in mind. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>We get bad services. People lose their jobs. That’s an accurate version of the kind of nightmare scenario one would have in mind. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. Now, if the AI is really, really good at customer service, then eventually most of us do benefit. So, some people do lose their jobs, but they are able to move into others.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. Now, if the AI is really, really good at customer service, then eventually most of us do benefit. So, some people do lose their jobs, but they are able to move into others.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And meanwhile, the rest of us get our questions answered really quickly, really easily. We have more time in our day to do other things, and hopefully the products and the services from that company become less expensive because the firm is able to pass along those savings. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And meanwhile, the rest of us get our questions answered really quickly, really easily. We have more time in our day to do other things, and hopefully the products and the services from that company become less expensive because the firm is able to pass along those savings. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And as long as those workers who are displaced are able to find other kinds of jobs in this new economy, everyone’s income will eventually, be going up.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And as long as those workers who are displaced are able to find other kinds of jobs in this new economy, everyone’s income will eventually, be going up.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So, if I want to go back to this farming example, it’s very easy for me to see that, you know, in the last two hundred years, let’s say, since half of America was a farmer, it’s very easy for me to see that life is a lot better now. You’re gonna live if you are born — you stand a much higher likelihood, you’re just going to enjoy a lot of things that our ancestors would not have been able to. But I think right now, a lot of people are feeling like life in general is not getting better. They’re kind of feeling like, the chances that my kid is going to have a better life than me are not that great.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So, if I want to go back to this farming example, it’s very easy for me to see that, you know, in the last two hundred years, let’s say, since half of America was a farmer, it’s very easy for me to see that life is a lot better now. You’re gonna live if you are born — you stand a much higher likelihood, you’re just going to enjoy a lot of things that our ancestors would not have been able to. But I think right now, a lot of people are feeling like life in general is not getting better. They’re kind of feeling like, the chances that my kid is going to have a better life than me are not that great.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>You know, houses are getting more expensive. It’s more expensive to go to college. Like, I think a lot of people are feeling like they are just treading water. And so how does that square with this idea of incremental progress? Is it just that we are imagining the past to be better than it was? Or is it that maybe some of the things that are real pain points are because of these bottlenecks or something else?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>You know, houses are getting more expensive. It’s more expensive to go to college. Like, I think a lot of people are feeling like they are just treading water. And so how does that square with this idea of incremental progress? Is it just that we are imagining the past to be better than it was? Or is it that maybe some of the things that are real pain points are because of these bottlenecks or something else?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> I would say that’s more to do with inequality, and where the benefits have been felt in this economy. And this goes way before artificial intelligence. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> I would say that’s more to do with inequality, and where the benefits have been felt in this economy. And this goes way before artificial intelligence. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Going back to the ’70s for quite a long time, the median real household income was kind of stagnating in the United States.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Going back to the ’70s for quite a long time, the median real household income was kind of stagnating in the United States.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And so, we had a lot of growth, but as I think people know, a lot of that increased value added in the economy every year has been captured by people who are pretty well off already. One of the concerns with AI, as we see, these billionaires, trillionaires starting to emerge, is that too much of the added value will be captured by those who own the companies or own the capital. So, I think that’s a real question. The other kind of inequality, which is actually the major kind of inequality that’s been at work in the United States, is within labor. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And so, we had a lot of growth, but as I think people know, a lot of that increased value added in the economy every year has been captured by people who are pretty well off already. One of the concerns with AI, as we see, these billionaires, trillionaires starting to emerge, is that too much of the added value will be captured by those who own the companies or own the capital. So, I think that’s a real question. The other kind of inequality, which is actually the major kind of inequality that’s been at work in the United States, is within labor. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And what we’ve seen over time since the ’70s is a spreading where people who are in the upper educated professional classes have been capturing a lot of the growth, in income per capita\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>for themselves. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And what we’ve seen over time since the ’70s is a spreading where people who are in the upper educated professional classes have been capturing a lot of the growth, in income per capita\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>for themselves. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Oh, interesting.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Oh, interesting.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Whereas the median household has been struggling. Compared to history, we’ve seen relatively slow growth in real standards of living among the median household. I think when you think about why, Americans maybe not necessarily fully seeing these facts, but feeling them right? Feeling that maybe they put it on globalization, but that’s maybe not the right… But there’s some globalization, there’s a lot of automation, there’s a lot of technological change within the country. But feeling that somehow, these advances or this participation in the world economy, doesn’t seem like it’s making their lives better. And I think for many people, at least going back to the ’70s, there’s some truth in that.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Whereas the median household has been struggling. Compared to history, we’ve seen relatively slow growth in real standards of living among the median household. I think when you think about why, Americans maybe not necessarily fully seeing these facts, but feeling them right? Feeling that maybe they put it on globalization, but that’s maybe not the right… But there’s some globalization, there’s a lot of automation, there’s a lot of technological change within the country. But feeling that somehow, these advances or this participation in the world economy, doesn’t seem like it’s making their lives better. And I think for many people, at least going back to the ’70s, there’s some truth in that.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> In Ben’s view, much of the pessimism Americans feel about technological progress comes not from the technology itself but from how its gains have been distributed. But he thinks that at least some of this inequality, not the kind driven by tech billionaires, but the inequality within workers might actually decrease as AI automates white collar work. And to be very blunt, he does not share the average American’s concerns about AI making human labor obsolete.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> In Ben’s view, much of the pessimism Americans feel about technological progress comes not from the technology itself but from how its gains have been distributed. But he thinks that at least some of this inequality, not the kind driven by tech billionaires, but the inequality within workers might actually decrease as AI automates white collar work. And to be very blunt, he does not share the average American’s concerns about AI making human labor obsolete.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So, I mean, a stat I ran across earlier this year, just 6% of Americans say workplace AI use will lead to more jobs in the long run, and you would just wholeheartedly disagree with that and say that, this might just be kind of a failure of imagination.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So, I mean, a stat I ran across earlier this year, just 6% of Americans say workplace AI use will lead to more jobs in the long run, and you would just wholeheartedly disagree with that and say that, this might just be kind of a failure of imagination.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. I mean, you wouldn’t have imagined there was an ATM technician or a satellite engineer or a pilot before those things were created. And, I think it’s very hard to predict what’s gonna become easier, what’s gonna become hard, and that’s for the future to tell us. It’s gonna be unexpected and pretty interesting.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. I mean, you wouldn’t have imagined there was an ATM technician or a satellite engineer or a pilot before those things were created. And, I think it’s very hard to predict what’s gonna become easier, what’s gonna become hard, and that’s for the future to tell us. It’s gonna be unexpected and pretty interesting.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But there’s nothing so far in history that would suggest that suddenly all labor could be replaced. And even if it were, I mean, just to be clear, I mean, if it were, right? \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But there’s nothing so far in history that would suggest that suddenly all labor could be replaced. And even if it were, I mean, just to be clear, I mean, if it were, right? \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, let’s go there! \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, let’s go there! \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Then the amount of output would be enormous, right? So, if you actually replaced all human labor and you had these efficient machines that could do everything, the amount of consumption you could have would be incredibly high. It would at that point become entirely an issue of equity and access to that income. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Then the amount of output would be enormous, right? So, if you actually replaced all human labor and you had these efficient machines that could do everything, the amount of consumption you could have would be incredibly high. It would at that point become entirely an issue of equity and access to that income. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Right. \u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Right. \u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And, you know, that’s where governments can step in, right? And we can have redistributive policies. I mean, do you wanna just let a few capitalists own everything? I doubt that is a political equilibrium- with everyone starving and, like, three people are, you know, quadrillionaires. Maybe, this gets into dystopian scenarios —\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And, you know, that’s where governments can step in, right? And we can have redistributive policies. I mean, do you wanna just let a few capitalists own everything? I doubt that is a political equilibrium- with everyone starving and, like, three people are, you know, quadrillionaires. Maybe, this gets into dystopian scenarios —\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, it does\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, it does\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And it gets into various other things. And I’m not saying that’s not possible. We certainly see authoritarian behavior around the world that is problematic. It’s ultimately a question of our political process and the representation of voices who are being left out, or doing much worse because of technological change.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And it gets into various other things. And I’m not saying that’s not possible. We certainly see authoritarian behavior around the world that is problematic. It’s ultimately a question of our political process and the representation of voices who are being left out, or doing much worse because of technological change.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And, you know, if you’re making the pie much bigger through this kind of churn and technological advance, there’s more resources around. You should be able to compensate those who lost in some way and not have them live a life that is much harder for virtue of having been replaced by machines.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And, you know, if you’re making the pie much bigger through this kind of churn and technological advance, there’s more resources around. You should be able to compensate those who lost in some way and not have them live a life that is much harder for virtue of having been replaced by machines.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>And I think, you know, in the United States, you have to be careful in both directions. Technological progress is inevitably about creative destruction, right? I mean, think of what Amazon has done, right? E-tail destroyed bricks-and-mortar bookstores first and a whole lot of other kinds of bricks and mortar, right?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>And I think, you know, in the United States, you have to be careful in both directions. Technological progress is inevitably about creative destruction, right? I mean, think of what Amazon has done, right? E-tail destroyed bricks-and-mortar bookstores first and a whole lot of other kinds of bricks and mortar, right?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>But it is more efficient for a lot of people. Consumers like it. They get things delivered. It’s cheaper. You know, they get things faster. But if you owned a bookstore, it was terrible, right? And, so, how do we think about that as a society? Well, on one hand, if we let the people who are already kind of in charge resist creative destruction, then we don’t grow and we don’t advance, and then those people are kind of holding us back, right?\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>But it is more efficient for a lot of people. Consumers like it. They get things delivered. It’s cheaper. You know, they get things faster. But if you owned a bookstore, it was terrible, right? And, so, how do we think about that as a society? Well, on one hand, if we let the people who are already kind of in charge resist creative destruction, then we don’t grow and we don’t advance, and then those people are kind of holding us back, right?\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>On the other hand, if you just let creative destruction go with no kind of willy-nilly, with no compensation, which is pretty close to the American model, right? You got a lotta progress. You got a lotta churn. You get a lotta technological advance, but you’re gonna displace a lotta people. And so, at that point, you definitely need a very, at minimum, a very flexible labor market which allows people to reallocate into other jobs, and there are ways to have policy to facilitate that.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>On the other hand, if you just let creative destruction go with no kind of willy-nilly, with no compensation, which is pretty close to the American model, right? You got a lotta progress. You got a lotta churn. You get a lotta technological advance, but you’re gonna displace a lotta people. And so, at that point, you definitely need a very, at minimum, a very flexible labor market which allows people to reallocate into other jobs, and there are ways to have policy to facilitate that.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Retraining, et cetera. But that’s not to sugarcoat anything here. I mean, if you’re in a rural area and the main employer goes down, reallocating to a new job probably means reallocating to a new place, leaving your family, leaving the region you know and all the culture that goes with that.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>Retraining, et cetera. But that’s not to sugarcoat anything here. I mean, if you’re in a rural area and the main employer goes down, reallocating to a new job probably means reallocating to a new place, leaving your family, leaving the region you know and all the culture that goes with that.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>That’s an extraordinarily painful experience. And whether that’s because of technological change or trade, you know, I think it’s on all of us and as citizens in a country to take that extremely seriously.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>That’s an extraordinarily painful experience. And whether that’s because of technological change or trade, you know, I think it’s on all of us and as citizens in a country to take that extremely seriously.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I think this question of how we as a society deploy and adapt to automation is one of the most important questions today. But before we can adapt, we need to understand. That’s what this show is trying to do, help more people, including me, make sense of things. So we have a lot more great conversations coming up with economists, scientists, experts in design and media, people whose work can help us understand this moment and maybe even peek into the future.\u003c/p>\n",
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>I’m Jess Love. Life, Automated is a project of the Ryan Institute on Complexity at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. We’re distributed by KQED. Our show is produced by Jesse Dukes with help from Nathan Ray and Steven Jackson. Music by Steven Jackson, Q Shop, and Neutral Propulsion Laboratory.\u003c/p>\n",
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"\n\u003cp>I’m Jess Love. Life, Automated is a project of the Ryan Institute on Complexity at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. We’re distributed by KQED. Our show is produced by Jesse Dukes with help from Nathan Ray and Steven Jackson. Music by Steven Jackson, Q Shop, and Neutral Propulsion Laboratory.\u003c/p>\n"
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"innerHTML": "\n\u003cp>Recording help from Will Feeney and George Christensen. Administrative support, recording, and wise counsel from Stacia Sliger.\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "Will AI actually take over every job ever? Economist Ben Jones doesn't think so. ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003ca href=\"#transcript\">View the full episode transcript.\u003c/a>\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Will AI actually take over every job ever? \u003ca href=\"https://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/academics-research/faculty/jones_benjamin_f/\">Economist Ben Jones\u003c/a> doesn’t think so. Drawing from historical evidence around innovation, Jones argues that automation never conquers \u003cem>everything \u003c/em>— it inevitably creates operational bottlenecks that only humans can solve. By leaning into these bottlenecks, we can protect meaningful, well-paid work. But his optimism comes with a stark caveat: there is one nightmare scenario where this historical pattern breaks down entirely. And it doesn’t involve superintelligence. It involves mediocre AI.\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Further Reading: \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://ai-frontiers.org/articles/how-ai-could-benefit-the-workers-it-displaces\">How AI Could Benefit Workers, Even If It Displaces Most Jobs\u003c/a> — Benjamin Jones, \u003cem>AI Frontiers\u003c/em>\u003cbr>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003ch2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"transcript\">Episode Transcript\u003c/h2>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>This is a computer-generated transcript. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I’m Jess Love. This is Life Automated. For generations of Americans, the question was, where were you when JFK was shot? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Breaking news bulletin announcing the death of John F. Kennedy]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem> Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. You’ll excuse the fact that I’m out of breath, but about 10 or 15 minutes ago, a tragic thing from all indications at this point has happened to this city.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio Clip of Neil Armstrong on the moon]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>That’s one small step for man, one giant- \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Or the towers fell on 9/11?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[News bulletin from September 11, 2001]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>There’s smoke \u003c/em>\u003cem>billowing out of the World Trade Center.\u003c/em>\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> These are moments seared into our collective psyche, and now we have a new moment, only this one arrived a bit differently, a browser at a time.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Where were you when you first used ChatGPT?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>This is Life, Automated. I’m Jess Love, and I can tell you exactly where I was. The year was 2022, and I was visiting my in-laws in Florida. It was that lazy week between Christmas and New Year’s that I usually spend in a food coma. I sat on my sister-in-law’s childhood bed and signed up for a free subscription to ChatGPT.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I started asking the machine questions, easy ones at first. What did it know about butterflies native to Chicago or the most common tourist attractions in Italy? But it wasn’t too long before I asked what I really wanted to know. Could it do my job? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>See, much of the work I’ve done over the past decade is in science communication, essentially translating original research written by and for experts into something comprehensible to most people.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, I asked ChatGPT to summarize some papers I was familiar with, and it did okay. But what it lacked in finesse, and especially in those earlier iterations, accurate citations, it more than made up for in sheer efficiency. In just seconds, it could do work that would take a human the better part of a day.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If I didn’t like the first draft that was conjured, I could just tell it to try again from a different perspective now. Write it shorter. Write it longer. Write it for a fifth grader. Write it with sports metaphors. I was stunned. It seemed clear we were entering a new era of science communication where all the world’s knowledge was not only available, but personally customizable on demand.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you wanted a given study to be relayed in the style of Mr. Darcy flirting with Elizabeth Bennet, you were now suddenly in luck. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[AI-generated summary of Pride and Prejudice in style of research article]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Darcy’s mouth tightened in a way that suggested the accusation had landed, but he proceeded anyway. My dear Miss Bennet, said Mr. Darcy with an air of careful restraint, I have been reading “AIG in Hindsight.” It is an instructive account of how a firm may appear a paragon of prudence until one… \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> The thing I did to make my living that made me special, that made me employable, that I loved to do, was now available to anybody. How could I possibly compete? What did all of my expertise even mean anymore?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And the more I thought about ChatGPT, and the more its implications for a lot of other professions became clear, the more I started wondering about all of us. I have a seven-year-old daughter. What opportunities are gonna be available to her? I’m not alone here. The majority of Americans feel pretty anxious about AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And it’s not just jobs. Public polling data suggests Americans are really concerned about how AI will affect education, democracy, our environment, our information ecosystem, and just how we relate to each other. But even as I share all these concerns, I gotta say, over time, a big part of me did start rooting for this technology.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Partly, this is because I now work at a research institute, the Ryan Institute on Complexity. I use AI tools every day, and so do the people around me. I see firsthand how useful they can be. But there’s a bigger reason. I have another daughter, an 11-year-old. She was born with a rare neurological disorder, so rare that it doesn’t actually have a name.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You can currently count the number of people in the world with her specific genetic mutation on two fingers. And this genetic difference, it affects how she talks, how she moves, how she uses objects like forks and scissors, how she thinks and learns. My daughter lives in a world that wasn’t made for her, with a brain that science doesn’t really understand.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, technology that can harness the world’s cumulative knowledge in order to make her life a little easier sounds pretty incredible. AI that can predict which medications might be useful or offer step-by-step directions on how to operate household appliances, and then wait for her to finish each step.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of AI Microwave]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>First, press the button above the handle and open the door. Your food will go inside that box when it’s ready. Now close the door. Did it click? \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Or AI that can adapt educational materials to her specifically, on demand, maybe in the voice of her favorite Moana character. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>\u003cem>[Audio of Maui from Moana]\u003c/em>\u003c/strong>\u003cem> \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cem>You’re welcome. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Sign me up. So yeah, that’s me. One person, one employee, one parent, reckoning with this technology. But of course, it isn’t just me. There are millions, billions of us wondering what AI and other kinds of automation really mean for our lives and our businesses and our communities, and what we should be doing to prepare. If you are one of these people, I’d like to invite you on a journey.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Because nobody can predict the future, nobody has all the answers about where we’re headed, but there are a lot of people with some answers, and I’ll be speaking with them on Life, Automated, a new podcast from Kellogg’s Ryan Institute on Complexity, distributed by KQED. I’ll talk with scientists and philosophers, business leaders and engineers and artists, all with unique insights into the world we’re collectively building.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m not gonna try to freak you out. I’m not gonna try to sell you anything. I am gonna get nerdy. I’m gonna try to understand, as best I can, where we’re headed. And you’re invited.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Shortly after I had my initial ChatGPT moment several years ago, I tracked down Ben Jones. He’s an economist and a co-director here at the Ryan Institute where he studies economic development, innovation, entrepreneurship, and the scientific process. And it turns out, Ben has been paying attention to new developments in generative AI for much longer than me.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>When we talked three and a half years ago, I was kind of at peak anxiety; but Ben, he’d had a head start. Speaking with him helped me feel better about where we were headed, in part because he gave me a helpful way of thinking about AI. So, I wanted to bring him back for another conversation, this time in a recording studio. I started off by getting him talking about the first moment he realized AI had the potential to bring about big changes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Did you have an AI moment, kind of a single moment that sort of shook you to the core and made you think, wow, something about these newest models is really fundamentally different? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> I did. I’ve had several AI moments along the way. I think many people, you know, when you see what AI can do, it’s uncanny.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Sometimes the hair stands up on the back of my neck. But my first AI moment where the hair stood up on the back of my neck was in 2017, and I was in Toronto for a conference that mixed economists and technologists, people from Geoff Hinton’s lab, who would go on to lead many of the top AI groups at the top companies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And we were shown over dinner, it was a very nice dinner, a video. The video was of an AI learning how to play a first-person shooter game. And as you may know, with first-person shooter games, the experience is if you’re looking through the eyes of the player. So, we’re sort of looking through the eyes of the AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And without any particular directives, except to sort of survive as long as possible, the AI was training itself to play this game better and better. And at first, you’re sitting there looking through the AI’s eyes, and you’re kind of like a drunken sailor. You’re, like, stumbling around, you’re banging into walls, you’re getting trapped in corners.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You never pick up health or a weapon. You just don’t last very long. The video showed us the AI’s progression kind of in a fast-forward, high speed over maybe 24 hours. And so around the middle of the training, over, maybe 12 hours, it started running around the maze extremely effectively, but it wasn’t always picking up things on the floor, and it was no longer falling off bridges.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>By the end of the day, it was not only picking everything up and firing the weapons accurately, it was killing every single person in the game, all the real players. It didn’t miss. It didn’t miss in any way. And just watching this progression from this AI algorithm was a really uncanny moment, and to me, opened my mind to how powerful but also potentially worrisome AI is.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and I think, you know, on some level it’s not that surprising that a computer can learn to master a computer game. But what makes this story so incredible is just that the computer had no instructions that told us what it was supposed to be doing or what it was supposed to be optimizing other than just, like, live.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And it was able to just learn all of those techniques just via trial and error. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Right. Just the certain algorithms for training AI with fairly simple objectives lead to this incredible set of capabilities, which are truly uncanny. Many people have probably had that first moment now with AI, I think a lot with ChatGPT, where you ask it a question and you can’t believe the answer.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You’re like, “How could it possibly be coming up with this?” And AI absolutely has that quality. So, for me, it kind of happened a bit earlier, and so I started writing about it a bit earlier than most because I’d had that experience a bit earlier than most. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, which was very convenient for me personally because it meant that, when I was still in my AI freak-out phase, you were somebody who had been doing research on this for years, and were able to kind of be this, calming presence, in order to give me some concrete information about this technology.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, you have kind of an interesting perspective, which is that AI, the current generative AI that we’re talking about with ChatGPT, it’s really just part of a long process of automation. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And it’s true that certain technologies for a long time, and AI is one of them, are just hands down amazing.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>They do things that are just amazing. But that doesn’t mean that they disemploy everybody.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Phew.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And, how can those two things be true? Well, let me just give you another example. You know, obviously computers have been around for a long time now, and their capacity to do sort of certain kinds of calculations are just, more or less infinitely, virtually infinitely better than humans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You know, in my field and in many research fields, you use data and statistical regressions. If I were to run a regression by hand, with a large number of observations, it would take me literally my entire life. And I would make mistakes. You know, my computer can do a regression with a million data points in a minute.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so, we have these technologies that basically are infinitely better than us to do these tasks that are really important to what we do. And then you can ask, okay, well, has our understanding of economics or astronomy or physics multiplied by a similar factor? And you’d say no, because although we can do certain things really, really, really incredibly well, other things are holding us back.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have these other tasks, which I would call bottlenecks.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay, and this is the thing that I have thought about so often since our conversation. It kind of blew my mind. So, can you talk to us about what a bottleneck is and why it’s so important?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Well, of course, it’s a metaphor from a bottle, and what do we know about bottles? We know that the speed at which water or wine will flow from the bottle depends on the width of the neck. Doesn’t really depend on how big the bottle is otherwise, how much wine there is in it, how big the base is. It really just depends on the neck.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And in many processes in the economy and in the economy overall, it looks like there are certain things that have to happen that act as bottlenecks. Let’s say you’re going out to see your cousins for Thanksgiving dinner, and you’ve gotta get everyone in your house into the car, and you’ve gotta pack up the pies that you’re bringing and contributing to the festivities.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Well, everyone in the house could have gotten up early, gotten dressed, put on their Thanksgiving sweaters, gotten the pies into the car. But you’re not leaving the house until everyone has their shoes on and their socks. And maybe there’s someone in the family who just is getting real slow about getting their socks and their shoes on.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>How fast is it that you leave the house? It doesn’t really depend on how fast everyone is. It depends on how slow the slowest person is. That person becomes a bottleneck. Maybe an example we can all relate to. Much of the economy has that flavor, where it’s not how good you are at a lot of things. What’s really sort of determining the rate of the economy is the things we’re quite slow at, the things we’re not very good at.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So basically, it’s this task that is slowing down the speed with which the entire overall goal or objective can be met. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And the reason that’s important is because often in innovation, we get really focused on the shiny thing that’s going really fast, and we’re really excited about how fast it can compute things and these kinds of new technologies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But often what really matters is the thing we’re not looking at. It’s the things that we’re quite bad at. The things that we’re really bad at are actually going to slow down the whole system, and if we can’t improve those, the gains from these kind of shiny new objects and new technologies won’t be as great as we hope.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I thought about these bottlenecks a lot after our initial conversation. Like, whenever I heard a tech leader say AI was going to be ready to colonize the galaxy in five years, or whenever I started spiraling about whether AI was going to take over every job ever. Now, about that. Overall, Ben, like many economists, is bullish on AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>He says that automation is generally good for workers. Sure, it causes some job loss and dislocation in the short term. But in the long term, it raises the quality of life for everybody, in part because it lowers the price of things we need and want. But that doesn’t mean people don’t get harmed along the way.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> So, one of the fears people have is that these automation technologies take jobs.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And of course, this goes back to the early years of the Industrial Revolution and the Luddites. You know, when you have handcrafts people who are silversmiths and blacksmiths, and you’re making clothes by hand, and then suddenly you have, say, the loom, you’re going to put out of work a lot of hand clothes makers.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But they’re going to migrate into other jobs, right? Over the long run, we’re going to see people do many other things, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Think about the real economy. Think about farming. I don’t know if anyone in the audience has ever had a chance to ride around in a combine harvester.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But, that’s one of the most incredible pieces of machinery you can imagine. I think a single combine harvester with a bunch of trucks driving up and around it, was able to harvest something like four or five million pounds of corn in twelve hours. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> That’s insane. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Right? And certainly, agricultural technology is one of those areas where we’ve had massive productivity growth.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We have better seeds and irrigation systems. We have a lot more knowledge. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>Fertilizer. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Fertilizers… All sorts of pesticides, depending how you feel about that. And those together have made for very high productivity, meaning, one hour of labor working with those machines can produce an enormous amount of food.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And the end result of that is that instead of having half our workforce in the US, you know, be in agriculture- \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> And that’s what it would have been, like- two hundred years ago.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And that’s what it is in many very low-income countries today, which still struggle to put in place even more basic agricultural technologies.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, if fifty percent of the American workforce was in agriculture, now it’s, say, two percent of the American workforce working with an enormous amount of machines. But of course, that’s why many people have gone on to find other careers in other parts of the country. And overall, that process, while it’s not incidental, it can be quite painful. This process of what we call creative destruction, in the long run is what allows us to be far more productive, have higher standards of living.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Coming up, Ben Jones explains why he wants AI to be really good at every job it automates, and why the bigger risk is mediocre AI.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I do want to point out a very important difference that I think a lot of people are feeling, which is that what is happening with artificial intelligence right now, it’s that the most desirable jobs seem to be the ones that are most at risk. So, I don’t think many people grow up and think, “Boy, I really want to spend all day turning a knob again and again and again.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But a lot of people really do want to do things like animate, or people want to become journalists. People are accepting giant salary reductions already, to position themselves in these fields. And it seems like those jobs are also at risk. So, there does almost seem to be an emotional difference with the jobs that are being lost right now, that puts kids growing up today in a really hard spot in terms of, follow your dreams.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Well, so, I mean, this is a bit too soon to tell, I think. But, you’re right that if you think of a job as not a task, but a bundle of tasks, that doesn’t mean that you don’t like some of the tasks more than others. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> If you’re a chef, I presume you think about the menu and, and some of the cooking is more fun than washing the dishes, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, that’s exactly right.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Maybe I’m wrong. And I don’t think people are the same. So, I think people have different preferences, even in the same job, about different kinds of tasks that they have to do. But to the extent that, you know, AI replaces, it’s just lower cost for how good it is at the tasks that you like, I think that’s not gonna feel so great.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You know, what if it’s really good at creativity and then all you’re doing is editing? But you’d rather do the creative part. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Exactly. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> But on the other hand, you know, it’s also the case that when you bring in… Like, let’s go back to regressions. I like to do statistical analysis. I think it’s really interesting.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But I’m mostly interested in the output. I have no interest in the calculation, and it’s boring. So, this makes me get to the interesting part much faster. And maybe when you’re writing, it’s a collaborator, right? I mean, maybe it’s not a replacement. It’s like another voice on your team.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And suddenly you’re getting a higher quality product, and it could be that you’re making a screenplay or writing an article, you’re writing a song, and suddenly it’s better for your collaboration with the AI, but they’re not actually taking kind of full control. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> That’s the optimistic version here.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That at least for a lot of jobs, some tasks will be automated, but other tasks won’t. And those tasks, those bottlenecks, will keep us humans busy and employed and maybe even fulfilled. And looking for these bottlenecks in our own jobs or industries, that is something that feels actionable. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Naturally, if there’s some bottleneck tasks that are slowing up the whole system, those are gonna have a lot of value.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>If you can continue to do those or do them relatively well, people will value that. You’ll get a lot of income, you’ll get a sustained job, based on those kinds of tasks. So, the question I think is, are there tasks that are bottleneck tasks that computers can’t do very well yet? That’s really where you should focus.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> And in Ben’s view, assuming there will always be some role for humans, we should actually be rooting for AI to get really, really good at whatever it automates. To understand why, we first need to understand two opposing forces. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> So, the first is automation. Automation would be when a machine starts doing a task that we used to do as labor, humans.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yeah, and I think this is the force that a lot of people think of. They think about, okay, this machine can do more and more and more work, and so there’s obviously going to be just, like, less and less and less of the income or the share of the economy that’s going to be available to us non-machines.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. That’s the sort of obvious force that most people get. But there’s another force which is a little bit more subtle, and it has to do with the fact that if machines are taking over tasks, and they are really good at those tasks, right… And at some level they have to be good at those tasks, otherwise they wouldn’t be taking them over from labor.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But if they get very, very good at those tasks, then what happens is those tasks become very cheap, in the sense that whenever you flood a market with something, right? If I made anything abundant, its price will fall. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so what’s gonna happen if machines are really, really good at those tasks is the kinds of services they produce will become very inexpensive.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so, what we really want if AI is gonna take over a lot of tasks, it’s very important that it not just slightly beat labor at those tasks. We want AI, if it’s gonna take over those tasks, to be really great at it, because then we’re gonna have an abundance of that output, and actually the prices fall and people end up being much better off in a real income sense.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So, I was trying to come up with an example, and instead of it being, quite as theoretical, I was trying to think of something that maybe is already happening in the economy today so that we could sort of play out this idea, this thought experiment, and really understand why even us mere laborers really ought to be working, rooting for AI to get quite good at the tasks of ours that it takes over.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, I’m gonna read an example to you, and I am hoping that you can respond to it. Give me a sense of whether this is correct, and if so, what it means. If not, where I went wrong. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>‘Imagine that companies start replacing customer service professionals at call centers with AI. This is something that we already know is happening, like when you call your health insurance company to ask about coverage, or you ask your bank why a deposit hasn’t gone through, what have you.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>The person you talk to gets automated. They’re replaced by AI, and even if the AI isn’t cheap, they still cost a lot less than paying the salaries of fluent English speakers trained in customer service. So, one scenario is the AI is just ‘okay’ at this. It provides worse customer service than humans. People don’t always get their problems resolved.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Maybe they get frustrated, maybe they even get angry at the company. But the AI is still good enough that even though the company’s reputation might suffer a bit, the money they’re saving kind of makes it worth it. Maybe they come out a bit ahead. And this is your nightmare scenario as I understand it.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>So, all these call center jobs get eliminated. Nobody really benefits except for the companies that might save a little money every year. Is that a fair depiction of the nightmare scenario?’\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Yes, because if the companies are only just saving a little bit of money, that’s a sign that the computers aren’t that much better at the task.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>We get bad services. People lose their jobs. That’s an accurate version of the kind of nightmare scenario one would have in mind. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. Now, if the AI is really, really good at customer service, then eventually most of us do benefit. So, some people do lose their jobs, but they are able to move into others.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And meanwhile, the rest of us get our questions answered really quickly, really easily. We have more time in our day to do other things, and hopefully the products and the services from that company become less expensive because the firm is able to pass along those savings. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. And as long as those workers who are displaced are able to find other kinds of jobs in this new economy, everyone’s income will eventually, be going up.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> So, if I want to go back to this farming example, it’s very easy for me to see that, you know, in the last two hundred years, let’s say, since half of America was a farmer, it’s very easy for me to see that life is a lot better now. You’re gonna live if you are born — you stand a much higher likelihood, you’re just going to enjoy a lot of things that our ancestors would not have been able to. But I think right now, a lot of people are feeling like life in general is not getting better. They’re kind of feeling like, the chances that my kid is going to have a better life than me are not that great.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>You know, houses are getting more expensive. It’s more expensive to go to college. Like, I think a lot of people are feeling like they are just treading water. And so how does that square with this idea of incremental progress? Is it just that we are imagining the past to be better than it was? Or is it that maybe some of the things that are real pain points are because of these bottlenecks or something else?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> I would say that’s more to do with inequality, and where the benefits have been felt in this economy. And this goes way before artificial intelligence. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Going back to the ’70s for quite a long time, the median real household income was kind of stagnating in the United States.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And so, we had a lot of growth, but as I think people know, a lot of that increased value added in the economy every year has been captured by people who are pretty well off already. One of the concerns with AI, as we see, these billionaires, trillionaires starting to emerge, is that too much of the added value will be captured by those who own the companies or own the capital. So, I think that’s a real question. The other kind of inequality, which is actually the major kind of inequality that’s been at work in the United States, is within labor. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Okay. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And what we’ve seen over time since the ’70s is a spreading where people who are in the upper educated professional classes have been capturing a lot of the growth, in income per capita\u003cstrong> \u003c/strong>for themselves. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Oh, interesting.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones: \u003c/strong>Whereas the median household has been struggling. Compared to history, we’ve seen relatively slow growth in real standards of living among the median household. I think when you think about why, Americans maybe not necessarily fully seeing these facts, but feeling them right? Feeling that maybe they put it on globalization, but that’s maybe not the right… But there’s some globalization, there’s a lot of automation, there’s a lot of technological change within the country. But feeling that somehow, these advances or this participation in the world economy, doesn’t seem like it’s making their lives better. And I think for many people, at least going back to the ’70s, there’s some truth in that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> In Ben’s view, much of the pessimism Americans feel about technological progress comes not from the technology itself but from how its gains have been distributed. But he thinks that at least some of this inequality, not the kind driven by tech billionaires, but the inequality within workers might actually decrease as AI automates white collar work. And to be very blunt, he does not share the average American’s concerns about AI making human labor obsolete.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love: \u003c/strong>So, I mean, a stat I ran across earlier this year, just 6% of Americans say workplace AI use will lead to more jobs in the long run, and you would just wholeheartedly disagree with that and say that, this might just be kind of a failure of imagination.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Correct. I mean, you wouldn’t have imagined there was an ATM technician or a satellite engineer or a pilot before those things were created. And, I think it’s very hard to predict what’s gonna become easier, what’s gonna become hard, and that’s for the future to tell us. It’s gonna be unexpected and pretty interesting.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But there’s nothing so far in history that would suggest that suddenly all labor could be replaced. And even if it were, I mean, just to be clear, I mean, if it were, right? \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, let’s go there! \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> Then the amount of output would be enormous, right? So, if you actually replaced all human labor and you had these efficient machines that could do everything, the amount of consumption you could have would be incredibly high. It would at that point become entirely an issue of equity and access to that income. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Right. \u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And, you know, that’s where governments can step in, right? And we can have redistributive policies. I mean, do you wanna just let a few capitalists own everything? I doubt that is a political equilibrium- with everyone starving and, like, three people are, you know, quadrillionaires. Maybe, this gets into dystopian scenarios —\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> Yes, it does\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ben Jones:\u003c/strong> And it gets into various other things. And I’m not saying that’s not possible. We certainly see authoritarian behavior around the world that is problematic. It’s ultimately a question of our political process and the representation of voices who are being left out, or doing much worse because of technological change.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And, you know, if you’re making the pie much bigger through this kind of churn and technological advance, there’s more resources around. You should be able to compensate those who lost in some way and not have them live a life that is much harder for virtue of having been replaced by machines.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>And I think, you know, in the United States, you have to be careful in both directions. Technological progress is inevitably about creative destruction, right? I mean, think of what Amazon has done, right? E-tail destroyed bricks-and-mortar bookstores first and a whole lot of other kinds of bricks and mortar, right?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>But it is more efficient for a lot of people. Consumers like it. They get things delivered. It’s cheaper. You know, they get things faster. But if you owned a bookstore, it was terrible, right? And, so, how do we think about that as a society? Well, on one hand, if we let the people who are already kind of in charge resist creative destruction, then we don’t grow and we don’t advance, and then those people are kind of holding us back, right?\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>On the other hand, if you just let creative destruction go with no kind of willy-nilly, with no compensation, which is pretty close to the American model, right? You got a lotta progress. You got a lotta churn. You get a lotta technological advance, but you’re gonna displace a lotta people. And so, at that point, you definitely need a very, at minimum, a very flexible labor market which allows people to reallocate into other jobs, and there are ways to have policy to facilitate that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>Retraining, et cetera. But that’s not to sugarcoat anything here. I mean, if you’re in a rural area and the main employer goes down, reallocating to a new job probably means reallocating to a new place, leaving your family, leaving the region you know and all the culture that goes with that.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>That’s an extraordinarily painful experience. And whether that’s because of technological change or trade, you know, I think it’s on all of us and as citizens in a country to take that extremely seriously.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Jess Love:\u003c/strong> I think this question of how we as a society deploy and adapt to automation is one of the most important questions today. But before we can adapt, we need to understand. That’s what this show is trying to do, help more people, including me, make sense of things. So we have a lot more great conversations coming up with economists, scientists, experts in design and media, people whose work can help us understand this moment and maybe even peek into the future.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>I’m Jess Love. Life, Automated is a project of the Ryan Institute on Complexity at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. We’re distributed by KQED. Our show is produced by Jesse Dukes with help from Nathan Ray and Steven Jackson. Music by Steven Jackson, Q Shop, and Neutral Propulsion Laboratory.\u003c/p>\n\n\n\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recording help from Will Feeney and George Christensen. Administrative support, recording, and wise counsel from Stacia Sliger.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"slug": "remember-your-moms-tanda-young-latinos-are-giving-it-a-tech-savvy-twist-2",
"title": "Remember Your Mom’s ‘Tanda’? Young Latinos Are Giving It a Tech-Savvy Twist",
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"headTitle": "Remember Your Mom’s ‘Tanda’? Young Latinos Are Giving It a Tech-Savvy Twist | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">\u003cem>How We Get By\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a KQED series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. Find the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">\u003cem>full series here\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the span of four months, Juan Carrillo’s life got flipped around. He lost two family members in January: a brother and a nephew.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On top of his grief, the 49-year-old Fresno resident and his family were staring down funeral bills, each costing more than $10,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everything has done a complete 360-degree turn; you just don’t see it coming, and you don’t even know where else to find the money to make your regular payments,” Carrillo said in Spanish. “In one way or another, we had to help our families.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result of the unexpected expenses, he fell behind on rent and utility payments, even though he was working three jobs — as a DJ, an Uber driver and as a construction worker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Carrillo got a boon at just the right time: in January, he received $900 in his bank account, which helped his family cover some of the funeral expenses. That was thanks to his tanda, a community-based lending circle, in which members contribute small amounts of money regularly — in his case, $150 each month — and take turns receiving a lump-sum payout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s how we help each other,” Carrillo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090543\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090543\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-08_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-08_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-08_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-08_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Juan Carrillo stands for a portrait at his home in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Carrillo joined a tanda, a lending circle widely used in Latin America, and was able to contribute to funeral expenses for two of his family members because of it. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A tanda is a centuries-old financial system widely used across Latin America that functions as a community-based savings-and-lending circle. The system relies on trust among its members — usually small groups of six to 10 — and has historically operated in cash, similar to an interest-free savings plan or an informal loan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, however, tandas are becoming more modernized, with apps and other tech tools drawing in younger generations of Latinos. And as California’s cost of living continues to increase, more people are turning to tandas as a way to get out of a tight spot, to save money and build credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is very expensive to live in these areas,” said Mariel Hernandez, a spokesperson for Bay Area nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.missionassetfund.org/\">Mission Asset Fund\u003c/a>. “California’s affordability crisis has made predatory lending more dangerous and more tempting at the same time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her organization partnered with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.elfus.org/\">Education and Leadership Foundation\u003c/a>, based in Fresno, more than three years ago to expand access to these traditional lending circles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090555\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090555\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-11_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-11_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-11_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-11_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Juan Carrillo displays his delivery driver badge in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Carrillo joined a tanda, a lending circle widely used in Latin America, and was able to buy new tires for his car with a loan from the tanda. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Both nonprofits use the model as a way to help communities build savings and access small, no-interest loans through structured, community-based programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the origins of tandas go back centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re not new,” Hinojosa-Ojeda said. “There’s multi-thousand-year-old roots of communal labor in Mexico, there’s 1,000-year-old roots in Asia of communal work and communal savings and lending.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hinojosa-Ojeda said tandas made their way to California in the 19th century, when immigrants from China and Mexico brought the collective savings practices to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090556\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090556\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-15_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-15_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-15_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-15_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A new tire on delivery driver Juan Carrillo’s car in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Carrillo joined a tanda, a lending circle widely used in Latin America, and was able to buy new tires for his car with a loan from the tanda. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Traditionally, participants knew each other; they were family members, neighbors, friends, and coworkers. Trust is essential within the tanda because a person is less likely to take the money and never return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the systems operated by the Education and Leadership Foundation and Mission Asset Fund, participants are strangers, and they no longer operate with cash. Instead, they use an app.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the organizations are able to guarantee funding if a person drops out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The concept is very similar,” Hinojosa-Ojeda said. “People join, and then they agree to deposit money into a fund that’s controlled by a trusted body.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090546\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090546\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-03_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-03_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-03_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-03_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Community Engagement Coordinator Carmen Cardenas shows the “MyMAF” portal on her phone at the Education and Leadership Foundation office in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. MyMAF is a model by Mission Asset Fund that helps community members build their savings, credit, and access small loans. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hernandez said community members turn to tandas for any number of reasons, including household emergencies or securing a down payment for a home or for rent. She uses tandas herself and said she’s received $1,200 that helped cover the tuition costs of her master’s degree, as well as her Bay Area apartment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be for buying back-to-school supplies, sending money to family abroad, sometimes it’s even covering quinceañeras,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When 24-year-old David Medina was feeling the pressure of the holiday season late last year, he realized he didn’t have enough money to buy gifts for his family.[aside postID=news_12084761 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/IMG_1522.jpg']“And then I remembered, ‘Wait, I’m about to get my money from the tanda.’ That money can go straight into my Christmas shopping,” Medina said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He had been paying $100 a month and received $1,000 just before the holidays. The timing helped turn a stressful situation into a manageable one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That money that I didn’t know I had put aside, I had it, and it worked perfectly,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the extra cash, Medina was able to buy gifts: toys, new clothes, household items, and food. It helped his family enjoy a more comfortable Christmas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carmen Cardenas, the community engagement coordinator for Education and Leadership Foundation, joined a tanda to celebrate her 24th birthday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I received the loan, I wasn’t wanting to go into credit card debt for my birthday celebration, so I saved the money that I got from the lending circle to put it towards that,” Cardenas said. “I was able to use that money and then keep paying it back as the lending circle went on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She makes it a priority to participate in tandas whenever the opportunity arises, viewing them as an important way to manage her finances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090547\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090547\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-07_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-07_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-07_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-07_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Community Engagement Coordinator Carmen Cardenas stands for a portrait at the Education and Leadership Foundation (ELF) office in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Cardenas assists ELF community members with signing up for tandas, also known as lending circles, and has made use of them for her own expenses. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Through the Mission Asset Fund app — which is now available through partnerships in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York and Washington — Cardenas is instantly alerted whenever a scheduled payment is processed, allowing her to track when money has been automatically withdrawn from her bank account.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Medina has grown to love tandas — not just because he can save money along the way, but also because he’s actively building and strengthening his credit score through the Mission Asset Fund’s app, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After college, I didn’t really build my credit,” Medina said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After receiving his last payout, he signed up for another tanda and is set to collect $750 later this year — again with the ability to track and access his payments instantly from his devices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090548\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090548\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-19_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-19_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-19_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-19_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Juan Carrillo prays at an altar honoring his brother and nephew in his home in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Carrillo was able to contribute to funeral expenses for his brother and nephew after joining a tanda, a lending circle widely used in Latin America. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The ability to build credit scores also interested Carrillo, not for himself, but for his 18- and 20-year-old sons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In this country, you move forward with credit; without credit, you don’t,” Carrillo said. “Everything relies on credit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’d be tempting to lean on credit to keep up with California’s rising costs, but Carrillo said the tandas have helped him manage it. And, when tragedy struck, the tanda was there with quick cash and zero debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thank God because it arrived at a time [of need],” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"title": "Remember Your Mom’s ‘Tanda’? Young Latinos Are Giving It a Tech-Savvy Twist | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is part of \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">\u003cem>How We Get By\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a KQED series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. Find the \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">\u003cem>full series here\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the span of four months, Juan Carrillo’s life got flipped around. He lost two family members in January: a brother and a nephew.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On top of his grief, the 49-year-old Fresno resident and his family were staring down funeral bills, each costing more than $10,000.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Everything has done a complete 360-degree turn; you just don’t see it coming, and you don’t even know where else to find the money to make your regular payments,” Carrillo said in Spanish. “In one way or another, we had to help our families.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result of the unexpected expenses, he fell behind on rent and utility payments, even though he was working three jobs — as a DJ, an Uber driver and as a construction worker.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Carrillo got a boon at just the right time: in January, he received $900 in his bank account, which helped his family cover some of the funeral expenses. That was thanks to his tanda, a community-based lending circle, in which members contribute small amounts of money regularly — in his case, $150 each month — and take turns receiving a lump-sum payout.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That’s how we help each other,” Carrillo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090543\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090543\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-08_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-08_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-08_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-08_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Juan Carrillo stands for a portrait at his home in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Carrillo joined a tanda, a lending circle widely used in Latin America, and was able to contribute to funeral expenses for two of his family members because of it. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A tanda is a centuries-old financial system widely used across Latin America that functions as a community-based savings-and-lending circle. The system relies on trust among its members — usually small groups of six to 10 — and has historically operated in cash, similar to an interest-free savings plan or an informal loan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Today, however, tandas are becoming more modernized, with apps and other tech tools drawing in younger generations of Latinos. And as California’s cost of living continues to increase, more people are turning to tandas as a way to get out of a tight spot, to save money and build credit.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is very expensive to live in these areas,” said Mariel Hernandez, a spokesperson for Bay Area nonprofit \u003ca href=\"https://www.missionassetfund.org/\">Mission Asset Fund\u003c/a>. “California’s affordability crisis has made predatory lending more dangerous and more tempting at the same time.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Her organization partnered with the \u003ca href=\"https://www.elfus.org/\">Education and Leadership Foundation\u003c/a>, based in Fresno, more than three years ago to expand access to these traditional lending circles.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090555\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090555\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-11_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-11_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-11_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-11_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Juan Carrillo displays his delivery driver badge in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Carrillo joined a tanda, a lending circle widely used in Latin America, and was able to buy new tires for his car with a loan from the tanda. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Both nonprofits use the model as a way to help communities build savings and access small, no-interest loans through structured, community-based programs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Raúl Hinojosa-Ojeda, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the origins of tandas go back centuries.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re not new,” Hinojosa-Ojeda said. “There’s multi-thousand-year-old roots of communal labor in Mexico, there’s 1,000-year-old roots in Asia of communal work and communal savings and lending.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Hinojosa-Ojeda said tandas made their way to California in the 19th century, when immigrants from China and Mexico brought the collective savings practices to the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090556\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1999px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090556\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-15_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1999\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-15_qed.jpg 1999w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-15_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-15_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1999px) 100vw, 1999px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A new tire on delivery driver Juan Carrillo’s car in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Carrillo joined a tanda, a lending circle widely used in Latin America, and was able to buy new tires for his car with a loan from the tanda. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Traditionally, participants knew each other; they were family members, neighbors, friends, and coworkers. Trust is essential within the tanda because a person is less likely to take the money and never return.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the systems operated by the Education and Leadership Foundation and Mission Asset Fund, participants are strangers, and they no longer operate with cash. Instead, they use an app.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And the organizations are able to guarantee funding if a person drops out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The concept is very similar,” Hinojosa-Ojeda said. “People join, and then they agree to deposit money into a fund that’s controlled by a trusted body.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090546\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090546\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-03_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-03_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-03_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-03_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Community Engagement Coordinator Carmen Cardenas shows the “MyMAF” portal on her phone at the Education and Leadership Foundation office in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. MyMAF is a model by Mission Asset Fund that helps community members build their savings, credit, and access small loans. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Hernandez said community members turn to tandas for any number of reasons, including household emergencies or securing a down payment for a home or for rent. She uses tandas herself and said she’s received $1,200 that helped cover the tuition costs of her master’s degree, as well as her Bay Area apartment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It can be for buying back-to-school supplies, sending money to family abroad, sometimes it’s even covering quinceañeras,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When 24-year-old David Medina was feeling the pressure of the holiday season late last year, he realized he didn’t have enough money to buy gifts for his family.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“And then I remembered, ‘Wait, I’m about to get my money from the tanda.’ That money can go straight into my Christmas shopping,” Medina said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He had been paying $100 a month and received $1,000 just before the holidays. The timing helped turn a stressful situation into a manageable one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“That money that I didn’t know I had put aside, I had it, and it worked perfectly,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With the extra cash, Medina was able to buy gifts: toys, new clothes, household items, and food. It helped his family enjoy a more comfortable Christmas.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carmen Cardenas, the community engagement coordinator for Education and Leadership Foundation, joined a tanda to celebrate her 24th birthday.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“When I received the loan, I wasn’t wanting to go into credit card debt for my birthday celebration, so I saved the money that I got from the lending circle to put it towards that,” Cardenas said. “I was able to use that money and then keep paying it back as the lending circle went on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>She makes it a priority to participate in tandas whenever the opportunity arises, viewing them as an important way to manage her finances.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090547\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090547\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-07_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-07_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-07_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-07_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Community Engagement Coordinator Carmen Cardenas stands for a portrait at the Education and Leadership Foundation (ELF) office in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Cardenas assists ELF community members with signing up for tandas, also known as lending circles, and has made use of them for her own expenses. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Through the Mission Asset Fund app — which is now available through partnerships in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, New York and Washington — Cardenas is instantly alerted whenever a scheduled payment is processed, allowing her to track when money has been automatically withdrawn from her bank account.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, Medina has grown to love tandas — not just because he can save money along the way, but also because he’s actively building and strengthening his credit score through the Mission Asset Fund’s app, too.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“After college, I didn’t really build my credit,” Medina said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After receiving his last payout, he signed up for another tanda and is set to collect $750 later this year — again with the ability to track and access his payments instantly from his devices.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12090548\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12090548\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-19_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-19_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-19_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/07/20260706-tandas-JY-19_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Juan Carrillo prays at an altar honoring his brother and nephew in his home in Fresno, California, on Monday, July 6, 2026. Carrillo was able to contribute to funeral expenses for his brother and nephew after joining a tanda, a lending circle widely used in Latin America. \u003ccite>(Juliana Yamada for KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The ability to build credit scores also interested Carrillo, not for himself, but for his 18- and 20-year-old sons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“In this country, you move forward with credit; without credit, you don’t,” Carrillo said. “Everything relies on credit.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It’d be tempting to lean on credit to keep up with California’s rising costs, but Carrillo said the tandas have helped him manage it. And, when tragedy struck, the tanda was there with quick cash and zero debt.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thank God because it arrived at a time [of need],” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Monterey Park made history in June, becoming the first\u003ca href=\"https://lapublicpress.org/2026/06/monterey-park-data-center-ban-elections-2026/\"> U.S. city to permanently ban data centers\u003c/a>. Close to 90% of voters supported the ballot measure that made it possible. But the city, just east of Los Angeles, likely won’t be the last in California to ban \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/data-centers\">data centers\u003c/a>, as political fights are erupting across the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Residents in regions like the Coachella Valley argue that the data center industry and local governments have failed to be transparent. Experts say organizations that run data centers should increase the amount of information that they share about their facility’s impacts and benefits, in an effort to bridge some trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Behind Monterey Park’s ban on data centers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.costar.com/article/290586268/hmc-capital-puts-multiple-us-data-centers-on-the-block\">HMC Stratcap\u003c/a> is an Australian Company that planned to build an AI data center at an office park near State Route 60 in Monterey Park. The center could have spanned up to 250,000 square feet — with the capacity to provide close to 50 megawatts of power — or enough to power thousands of homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yun Wang, 50, has lived in Monterey Park since 2008. Wang said he lives about a mile from the office park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This whole area could have become a data center alley, similar to Northern Virginia,” Wang said as he drove up to the site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12089539\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12089539\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">City officials had previously welcomed plans to build a sprawling, new data center at an empty property on Saturn Avenue, pictured here on April 1, 2026, in Monterey Park, California. \u003ccite>(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He added that many residents didn’t find out about the plans until a year after they were drafted, when the city was getting ready to approve an environmental report for the project. In that report, the city shared that HMC Stratcap’s proposed data center “did not pose significant harm to the environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year prior, in November 2024, the city changed the land use designation at the office park location to help accommodate future data center construction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one knew what was going on. The details were obscure,” Wang said. “They were moving things along [under] the cover of night, I would say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wang said most of the council seemed more interested in the possible tax revenue that data centers could bring, instead of advocating for constituents. Wang also said the council failed to address residents’ concerns about water and electricity use.[aside postID=news_12072118 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/CAT-%E2%80%94-DataCenters2.png']“I was very disappointed that my representative didn’t stand up for our city, and so far as how the city council handled everything,” Wang said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, Wang began canvassing home by home in his neighborhood. He later became a part of a growing coalition of people and groups opposing data centers in Monterey Park and the larger San Gabriel Valley area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wang claims the coalition even held their own educational meetings known as “teach-ins.” The public backlash led council members to reconsider their stances, and in March, Monterey Park’s city council unanimously \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/live/n66FWgy89yc?si=njo69Pgg3jKmipuS&t=14948\">voted to place a measure\u003c/a> banning data centers on the June ballot. After voting, Councilmember Jose Sanchez thanked residents for educating him about the impacts of data centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wang said that aside from Sanchez, he remains skeptical of most council members, including his own representative. He also said HMC Stratcap’s approach intensified the backlash among Monterey Park residents, adding that the Australian company never reached out to the community or addressed their concerns until residents protested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Wang said it was the community’s ability to come together and educate one another that helped make the difference at the polls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can tell you that what went wrong with HMC was their community engagement was nonexistent,” Wang said. “They need to know where the residents stand, and not waste our time and not waste our money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HMC Stratcap did not respond to KVCR’s requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Experts argue transparency matters when proposing data centers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Scientists and experts studying the impacts and benefits of data centers argue that it’s fair for communities to ask questions about transparency, especially around energy and water use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kate Stoll with the American Association for the Advancement of Science claims that the data center industry is trying to address environmental concerns. For example, she said, they’re using new technology like \u003ca href=\"https://www.ksl.com/article/news/utah/science-and-tech/closed-loop-cooling-systems-save-water-but-can-be-a-drain-on-electricity/51496230\">closed-loop cooling\u003c/a>, which requires less water by recycling it. However, the system also requires more electricity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stoll said some communities may decide whether they can absorb some of the impacts. She also emphasized that not every data center or developer is the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12089540\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12089540 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty3-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty3-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The proposed site for a data center on Saturn Avenue in Monterey Park, California, on April 1, 2026. The city’s former plan to welcome a data center on the empty property spurred opposition among residents. \u003ccite>(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Some are better at community engagement up front. Some are better at making and sticking to sustainability practices than others,” Stoll said. “But I think transparency brings trust.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Once you lose trust, it’s harder to build it back up and that might be the case in some of these communities,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, it appears that the tech and data industry has taken an opposite strategy. The industries lobbied to \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-14/newsom-ai-data-center-water\">kill a state bill\u003c/a> that required data centers to disclose their water use. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AB-93-Veto.pdf\">Assembly Bill 93\u003c/a> in October because the economic impact was unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khara Boender, the director of state policy with the Data Center Coalition, said the bill could have required centers to reveal trade secrets. The Data Center Coalition was among the groups that \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab93\">lobbied against it\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Boender said the data center industry could benefit from engaging with communities early on and answering their concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re also seeing many of our members engaging early and often with these communities to try to provide a better understanding,” Boender said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Data centers in Coachella placed on hold after weeks of protest\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Aside from Monterey Park, many cities across the state are now implementing moratoriums on data center approvals and considering their own bans on data centers entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the city of Coachella, a data center company’s failure to engage residents put plans to build six data centers in the desert city \u003ca href=\"https://kvcr.org/news/local/2026-06-06/coachella-council-approves-data-center-moratorium-directs-staff-to-draft-ban\">on hold\u003c/a>. In May, residents \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvcrnews.org/local-news/2026-05-28/coachella-considers-moratorium-on-data-centers-as-community-pushes-back-against-proposed-tech-campus\">packed\u003c/a> city council chambers after discovering that the city council had signed an agreement earlier that year with Stronghold Power Systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Riverside County-based company builds energy infrastructure. It entered into an agreement to create a city-owned electric utility, paid for by developing data centers. The city’s current utility provider, Imperial Irrigation District, is \u003ca href=\"https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/local/la-quinta/2023/02/09/iid-east-coachella-valley-imperial-irrigation-district-cvwd-water-district/69885076007/\">unreliable\u003c/a> because it experiences frequent power outages during the summer. The district, based in the Imperial Valley, is also facing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kpbs.org/news/environment/2026/06/15/imperial-valley-data-center-developer-files-lawsuit-seeking-access-to-colorado-river-water\">legal challenges\u003c/a> after denying a data center developer access to water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There weren’t a lot of community members who were informed about these plans,” said Stephanie Ambriz, a Coachella resident who helped mobilize opposition to the agreement and data centers.[aside postID=news_12076074 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/03/BIP_Renderings_Page_4.jpg']Ambriz said she was outraged because the city didn’t include residents in the process, and added that she believes the council seemed oblivious to how much water data centers use. The Coachella Valley is already struggling with challenges to water access due to the depletion of watersheds like the Colorado River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re already living in this time where the city of Coachella needs to address our drinking water situation, and they’re introducing data centers,” Ambriz said. “It’s tone deaf. It’s enraging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After hundreds of public comments, the city council in June approved a 45-day temporary pause on data centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ambriz said that the people’s voices mattered and the council listened this time. However, she thinks it’s too soon to celebrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s going to be a long road,” Ambriz said. “I don’t anticipate Stronghold is going to take too kindly to it. There is a lot of distrust now between our community and local government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, Ambriz said, Coachella residents want to make sure the council sticks to their decision — and keep working on a plan to draft a permanent no-data-center ordinance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was edited with support from \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californianewsroom\">\u003cem>The California Newsroom\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state. It was originally \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kvcrnews.org/local-news/2026-06-22/data-centers-face-backlash-across-california-as-residents-demand-more-transparency-around-their-impacts\">\u003cem>published\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> by KVCR. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Monterey Park made history in June, becoming the first\u003ca href=\"https://lapublicpress.org/2026/06/monterey-park-data-center-ban-elections-2026/\"> U.S. city to permanently ban data centers\u003c/a>. Close to 90% of voters supported the ballot measure that made it possible. But the city, just east of Los Angeles, likely won’t be the last in California to ban \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/data-centers\">data centers\u003c/a>, as political fights are erupting across the state.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Residents in regions like the Coachella Valley argue that the data center industry and local governments have failed to be transparent. Experts say organizations that run data centers should increase the amount of information that they share about their facility’s impacts and benefits, in an effort to bridge some trust.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Behind Monterey Park’s ban on data centers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://www.costar.com/article/290586268/hmc-capital-puts-multiple-us-data-centers-on-the-block\">HMC Stratcap\u003c/a> is an Australian Company that planned to build an AI data center at an office park near State Route 60 in Monterey Park. The center could have spanned up to 250,000 square feet — with the capacity to provide close to 50 megawatts of power — or enough to power thousands of homes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Yun Wang, 50, has lived in Monterey Park since 2008. Wang said he lives about a mile from the office park.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“This whole area could have become a data center alley, similar to Northern Virginia,” Wang said as he drove up to the site.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12089539\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12089539\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1125\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty2-1200x675.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">City officials had previously welcomed plans to build a sprawling, new data center at an empty property on Saturn Avenue, pictured here on April 1, 2026, in Monterey Park, California. \u003ccite>(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>He added that many residents didn’t find out about the plans until a year after they were drafted, when the city was getting ready to approve an environmental report for the project. In that report, the city shared that HMC Stratcap’s proposed data center “did not pose significant harm to the environment.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year prior, in November 2024, the city changed the land use designation at the office park location to help accommodate future data center construction.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“No one knew what was going on. The details were obscure,” Wang said. “They were moving things along [under] the cover of night, I would say.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wang said most of the council seemed more interested in the possible tax revenue that data centers could bring, instead of advocating for constituents. Wang also said the council failed to address residents’ concerns about water and electricity use.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“I was very disappointed that my representative didn’t stand up for our city, and so far as how the city council handled everything,” Wang said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So, Wang began canvassing home by home in his neighborhood. He later became a part of a growing coalition of people and groups opposing data centers in Monterey Park and the larger San Gabriel Valley area.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wang claims the coalition even held their own educational meetings known as “teach-ins.” The public backlash led council members to reconsider their stances, and in March, Monterey Park’s city council unanimously \u003ca href=\"https://www.youtube.com/live/n66FWgy89yc?si=njo69Pgg3jKmipuS&t=14948\">voted to place a measure\u003c/a> banning data centers on the June ballot. After voting, Councilmember Jose Sanchez thanked residents for educating him about the impacts of data centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Wang said that aside from Sanchez, he remains skeptical of most council members, including his own representative. He also said HMC Stratcap’s approach intensified the backlash among Monterey Park residents, adding that the Australian company never reached out to the community or addressed their concerns until residents protested.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead, Wang said it was the community’s ability to come together and educate one another that helped make the difference at the polls.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I can tell you that what went wrong with HMC was their community engagement was nonexistent,” Wang said. “They need to know where the residents stand, and not waste our time and not waste our money.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>HMC Stratcap did not respond to KVCR’s requests for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Experts argue transparency matters when proposing data centers\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Scientists and experts studying the impacts and benefits of data centers argue that it’s fair for communities to ask questions about transparency, especially around energy and water use.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Kate Stoll with the American Association for the Advancement of Science claims that the data center industry is trying to address environmental concerns. For example, she said, they’re using new technology like \u003ca href=\"https://www.ksl.com/article/news/utah/science-and-tech/closed-loop-cooling-systems-save-water-but-can-be-a-drain-on-electricity/51496230\">closed-loop cooling\u003c/a>, which requires less water by recycling it. However, the system also requires more electricity.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stoll said some communities may decide whether they can absorb some of the impacts. She also emphasized that not every data center or developer is the same.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12089540\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12089540 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty3.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty3-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/MontereyParkGetty3-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The proposed site for a data center on Saturn Avenue in Monterey Park, California, on April 1, 2026. The city’s former plan to welcome a data center on the empty property spurred opposition among residents. \u003ccite>(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“Some are better at community engagement up front. Some are better at making and sticking to sustainability practices than others,” Stoll said. “But I think transparency brings trust.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Once you lose trust, it’s harder to build it back up and that might be the case in some of these communities,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For now, it appears that the tech and data industry has taken an opposite strategy. The industries lobbied to \u003ca href=\"https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2025-10-14/newsom-ai-data-center-water\">kill a state bill\u003c/a> that required data centers to disclose their water use. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed \u003ca href=\"https://www.gov.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/AB-93-Veto.pdf\">Assembly Bill 93\u003c/a> in October because the economic impact was unclear.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Khara Boender, the director of state policy with the Data Center Coalition, said the bill could have required centers to reveal trade secrets. The Data Center Coalition was among the groups that \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260ab93\">lobbied against it\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Still, Boender said the data center industry could benefit from engaging with communities early on and answering their concerns.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think we’re also seeing many of our members engaging early and often with these communities to try to provide a better understanding,” Boender said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Data centers in Coachella placed on hold after weeks of protest\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Aside from Monterey Park, many cities across the state are now implementing moratoriums on data center approvals and considering their own bans on data centers entirely.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the city of Coachella, a data center company’s failure to engage residents put plans to build six data centers in the desert city \u003ca href=\"https://kvcr.org/news/local/2026-06-06/coachella-council-approves-data-center-moratorium-directs-staff-to-draft-ban\">on hold\u003c/a>. In May, residents \u003ca href=\"https://www.kvcrnews.org/local-news/2026-05-28/coachella-considers-moratorium-on-data-centers-as-community-pushes-back-against-proposed-tech-campus\">packed\u003c/a> city council chambers after discovering that the city council had signed an agreement earlier that year with Stronghold Power Systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Riverside County-based company builds energy infrastructure. It entered into an agreement to create a city-owned electric utility, paid for by developing data centers. The city’s current utility provider, Imperial Irrigation District, is \u003ca href=\"https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/local/la-quinta/2023/02/09/iid-east-coachella-valley-imperial-irrigation-district-cvwd-water-district/69885076007/\">unreliable\u003c/a> because it experiences frequent power outages during the summer. The district, based in the Imperial Valley, is also facing \u003ca href=\"https://www.kpbs.org/news/environment/2026/06/15/imperial-valley-data-center-developer-files-lawsuit-seeking-access-to-colorado-river-water\">legal challenges\u003c/a> after denying a data center developer access to water.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“There weren’t a lot of community members who were informed about these plans,” said Stephanie Ambriz, a Coachella resident who helped mobilize opposition to the agreement and data centers.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>Ambriz said she was outraged because the city didn’t include residents in the process, and added that she believes the council seemed oblivious to how much water data centers use. The Coachella Valley is already struggling with challenges to water access due to the depletion of watersheds like the Colorado River.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We’re already living in this time where the city of Coachella needs to address our drinking water situation, and they’re introducing data centers,” Ambriz said. “It’s tone deaf. It’s enraging.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>After hundreds of public comments, the city council in June approved a 45-day temporary pause on data centers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ambriz said that the people’s voices mattered and the council listened this time. However, she thinks it’s too soon to celebrate.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It’s going to be a long road,” Ambriz said. “I don’t anticipate Stronghold is going to take too kindly to it. There is a lot of distrust now between our community and local government.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, Ambriz said, Coachella residents want to make sure the council sticks to their decision — and keep working on a plan to draft a permanent no-data-center ordinance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was edited with support from \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/californianewsroom\">\u003cem>The California Newsroom\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a collaboration of public media outlets throughout the state. It was originally \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kvcrnews.org/local-news/2026-06-22/data-centers-face-backlash-across-california-as-residents-demand-more-transparency-around-their-impacts\">\u003cem>published\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem> by KVCR. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cp>Independent production and distribution company Neon has purchased \u003cem>Artificial\u003c/em>, a new movie about the rise of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083278/sam-altman-defends-himself-from-elon-musks-accusations-in-openai-trial\">OpenAI CEO Sam Altman\u003c/a>, after Amazon’s studio dropped the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The acquisition underscores Neon’s commitment to partnering with visionary filmmakers and bringing ambitious cinema to audiences around the world,” the indie studio said in a \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/openai-artificial-amazon-neon-6879fc8605701a3254f0f4fedb7a2e8c\">statement\u003c/a> on Tuesday, adding that the film is slated to release this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amazon MGM Studios had originally planned to distribute \u003cem>Artificial\u003c/em>, which was directed by \u003cem>Call Me By Your Name\u003c/em> director Luca Guadagnino. However, after the company invested \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2026/film/global/luca-guadagnino-sam-altman-movie-artificial-dropped-amazon-1236785830/\">$50 billion\u003c/a> into OpenAI’s tech, media outlet \u003ca href=\"https://puck.news/amazon-is-dumping-its-sam-altman-movie/\">\u003cem>Puck\u003c/em>\u003c/a> reported on June 19 that Amazon was shopping the nearly finished film to other studios.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Artificial\u003c/em> stars Andrew Garfield as the controversial founder and details \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11968285/how-openais-origins-explain-the-sam-altman-drama\">his firing\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083224/former-openai-exec-calls-decision-to-remove-sam-altman-a-hail-mary-during-musk-trial\">and immediate rehiring\u003c/a> days later as San Francisco-based OpenAI chief executive. The movie generated curiosity in the Bay Area after \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/40-million-movie-san-francisco-shoot-20796410.php\">residents spotted filming \u003c/a>throughout the city — with scenes shot near Dolores Park, \u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2025/08/12/artificial-openai-sam-altman-movie-andrew-garfield/\">Coit Tower\u003c/a> and Stable Cafe in the city’s Mission District – with actors like Jason Schwartzman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2026/06/luca-guadagnino-gives-hope-artificial-release-1236968824/\">Deadline\u003c/a>, Guadagnino described San Francisco on an Italian television show as “a wonderful city.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the great, distinguished U.S. cities, Alfred Hitchcock’s city — a place of great beauty,” he said. “But also great despair, with so many homeless people, so many people living under the influence of fentanyl, while these wonderful, silent, self-driving cars glided past them.”[aside postID=news_12082428 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/260504-MUSK-ALTMAN-VB-04-KQED.jpg']The director added that those contrasts illustrate the film’s theme.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is a disturbing image — more than just disturbing,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amazon did not reply to KQED’s request for a statement by the time of publication. Earlier this \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2026/film/global/luca-guadagnino-sam-altman-movie-artificial-dropped-amazon-1236785830/\">month\u003c/a>, a spokesperson for Amazon said, “We believe that ‘Artificial’ will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amazon has had a years-long partnership with Guadagnino and has distributed his past films, including tennis drama \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/list/ls597599759/\">\u003cem>Challengers\u003c/em> in 2024\u003c/a> starring Oakland actress Zendaya and horror-remake \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2018/08/suspiria-luca-guadagnino-amazon-dakota-johnson-comic-con-sequels-1202453398/\">\u003cem>Suspiria\u003c/em> in 2018\u003c/a> starring Dakota Johnson. According to \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/luca-guadagnino-not-surprised-amazon-dropped-openai-movie-1236632083/\">the \u003cem>Hollywood Reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Guadagnino also said on the Italian network show that, “I can’t say much because we are right in the middle of this situation … [but] these are industrial policies that are certainly not new.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Guadagnino also \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2026/06/luca-guadagnino-gives-hope-artificial-release-1236968824/\">expressed\u003c/a> his concern over how AI consumption habits are changing “the very face of the identity of a place like the United States and the entire world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Tuesday statement, Neon said \u003cem>Artificial \u003c/em>was bought during a bidding process. The company also announced that it will “compete in this year’s Oscar race.” Neon was also the distributor behind Best Picture Oscar winners like \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2025/03/oscars-best-picture-neon-record-anora-1236308125/\">\u003cem>Anora\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/box-office-parasite-heads-huge-50m-us-oscar-win-1279671/\">\u003cem>Parasite\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, \u003c/em>as well as Oakland director \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13989694/boots-riley-i-love-boosters-oakland-interview\">Boots Riley’s \u003cem>I Love Boosters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not respond to KQED’s request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>Independent production and distribution company Neon has purchased \u003cem>Artificial\u003c/em>, a new movie about the rise of \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083278/sam-altman-defends-himself-from-elon-musks-accusations-in-openai-trial\">OpenAI CEO Sam Altman\u003c/a>, after Amazon’s studio dropped the film.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The acquisition underscores Neon’s commitment to partnering with visionary filmmakers and bringing ambitious cinema to audiences around the world,” the indie studio said in a \u003ca href=\"https://apnews.com/article/openai-artificial-amazon-neon-6879fc8605701a3254f0f4fedb7a2e8c\">statement\u003c/a> on Tuesday, adding that the film is slated to release this year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amazon MGM Studios had originally planned to distribute \u003cem>Artificial\u003c/em>, which was directed by \u003cem>Call Me By Your Name\u003c/em> director Luca Guadagnino. However, after the company invested \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2026/film/global/luca-guadagnino-sam-altman-movie-artificial-dropped-amazon-1236785830/\">$50 billion\u003c/a> into OpenAI’s tech, media outlet \u003ca href=\"https://puck.news/amazon-is-dumping-its-sam-altman-movie/\">\u003cem>Puck\u003c/em>\u003c/a> reported on June 19 that Amazon was shopping the nearly finished film to other studios.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Artificial\u003c/em> stars Andrew Garfield as the controversial founder and details \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/11968285/how-openais-origins-explain-the-sam-altman-drama\">his firing\u003c/a> \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12083224/former-openai-exec-calls-decision-to-remove-sam-altman-a-hail-mary-during-musk-trial\">and immediate rehiring\u003c/a> days later as San Francisco-based OpenAI chief executive. The movie generated curiosity in the Bay Area after \u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/40-million-movie-san-francisco-shoot-20796410.php\">residents spotted filming \u003c/a>throughout the city — with scenes shot near Dolores Park, \u003ca href=\"https://sfstandard.com/2025/08/12/artificial-openai-sam-altman-movie-andrew-garfield/\">Coit Tower\u003c/a> and Stable Cafe in the city’s Mission District – with actors like Jason Schwartzman.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>According to \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2026/06/luca-guadagnino-gives-hope-artificial-release-1236968824/\">Deadline\u003c/a>, Guadagnino described San Francisco on an Italian television show as “a wonderful city.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the great, distinguished U.S. cities, Alfred Hitchcock’s city — a place of great beauty,” he said. “But also great despair, with so many homeless people, so many people living under the influence of fentanyl, while these wonderful, silent, self-driving cars glided past them.”\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>The director added that those contrasts illustrate the film’s theme.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It is a disturbing image — more than just disturbing,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amazon did not reply to KQED’s request for a statement by the time of publication. Earlier this \u003ca href=\"https://variety.com/2026/film/global/luca-guadagnino-sam-altman-movie-artificial-dropped-amazon-1236785830/\">month\u003c/a>, a spokesperson for Amazon said, “We believe that ‘Artificial’ will be better served if it were released by a different studio and are working closely with the filmmaking team to find the film a new home.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Amazon has had a years-long partnership with Guadagnino and has distributed his past films, including tennis drama \u003ca href=\"https://www.imdb.com/list/ls597599759/\">\u003cem>Challengers\u003c/em> in 2024\u003c/a> starring Oakland actress Zendaya and horror-remake \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2018/08/suspiria-luca-guadagnino-amazon-dakota-johnson-comic-con-sequels-1202453398/\">\u003cem>Suspiria\u003c/em> in 2018\u003c/a> starring Dakota Johnson. According to \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/luca-guadagnino-not-surprised-amazon-dropped-openai-movie-1236632083/\">the \u003cem>Hollywood Reporter\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, Guadagnino also said on the Italian network show that, “I can’t say much because we are right in the middle of this situation … [but] these are industrial policies that are certainly not new.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Guadagnino also \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2026/06/luca-guadagnino-gives-hope-artificial-release-1236968824/\">expressed\u003c/a> his concern over how AI consumption habits are changing “the very face of the identity of a place like the United States and the entire world.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the Tuesday statement, Neon said \u003cem>Artificial \u003c/em>was bought during a bidding process. The company also announced that it will “compete in this year’s Oscar race.” Neon was also the distributor behind Best Picture Oscar winners like \u003ca href=\"https://deadline.com/2025/03/oscars-best-picture-neon-record-anora-1236308125/\">\u003cem>Anora\u003c/em>\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/box-office-parasite-heads-huge-50m-us-oscar-win-1279671/\">\u003cem>Parasite\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, \u003c/em>as well as Oakland director \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13989694/boots-riley-i-love-boosters-oakland-interview\">Boots Riley’s \u003cem>I Love Boosters\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>OpenAI did not respond to KQED’s request for comment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>When \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> Deputy Public Defender Sierra Villaran set out to explain to a judge just how sweeping a single police warrant could be, she cited a striking estimate: to comply with the warrant, Google likely had to search the location data of some 500 million people — all to identify six possible suspects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you have location history enabled on your phone, they searched you,” Villaran said. “They searched me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That kind of data dragnet is subject to the Fourth Amendment, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/supreme-court-of-the-united-states\">U.S. Supreme Court\u003c/a> ruled Monday, in a decision civil liberties advocates are calling a significant, if incomplete, victory in the fight over digital surveillance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Chatrie v. United States\u003c/em>, the justices held 6-3 that people are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy in records of where their phones have been, even in public. Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan said police “intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information,” even briefly and from a third-party company like Google.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of naming a suspect and requesting their records, as they would in a traditional warrant, police draw a virtual boundary around a place and a span of time, then ask a company to turn over data on every device inside it — whether or not those people had any link to the crime. In the \u003cem>Chatrie \u003c/em>case, police in Richmond, Virginia, used a so-called “geofence warrant” covering more than 70,000 square meters — more than 13 football fields — of a busy area to find an armed bank robber, vacuuming up data of everyone else nearby in the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Geofence warrants are] the equivalent of going to every home, every apartment, every tent in the city,” Villaran said. “I have no reason to suspect that you were there; I’m going to search your phone anyway. That’s the broadest imaginable search.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082399\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12082399\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2273951119-scaled-e1781111182660.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The U.S. Supreme Court building on May 4, 2026, in Washington, D.C. \u003ccite>(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25-112/399720/20260302152050137_25-112%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf\">brief\u003c/a> in Monday’s case, has fought these warrants for years, arguing they amount to unconstitutional general searches by design. The group \u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/victory-supreme-court-says-constitution-protects-peoples-location-data\">welcomed \u003c/a>the ruling, saying even brief tracking can reveal intimate details of a person’s life — where they worship, who they associate with, their political activity, their relationships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>EFF said the ruling was important because the justices affirmed that data generated by the apps on a phone belongs to the owner and is protected, even when shared with a tech company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gadeir Abbas, attorney for the Council on American-Islamic Relations who has represented clients challenging the seizure and search of their phones, said the ruling matters far beyond geofencing. For decades, courts have generally held that information a person gives to a third party, such as a phone carrier or an internet provider, isn’t constitutionally protected — a principle known as the third-party doctrine. The court’s reasoning, he said, breaks from that assumption, at least for location data.[aside postID=news_12088503 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/260623-SJFile-02-BL-KQED.jpg']“It’s data that your phone gives to another company automatically as you move about the world,” Abbas said, adding that the court found that sharing it doesn’t surrender a person’s expectation of privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The decision is narrow in scope. The justices ruled only that accessing the data is a search; they left it to a lower court to decide whether the specific warrant in the \u003cem>Chatrie \u003c/em>case was valid, a process Abbas estimated could take another five to seven years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The opinion is also limited to smartphone location data, leaving open how it applies to laptops, IP addresses or other digital records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Abbas sees broader stakes for anyone whose devices can be searched, especially travelers. He has represented clients whose phones were seized repeatedly at the border; one man, he said, had five devices taken before the government relented. Abbas noted that Customs and Border Protection agents can currently search and seize a phone based on what he called a vaguely defined “national security concern,” and that this is a standard he said falls short of reasonable suspicion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A ruling like this one, he said, “foretells the end of that practice.” He called it “another brick in the wall against that kind of lawless government surveillance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Villaran noted that the Bay Area has long been a testing ground for this fight. In 2022, a San Francisco court ruled in \u003cem>People v. Dawes\u003c/em> — a case Villaran litigated for the public defender’s office — that a geofence warrant issued to the San Francisco Police Department violated both the Fourth Amendment and California’s electronic privacy law. It was the first time a state court suppressed evidence from such a warrant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071979\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12071979 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/LaptopCellphoneGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/LaptopCellphoneGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/LaptopCellphoneGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/LaptopCellphoneGetty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In Chatrie v. United States, the justices held 6-3 that people are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy in records of where their phones have been, even in public. \u003ccite>(D3sign/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That California law, known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/policerecords\">CalECPA\u003c/a>, is part of what makes the state’s protections stronger than what the Supreme Court just established nationally, Villaran said. \u003cem>Chatrie \u003c/em>rests on the Fourth Amendment alone. California layers CalECPA on top, spelling out specific rules the government must follow to obtain electronic data and offering remedies beyond what the Fourth Amendment provides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Villaran said lasting change is more likely to come from legislation like CalECPA than from individual defendants fighting warrants one at a time. She also noted that Google has largely stopped responding to geofence warrants. However, law enforcement agencies have made the request of other tech companies like Apple, Lyft, Snapchat, Microsoft and Yahoo, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/us/politics/supreme-court-geofence-warrant-cell-phones.html\">\u003cem>The\u003c/em> \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which makes the ruling still relevant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that most folks would be horrified to know they were part of a huge dragnet search to see if they were in a certain part of the city at a certain time,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>When \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/san-francisco\">San Francisco\u003c/a> Deputy Public Defender Sierra Villaran set out to explain to a judge just how sweeping a single police warrant could be, she cited a striking estimate: to comply with the warrant, Google likely had to search the location data of some 500 million people — all to identify six possible suspects.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If you have location history enabled on your phone, they searched you,” Villaran said. “They searched me.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That kind of data dragnet is subject to the Fourth Amendment, the \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/tag/supreme-court-of-the-united-states\">U.S. Supreme Court\u003c/a> ruled Monday, in a decision civil liberties advocates are calling a significant, if incomplete, victory in the fight over digital surveillance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In \u003cem>Chatrie v. United States\u003c/em>, the justices held 6-3 that people are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy in records of where their phones have been, even in public. Writing for the majority, Justice Elena Kagan said police “intrude on that constitutionally protected interest when they demand the information,” even briefly and from a third-party company like Google.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Instead of naming a suspect and requesting their records, as they would in a traditional warrant, police draw a virtual boundary around a place and a span of time, then ask a company to turn over data on every device inside it — whether or not those people had any link to the crime. In the \u003cem>Chatrie \u003c/em>case, police in Richmond, Virginia, used a so-called “geofence warrant” covering more than 70,000 square meters — more than 13 football fields — of a busy area to find an armed bank robber, vacuuming up data of everyone else nearby in the process.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“[Geofence warrants are] the equivalent of going to every home, every apartment, every tent in the city,” Villaran said. “I have no reason to suspect that you were there; I’m going to search your phone anyway. That’s the broadest imaginable search.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12082399\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12082399\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/05/GettyImages-2273951119-scaled-e1781111182660.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The U.S. Supreme Court building on May 4, 2026, in Washington, D.C. \u003ccite>(Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed a \u003ca href=\"https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25-112/399720/20260302152050137_25-112%20Amicus%20Brief.pdf\">brief\u003c/a> in Monday’s case, has fought these warrants for years, arguing they amount to unconstitutional general searches by design. The group \u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/victory-supreme-court-says-constitution-protects-peoples-location-data\">welcomed \u003c/a>the ruling, saying even brief tracking can reveal intimate details of a person’s life — where they worship, who they associate with, their political activity, their relationships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>EFF said the ruling was important because the justices affirmed that data generated by the apps on a phone belongs to the owner and is protected, even when shared with a tech company.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gadeir Abbas, attorney for the Council on American-Islamic Relations who has represented clients challenging the seizure and search of their phones, said the ruling matters far beyond geofencing. For decades, courts have generally held that information a person gives to a third party, such as a phone carrier or an internet provider, isn’t constitutionally protected — a principle known as the third-party doctrine. The court’s reasoning, he said, breaks from that assumption, at least for location data.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>“It’s data that your phone gives to another company automatically as you move about the world,” Abbas said, adding that the court found that sharing it doesn’t surrender a person’s expectation of privacy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The decision is narrow in scope. The justices ruled only that accessing the data is a search; they left it to a lower court to decide whether the specific warrant in the \u003cem>Chatrie \u003c/em>case was valid, a process Abbas estimated could take another five to seven years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The opinion is also limited to smartphone location data, leaving open how it applies to laptops, IP addresses or other digital records.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Abbas sees broader stakes for anyone whose devices can be searched, especially travelers. He has represented clients whose phones were seized repeatedly at the border; one man, he said, had five devices taken before the government relented. Abbas noted that Customs and Border Protection agents can currently search and seize a phone based on what he called a vaguely defined “national security concern,” and that this is a standard he said falls short of reasonable suspicion.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A ruling like this one, he said, “foretells the end of that practice.” He called it “another brick in the wall against that kind of lawless government surveillance.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Villaran noted that the Bay Area has long been a testing ground for this fight. In 2022, a San Francisco court ruled in \u003cem>People v. Dawes\u003c/em> — a case Villaran litigated for the public defender’s office — that a geofence warrant issued to the San Francisco Police Department violated both the Fourth Amendment and California’s electronic privacy law. It was the first time a state court suppressed evidence from such a warrant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12071979\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12071979 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/LaptopCellphoneGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/LaptopCellphoneGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/LaptopCellphoneGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/02/LaptopCellphoneGetty-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">In Chatrie v. United States, the justices held 6-3 that people are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy in records of where their phones have been, even in public. \u003ccite>(D3sign/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>That California law, known as \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/policerecords\">CalECPA\u003c/a>, is part of what makes the state’s protections stronger than what the Supreme Court just established nationally, Villaran said. \u003cem>Chatrie \u003c/em>rests on the Fourth Amendment alone. California layers CalECPA on top, spelling out specific rules the government must follow to obtain electronic data and offering remedies beyond what the Fourth Amendment provides.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Villaran said lasting change is more likely to come from legislation like CalECPA than from individual defendants fighting warrants one at a time. She also noted that Google has largely stopped responding to geofence warrants. However, law enforcement agencies have made the request of other tech companies like Apple, Lyft, Snapchat, Microsoft and Yahoo, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/us/politics/supreme-court-geofence-warrant-cell-phones.html\">\u003cem>The\u003c/em> \u003cem>New York Times\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, which makes the ruling still relevant.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I think that most folks would be horrified to know they were part of a huge dragnet search to see if they were in a certain part of the city at a certain time,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"headTitle": "Giants’ Pride Controversy, Data Center in Pittsburg, and Youth-Backed Improvements to SF Bus Route | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cp>In this June 2026 edition of the monthly news roundup, we discuss the Giants’ pride month controversy, the debate over a new data center coming to Pittsburg, and how high school students pushed for improvements to their local bus line in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9556918216&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/pittsburg-controversy-over-data-center-old-delta-view-golf-course\">Pittsburg controversy over data center on old Delta View Golf Course\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/pittsburg-california-steel-mill-21307691.php\">This Bay Area suburb lost its main industry. Can it rebuild?\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084077/in-san-francisco-students-become-transit-advocates-to-fix-the-citys-school-bus\">In San Francisco, Students Become Transit Advocates to Fix ‘the City’s School Bus’ \u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/sf-giants-fans-pride-response-22318144.php\">Fans chew out SF Giants for team’s ‘weak’ response to Pride Night saga\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"\" title=\"\">\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Episode transcript\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This transcript is computer-generated. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:51] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevara and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted, and welcome to our June news roundup where we talk about some of the other stories on our radars this month. In the studio with me is Senior Editor Alan Montecillo. Hey, Alan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:07] Hello, good morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:08] And our very special guest this week is KQED producer Francesca Fenzi. Hey Francesca.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:01:14] Hey, thank you for having me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:15] Yeah, it’s so nice to have you here with us filling in on the show before our July break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:22] Yes, as long-time listeners of the show know, we do not make new episodes in the month of July. There’s a few reasons why we do this. The main one is that it’s a lot of work to make three episodes a week with only three people. And so this is really the only time of year where we have the ability to do any kind of long-term planning, any strategizing about the future of the show. It’s also frankly the only times, Ericka, when both you and I can take vacation at the same time. So in July we’ll be taking a bit of a break, doing some planning, and we’ll also be introducing a new producer for the show, which we will have later on in July.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:59] Right, right. So lots to come for you all listeners when we get back in August, but make sure you stay subscribed to The Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:02:08] Maybe catch up on old episodes you didn’t finish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:11] Totally, or take a listen to some Bay Curious while you’re missing us. We’re also wrapping up the end of Pride Month here, and I guess to dive into our stories for this month, Francesca, not a great way to transition into your, I guess, kind of Pride month story, but tell us about the story you brought for us today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:02:38] Yes, yes. Well, as you may already know a little bit, there has been a bit of a pride controversy around the Giants, the San Francisco baseball team. So at a Pride Month event on June 12, this was a game themed around pride that the Giants play every year, or at least they’ve played this every year since about 2021. So it’s been going for a while. And three pitchers for the Giants walked onto the field with inscribed Bible verses on their hats. And that kicked off a controversy that we’re still feeling the ripple effects of for the rest of the month\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:03:12] Right. So these were, um, for pride night, they were wearing these caps, right? That had the normal SF logo, but that was rainbow colored, right. And so the pictures had written references to Bible verses kind of over or on the hats. Is that right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:03:25] Yeah, exactly. So the typical uniform that players wear for this pride event, it’s the same San Francisco Giants jersey with rainbow insignia on the on the jerseys on the hats. And these three pictures, particularly the starting pitcher Landen Roupp, when he came onto the field, his hat had a reference to a passage from the book of Genesis, which had been scrolled over the rainbow logo. This is a passage that characterizes the rainbow as a sort of covenant between God and the faithful in Christianity. Obviously, rainbow is super prominent symbol for the queer community as well. So this Bible verse has been used by Christian groups in the past that oppose same-sex marriage and homosexuality in general to sort of, you know, kind of counter the narrative that rainbows are symbolic for the, the queer Community. And it’s kind of a controversial move.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:16] Yeah, and I’ve seen quite a bit of the backlash online. I mean, a lot of Giants fans feeling really disappointed in the team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:04:28] Yes, the fan response has been pretty negative, particularly from the queer community. Obviously, San Francisco is a city that has long been a mecca for queer people, super gay city. And historically, the baseball team has been really aligned with that. The Giants were the first professional sports team to host a game raising awareness for and money for the AIDS epidemic. That was in 1994. And then, of course, in 2021, they began. This Pride event and we’re actually the first team to incorporate Rainbow Colors and do a Pride-themed game annually. Many other Major League Baseball teams have adopted that practice now. So the Giants have a pretty pro-LGBTQ community history and I think fans were very upset by that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:05:14] So three players who wrote these verses over the Pride themed hats, I’m sure they’ve seen a lot of the backlash that’s happened. Have they responded to this publicly at all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:05:26] Well, so the players themselves have largely let the Bible verses speak for themselves. There was a post-game interview with that starting pitcher who I mentioned, Landon Roop. He more or less described this as something that represents his relationship to Christianity, the covenant between him and God, and tried to kind of downplay it as something that was a broader cultural statement and more about a personal belief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:53] What about the franchise more broadly and also the MLB, how are they responding to this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:05:58] Yeah, so the major league baseball officials did reprimand these pitchers, but not for the contents of their message. So MLB has a policy against slogans and writing on team uniforms generally, and they made a really big point of citing this as a rules violation of that standing no slogans policy. In fact, they even compared it to writing things like Happy Birthday Mom, which was another real example that a player’s been disciplined for in the past. So I think that landed a little lackluster for fans who were hoping to see the league take more of a stance on the content and the messaging. And then the team’s president, Buster Posey, this is his second year managing the team and he sort of dodged the controversy altogether.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reporter \u003c/strong>[00:06:43] Buster, you were a member of this organization for a long time, and every year there’s been a night to honor the gay community. Did you object to those nights when you were player?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Buster Posey \u003c/strong>[00:06:57] I mentioned that I’m not going to revisit it, so if you want to ask baseball questions, I’ll answer baseball questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reporter \u003c/strong>[00:07:02] Were you planning to reach out to the gay community about any of this or no?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Buster Posey \u003c/strong>[00:07:06] Again, if you wanna go baseball questions I made my statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:07:09] Really awkward press conference where he actively avoided answering many questions about this. In addition to some of the questions about how the team was playing and some other uncomfortable things he didn’t want to have to talk about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:07:23] I feel like whenever anything remotely controversial happens in San Francisco, many people across the country take notice and have opinions about it, particularly conservative media and conservative political figures. I know there’s been some stuff around that, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:07:37] Yes, yes, certainly this became a national news story. The New York Times has been reporting about it. Fox News has been recording about it, and part of the reason why this has blown up so much is that it fits into this broader context of the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric, which has been demonizing queer and trans people. That, of course, has frustrated and frightened many people in the community, particularly in this month of pride, which is usually and a time to celebrate. And then it’s also fitting into this larger conversation that’s playing out in sports. This is, of course, not the first time that athletes or even Bay Area athletes have used their platform or visibility to advocate for personal beliefs. The most prominent example of that probably being 49ers football player Colin Kaepernick. He, of of course we all remember, took a knee to protest police brutality and racial injustice in 2016 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. This current controversy with the Giants has become a flash point for some of those conversations about what the role of players’ beliefs should be in sport. And of course, the conservative media outlets have kind of latched onto this as being a one-for-one comparison. Fans have pushed back on this and have been describing the Bible verses as bigotry and something that is excluding a body of the fandom, a group of people, and not necessarily akin to the Black Lives Matter. Protests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] And if I’m understanding correctly as well, Francesca, the Giants aren’t doing very well in terms of their games either, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:09:16] That has been I think the roughest part is that they are the Giants are not doing well this season. They are fourth in the division. They’ve lost a lot of games and I think even more specifically, they have lost a lotta games even when they’ve scored a lot of runs. So the fans have really pushed the blame on that to the bullpen and onto the pitchers for losing these advantages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:42] Well, Francesca, thank you so much for bringing that story. Appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:09:45] Yeah, my pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:47] Well, we’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we’re going to talk about some of the other stories on our radars this month. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:45] And welcome back to the Bay’s June News Roundup, where we talk about some of the other stories on our radars this month. And now we’re gonna talk about a story that I am bringing from Pittsburg in Contra Costa County, where the city is planning to build a 300,000 square foot data center on a former golf course. And residents are not happy about it. Earlier this month, more than 300 Pittsburg residents packed this city hall meeting to express their concerns over this new data center. For context, Pittsburg is this working class suburb. It’s got real blue collar roots and it lost its main industry, the steel plant a couple years ago. And so it’s really sort of struggled with its economic identity and its economic future. And so meanwhile, the city says that this kind of is the answer to its economic problems, but of course others say this doesn’t really reflect the long-term vision that residents have for their city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:11:55] So, uh, this data center you mentioned on a former golf course, 300,000 square feet, um, who is behind it and what is it supposed to be used for?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:06] The company behind this data center is called AVAIO. They say that they develop this sort of energy smart hyper scale data centers that are used for AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:12:18] So the argument for this data center in Pittsburg is related to jobs and economic opportunity. You mentioned though that there’s some vocal pushback against it. What are those folks saying?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:30] There’s a lot of concern from folks, the kind of things that you hear often when it comes to pushback on these data centers, concern about the resources it’ll take, the power, the water that it’ll take to cool down these data centers. But another really big part of this in Pittsburg in particular is this big question that residents have of like, can this valuable land be used for? Something else. Something that actually benefits the community on a daily basis. Maybe it’s a park or mixed-use retail dining, for example, or more community gathering spaces. Something that folks can really use on the day-to-day in their daily lives to improve life in Pittsburg. Another big part of this, too, is this question of transparency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pittsburg resident \u003c/strong>[00:13:28] How about you listen to the community when you represent. You represent that. If you want some money, I got some change in my pocket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:33] The interesting thing is that this data center was approved unanimously a couple of years ago, actually, in November of 2024. It seems like the public backlash is only sort of happening now, and that is in part because of these transparency concerns. I think a lot of folks spoke at this city council meeting earlier this month, really feeling not included in the process of deciding to build this data center, not feeling like they had enough opportunity to express their concerns about it. There’s a petition going around that’s been signed by more than 20,000 people now, and it states that this is not an opposition to technology or progress, but it’s a call for, quote, thoughtful planning and responsible land use that reflects the priorities of the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:14:24] Regarding the timeline, I also wonder if part of this is because there’s more of an AI backlash sentiment in the air in 2026 than there was in 2024, in that not just in the Bay, but nationwide opposition to data centers is perhaps one of the few tangible things that AI skeptics feel they can do to oppose this seemingly kind of so-called, framed as inevitable growth of AI. Not being a Pittsburgh resident. I don’t know if that’s the case, but I wonder if part of that, if you’re the city, you’re like, well, we had this two years ago, like, what’s your problem with it now, I think the conversation day to day around AI data centers is pretty different than it was two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:08] No, totally. I mean, I feel like I know so much more about the water usage of these data centers than I did two years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:15:15] Same. Has the company behind this data center in Pittsburgh said where they’re planning to pull energy and resources from?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:25] City officials have said that the power will not come from the PG&E power grid that supplies local residents, but instead something called the Pittsburgh Power Company. And so they’re really trying to say, like, this won’t cause any increase in local rates, for example, in people’s PG&Es bills. And then they’re saying that the water that will be used to cool the center will be primarily recycled water from the Delta Diablo treatment plant, according to the city of Pittsburgh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Allison Spells \u003c/strong>[00:15:57] There are two concerns you hear about data centers all across the country, electricity and water. In Pittsburgh, the approved project handles both in ways that are specific to this community, and this is where it really stands apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:11] John Funberg, the Assistant Director of Community and Economic Development, and Allison Spells, who’s a Senior Planner for the city, really emphasized in this video that, you know, the project is operating under very strict environmental rules that they did, their due diligence to do an environmental impact report on the potential, you now, consequences of having a data center in the community. And they say that they have plans for how to mitigate the environmental impact of this project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:16:46] And if I understand it correctly, this is not the only data center in the Bay Area that is meeting with some local pushback, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:55] Yeah, that’s correct. Not too far away in Oakley, actually, the city recently unanimously voted to ban data centers. And then in December, Amazon began construction on a super controversial data center in Gilroy. So this is, I feel like another example of just these communities that exist on like the fringes of Silicon Valley. That are sort of struggling economically and then having to choose between a future where data centers are the future or it’s something else. And that is it for my very complicated news roundup story. Alan, we’re gonna turn to you for the last one here. What story did you bring for us today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:17:48] So I have a fun, inspiring, lighter story about transit activism in San Francisco. This is a story by KQED’s Elise Manoukian about how students have been successfully pushing for improvements to their local bus line, specifically the 29. Shout out to the sunset, that’s where I live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:18:07] And so Alan, for those of us who don’t live in San Francisco, tell me more about the 29 and who it serves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:18:13] This bus line goes through about 35 different schools across the city. 12% of riders on the 29 are students. That’s more than the city’s average. It goes from Baker Beach on one end, south through the Richmond, Golden Gate Park, the Sunset. It goes through San Francisco State and actually cuts east through Ingleside, Excelsior, Bayview. It’s actually the longest daytime bus route. And what students say, and honestly, many riders, including myself, would observe, is that. There’ve been lots of problems with crowding, delays, reliability. I mean, this is a very used bus line, actually. It’s about at 90% of pre-pandemic ridership because it, it serves lots of neighborhoods and not downtown. But if you can imagine a public bus line that has lots of students, you know, at around eight o’clock and 3.30, there’s just a huge influx of people getting on the bus. So you wind up with busses that get bunched together. Maybe you think you’re going to get on a bus, but it’s too full and you got to wait for the next one. Maybe you’re a student waiting for your bus in the morning and then you’re late for class because the bus you thought was gonna be available is not available. Some of that advocacy that came from students, particularly a group called the Lowell Transit Club at Lowell High School, had been pushing for changes since, honestly, before COVID, since around 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:19:30] I definitely remember being a student at San Francisco State, standing at the bus stop and then seeing a packed 29, filled like sardine, people just like squished in there and just always being like, God, I’m not going to get on that. The worst, truly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:19:48] The worst feeling. And so what were some of the changes that these students proposed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:19:54] Right, so some of these students at the Lowell Transit Club had been going to public meetings and organizing feedback campaigns, talking directly to SFMTA officials. So a lot of these are sort of quality of life improvements, consolidating bus stops to help increase the speed, infrastructure improvements, making wider sidewalks so it’s easier to board. Sometimes consolidating stops can get a bit contentious because you get into this problem of access, like maybe you live near a bus stop and it’s no longer available. But then the trade-off is that You know, fewer stops equals going faster. Some of these proposed changes had even been, um, going on before COVID. So yeah, a series of changes designed to create faster service, more convenient service, and avoid this sort of overcrowding problem where, or this issue when you think you’re going to get on a bus and it’s packed to the brim and you just got to wait for the next one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:20:43] I mean, I think it’s interesting that some of these students have been working on this since like before the pandemic. I imagine some of them have probably graduated by this point, but I don’t know. It seems like an inspiring story about like, what you can do to like improve their community’s transit system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:21:05] Yeah, I mean, I think it’s inspiring. This student advocacy has been going on, like you said, in various ways since 2019. So at this point in high school time, that’s like multiple generations of students who have been talking directly to SFMTA. I think its great whenever local officials are willing to talk directly to the people who use the thing that they’re in charge of and see what they can do with limited resources. And yeah, in many cases, some of these students can’t even vote yet. But they are constituents nonetheless, because they use a thing funded by tax dollars. And it’s not over yet either. There are some students who say they want a rapid line on the 29, kind of like the 38 that goes down Geary. Can we get a rapid-line that has fewer stops but faster service? SFMTA said they like the idea, but they want to stabilize funding before they consider it. But some of these students are also part of that organizing effort for the sales tax measures on the ballot this November. Even though they can’t vote in it. So, so yeah, I mean, organizing, talking to your official, it doesn’t always yield what you want, but it can happen. You can improve things where you live little by little.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>In this June 2026 edition of the monthly news roundup, we discuss the Giants’ pride month controversy, the debate over a new data center coming to Pittsburg, and how high school students pushed for improvements to their local bus line in San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c!-- iframe plugin v.4.3 wordpress.org/plugins/iframe/ -->\u003cbr>\n\u003ciframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https://playlist.megaphone.fm?e=KQINC9556918216&light=true\" width=\"100%\" class=\"iframe-class\">\u003c/iframe>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cb>Links:\u003c/b>\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.ktvu.com/news/pittsburg-controversy-over-data-center-old-delta-view-golf-course\">Pittsburg controversy over data center on old Delta View Golf Course\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/pittsburg-california-steel-mill-21307691.php\">This Bay Area suburb lost its main industry. Can it rebuild?\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12084077/in-san-francisco-students-become-transit-advocates-to-fix-the-citys-school-bus\">In San Francisco, Students Become Transit Advocates to Fix ‘the City’s School Bus’ \u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>\u003ca href=\"https://www.sfgate.com/giants/article/sf-giants-fans-pride-response-22318144.php\">Fans chew out SF Giants for team’s ‘weak’ response to Pride Night saga\u003c/a>\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>\u003cspan class=\"\" title=\"\">\u003ci>Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by The Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco-Northern California Local.\u003c/i>\u003c/span>\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Episode transcript\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This transcript is computer-generated. While our team has reviewed it, there may be errors.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:00:51] I’m Ericka Cruz Guevara and welcome to The Bay, local news to keep you rooted, and welcome to our June news roundup where we talk about some of the other stories on our radars this month. In the studio with me is Senior Editor Alan Montecillo. Hey, Alan.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:07] Hello, good morning.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:08] And our very special guest this week is KQED producer Francesca Fenzi. Hey Francesca.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:01:14] Hey, thank you for having me.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:15] Yeah, it’s so nice to have you here with us filling in on the show before our July break.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:01:22] Yes, as long-time listeners of the show know, we do not make new episodes in the month of July. There’s a few reasons why we do this. The main one is that it’s a lot of work to make three episodes a week with only three people. And so this is really the only time of year where we have the ability to do any kind of long-term planning, any strategizing about the future of the show. It’s also frankly the only times, Ericka, when both you and I can take vacation at the same time. So in July we’ll be taking a bit of a break, doing some planning, and we’ll also be introducing a new producer for the show, which we will have later on in July.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:01:59] Right, right. So lots to come for you all listeners when we get back in August, but make sure you stay subscribed to The Bay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:02:08] Maybe catch up on old episodes you didn’t finish.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:02:11] Totally, or take a listen to some Bay Curious while you’re missing us. We’re also wrapping up the end of Pride Month here, and I guess to dive into our stories for this month, Francesca, not a great way to transition into your, I guess, kind of Pride month story, but tell us about the story you brought for us today.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:02:38] Yes, yes. Well, as you may already know a little bit, there has been a bit of a pride controversy around the Giants, the San Francisco baseball team. So at a Pride Month event on June 12, this was a game themed around pride that the Giants play every year, or at least they’ve played this every year since about 2021. So it’s been going for a while. And three pitchers for the Giants walked onto the field with inscribed Bible verses on their hats. And that kicked off a controversy that we’re still feeling the ripple effects of for the rest of the month\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:03:12] Right. So these were, um, for pride night, they were wearing these caps, right? That had the normal SF logo, but that was rainbow colored, right. And so the pictures had written references to Bible verses kind of over or on the hats. Is that right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:03:25] Yeah, exactly. So the typical uniform that players wear for this pride event, it’s the same San Francisco Giants jersey with rainbow insignia on the on the jerseys on the hats. And these three pictures, particularly the starting pitcher Landen Roupp, when he came onto the field, his hat had a reference to a passage from the book of Genesis, which had been scrolled over the rainbow logo. This is a passage that characterizes the rainbow as a sort of covenant between God and the faithful in Christianity. Obviously, rainbow is super prominent symbol for the queer community as well. So this Bible verse has been used by Christian groups in the past that oppose same-sex marriage and homosexuality in general to sort of, you know, kind of counter the narrative that rainbows are symbolic for the, the queer Community. And it’s kind of a controversial move.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:04:16] Yeah, and I’ve seen quite a bit of the backlash online. I mean, a lot of Giants fans feeling really disappointed in the team.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:04:28] Yes, the fan response has been pretty negative, particularly from the queer community. Obviously, San Francisco is a city that has long been a mecca for queer people, super gay city. And historically, the baseball team has been really aligned with that. The Giants were the first professional sports team to host a game raising awareness for and money for the AIDS epidemic. That was in 1994. And then, of course, in 2021, they began. This Pride event and we’re actually the first team to incorporate Rainbow Colors and do a Pride-themed game annually. Many other Major League Baseball teams have adopted that practice now. So the Giants have a pretty pro-LGBTQ community history and I think fans were very upset by that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:05:14] So three players who wrote these verses over the Pride themed hats, I’m sure they’ve seen a lot of the backlash that’s happened. Have they responded to this publicly at all?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:05:26] Well, so the players themselves have largely let the Bible verses speak for themselves. There was a post-game interview with that starting pitcher who I mentioned, Landon Roop. He more or less described this as something that represents his relationship to Christianity, the covenant between him and God, and tried to kind of downplay it as something that was a broader cultural statement and more about a personal belief.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:05:53] What about the franchise more broadly and also the MLB, how are they responding to this?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:05:58] Yeah, so the major league baseball officials did reprimand these pitchers, but not for the contents of their message. So MLB has a policy against slogans and writing on team uniforms generally, and they made a really big point of citing this as a rules violation of that standing no slogans policy. In fact, they even compared it to writing things like Happy Birthday Mom, which was another real example that a player’s been disciplined for in the past. So I think that landed a little lackluster for fans who were hoping to see the league take more of a stance on the content and the messaging. And then the team’s president, Buster Posey, this is his second year managing the team and he sort of dodged the controversy altogether.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reporter \u003c/strong>[00:06:43] Buster, you were a member of this organization for a long time, and every year there’s been a night to honor the gay community. Did you object to those nights when you were player?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Buster Posey \u003c/strong>[00:06:57] I mentioned that I’m not going to revisit it, so if you want to ask baseball questions, I’ll answer baseball questions.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Reporter \u003c/strong>[00:07:02] Were you planning to reach out to the gay community about any of this or no?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Buster Posey \u003c/strong>[00:07:06] Again, if you wanna go baseball questions I made my statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:07:09] Really awkward press conference where he actively avoided answering many questions about this. In addition to some of the questions about how the team was playing and some other uncomfortable things he didn’t want to have to talk about.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:07:23] I feel like whenever anything remotely controversial happens in San Francisco, many people across the country take notice and have opinions about it, particularly conservative media and conservative political figures. I know there’s been some stuff around that, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:07:37] Yes, yes, certainly this became a national news story. The New York Times has been reporting about it. Fox News has been recording about it, and part of the reason why this has blown up so much is that it fits into this broader context of the Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive rhetoric, which has been demonizing queer and trans people. That, of course, has frustrated and frightened many people in the community, particularly in this month of pride, which is usually and a time to celebrate. And then it’s also fitting into this larger conversation that’s playing out in sports. This is, of course, not the first time that athletes or even Bay Area athletes have used their platform or visibility to advocate for personal beliefs. The most prominent example of that probably being 49ers football player Colin Kaepernick. He, of of course we all remember, took a knee to protest police brutality and racial injustice in 2016 as part of the Black Lives Matter movement. This current controversy with the Giants has become a flash point for some of those conversations about what the role of players’ beliefs should be in sport. And of course, the conservative media outlets have kind of latched onto this as being a one-for-one comparison. Fans have pushed back on this and have been describing the Bible verses as bigotry and something that is excluding a body of the fandom, a group of people, and not necessarily akin to the Black Lives Matter. Protests.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:06] And if I’m understanding correctly as well, Francesca, the Giants aren’t doing very well in terms of their games either, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:09:16] That has been I think the roughest part is that they are the Giants are not doing well this season. They are fourth in the division. They’ve lost a lot of games and I think even more specifically, they have lost a lotta games even when they’ve scored a lot of runs. So the fans have really pushed the blame on that to the bullpen and onto the pitchers for losing these advantages.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:42] Well, Francesca, thank you so much for bringing that story. Appreciate it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:09:45] Yeah, my pleasure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:09:47] Well, we’re gonna take a quick break, but when we come back, we’re going to talk about some of the other stories on our radars this month. Stay with us.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:10:45] And welcome back to the Bay’s June News Roundup, where we talk about some of the other stories on our radars this month. And now we’re gonna talk about a story that I am bringing from Pittsburg in Contra Costa County, where the city is planning to build a 300,000 square foot data center on a former golf course. And residents are not happy about it. Earlier this month, more than 300 Pittsburg residents packed this city hall meeting to express their concerns over this new data center. For context, Pittsburg is this working class suburb. It’s got real blue collar roots and it lost its main industry, the steel plant a couple years ago. And so it’s really sort of struggled with its economic identity and its economic future. And so meanwhile, the city says that this kind of is the answer to its economic problems, but of course others say this doesn’t really reflect the long-term vision that residents have for their city.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:11:55] So, uh, this data center you mentioned on a former golf course, 300,000 square feet, um, who is behind it and what is it supposed to be used for?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:06] The company behind this data center is called AVAIO. They say that they develop this sort of energy smart hyper scale data centers that are used for AI.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:12:18] So the argument for this data center in Pittsburg is related to jobs and economic opportunity. You mentioned though that there’s some vocal pushback against it. What are those folks saying?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:12:30] There’s a lot of concern from folks, the kind of things that you hear often when it comes to pushback on these data centers, concern about the resources it’ll take, the power, the water that it’ll take to cool down these data centers. But another really big part of this in Pittsburg in particular is this big question that residents have of like, can this valuable land be used for? Something else. Something that actually benefits the community on a daily basis. Maybe it’s a park or mixed-use retail dining, for example, or more community gathering spaces. Something that folks can really use on the day-to-day in their daily lives to improve life in Pittsburg. Another big part of this, too, is this question of transparency.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Pittsburg resident \u003c/strong>[00:13:28] How about you listen to the community when you represent. You represent that. If you want some money, I got some change in my pocket.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:13:33] The interesting thing is that this data center was approved unanimously a couple of years ago, actually, in November of 2024. It seems like the public backlash is only sort of happening now, and that is in part because of these transparency concerns. I think a lot of folks spoke at this city council meeting earlier this month, really feeling not included in the process of deciding to build this data center, not feeling like they had enough opportunity to express their concerns about it. There’s a petition going around that’s been signed by more than 20,000 people now, and it states that this is not an opposition to technology or progress, but it’s a call for, quote, thoughtful planning and responsible land use that reflects the priorities of the community.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:14:24] Regarding the timeline, I also wonder if part of this is because there’s more of an AI backlash sentiment in the air in 2026 than there was in 2024, in that not just in the Bay, but nationwide opposition to data centers is perhaps one of the few tangible things that AI skeptics feel they can do to oppose this seemingly kind of so-called, framed as inevitable growth of AI. Not being a Pittsburgh resident. I don’t know if that’s the case, but I wonder if part of that, if you’re the city, you’re like, well, we had this two years ago, like, what’s your problem with it now, I think the conversation day to day around AI data centers is pretty different than it was two years.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:08] No, totally. I mean, I feel like I know so much more about the water usage of these data centers than I did two years ago.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:15:15] Same. Has the company behind this data center in Pittsburgh said where they’re planning to pull energy and resources from?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:15:25] City officials have said that the power will not come from the PG&E power grid that supplies local residents, but instead something called the Pittsburgh Power Company. And so they’re really trying to say, like, this won’t cause any increase in local rates, for example, in people’s PG&Es bills. And then they’re saying that the water that will be used to cool the center will be primarily recycled water from the Delta Diablo treatment plant, according to the city of Pittsburgh.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Allison Spells \u003c/strong>[00:15:57] There are two concerns you hear about data centers all across the country, electricity and water. In Pittsburgh, the approved project handles both in ways that are specific to this community, and this is where it really stands apart.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:11] John Funberg, the Assistant Director of Community and Economic Development, and Allison Spells, who’s a Senior Planner for the city, really emphasized in this video that, you know, the project is operating under very strict environmental rules that they did, their due diligence to do an environmental impact report on the potential, you now, consequences of having a data center in the community. And they say that they have plans for how to mitigate the environmental impact of this project.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:16:46] And if I understand it correctly, this is not the only data center in the Bay Area that is meeting with some local pushback, right?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:16:55] Yeah, that’s correct. Not too far away in Oakley, actually, the city recently unanimously voted to ban data centers. And then in December, Amazon began construction on a super controversial data center in Gilroy. So this is, I feel like another example of just these communities that exist on like the fringes of Silicon Valley. That are sort of struggling economically and then having to choose between a future where data centers are the future or it’s something else. And that is it for my very complicated news roundup story. Alan, we’re gonna turn to you for the last one here. What story did you bring for us today?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:17:48] So I have a fun, inspiring, lighter story about transit activism in San Francisco. This is a story by KQED’s Elise Manoukian about how students have been successfully pushing for improvements to their local bus line, specifically the 29. Shout out to the sunset, that’s where I live.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:18:07] And so Alan, for those of us who don’t live in San Francisco, tell me more about the 29 and who it serves.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:18:13] This bus line goes through about 35 different schools across the city. 12% of riders on the 29 are students. That’s more than the city’s average. It goes from Baker Beach on one end, south through the Richmond, Golden Gate Park, the Sunset. It goes through San Francisco State and actually cuts east through Ingleside, Excelsior, Bayview. It’s actually the longest daytime bus route. And what students say, and honestly, many riders, including myself, would observe, is that. There’ve been lots of problems with crowding, delays, reliability. I mean, this is a very used bus line, actually. It’s about at 90% of pre-pandemic ridership because it, it serves lots of neighborhoods and not downtown. But if you can imagine a public bus line that has lots of students, you know, at around eight o’clock and 3.30, there’s just a huge influx of people getting on the bus. So you wind up with busses that get bunched together. Maybe you think you’re going to get on a bus, but it’s too full and you got to wait for the next one. Maybe you’re a student waiting for your bus in the morning and then you’re late for class because the bus you thought was gonna be available is not available. Some of that advocacy that came from students, particularly a group called the Lowell Transit Club at Lowell High School, had been pushing for changes since, honestly, before COVID, since around 2019.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:19:30] I definitely remember being a student at San Francisco State, standing at the bus stop and then seeing a packed 29, filled like sardine, people just like squished in there and just always being like, God, I’m not going to get on that. The worst, truly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Francesca Fenzi \u003c/strong>[00:19:48] The worst feeling. And so what were some of the changes that these students proposed?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:19:54] Right, so some of these students at the Lowell Transit Club had been going to public meetings and organizing feedback campaigns, talking directly to SFMTA officials. So a lot of these are sort of quality of life improvements, consolidating bus stops to help increase the speed, infrastructure improvements, making wider sidewalks so it’s easier to board. Sometimes consolidating stops can get a bit contentious because you get into this problem of access, like maybe you live near a bus stop and it’s no longer available. But then the trade-off is that You know, fewer stops equals going faster. Some of these proposed changes had even been, um, going on before COVID. So yeah, a series of changes designed to create faster service, more convenient service, and avoid this sort of overcrowding problem where, or this issue when you think you’re going to get on a bus and it’s packed to the brim and you just got to wait for the next one.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Ericka Cruz Guevarra \u003c/strong>[00:20:43] I mean, I think it’s interesting that some of these students have been working on this since like before the pandemic. I imagine some of them have probably graduated by this point, but I don’t know. It seems like an inspiring story about like, what you can do to like improve their community’s transit system.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Alan Montecillo \u003c/strong>[00:21:05] Yeah, I mean, I think it’s inspiring. This student advocacy has been going on, like you said, in various ways since 2019. So at this point in high school time, that’s like multiple generations of students who have been talking directly to SFMTA. I think its great whenever local officials are willing to talk directly to the people who use the thing that they’re in charge of and see what they can do with limited resources. And yeah, in many cases, some of these students can’t even vote yet. But they are constituents nonetheless, because they use a thing funded by tax dollars. And it’s not over yet either. There are some students who say they want a rapid line on the 29, kind of like the 38 that goes down Geary. Can we get a rapid-line that has fewer stops but faster service? SFMTA said they like the idea, but they want to stabilize funding before they consider it. But some of these students are also part of that organizing effort for the sales tax measures on the ballot this November. Even though they can’t vote in it. So, so yeah, I mean, organizing, talking to your official, it doesn’t always yield what you want, but it can happen. You can improve things where you live little by little.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is a collaboration between KQED’s podcast \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/closealltabs\">\u003cem>Close All Tabs \u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">\u003cem>How We Get By\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, American airline company JetBlue accidentally, \u003cem>possibly \u003c/em>confirmed a superstition long suspected by travelers: that corporations might be looking at your internet data and price-gouging based on your habits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As outlined in a class action lawsuit, a JetBlue customer posted on social media platform X to complain that a flight they were looking at had increased by $200 overnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To which JetBlue’s official corporate X account replied: \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/lawsuit-accuses-jetblue-using-customers-personal-data-raise-air-fares-2026-04-23/\">‘Try clearing your cache and cookies or booking with an incognito window.\u003c/a>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The post from JetBlue was a “stunning thing to see on Twitter,” said Lindsay Owens, an economic sociologist who runs \u003ca href=\"https://groundworkcollaborative.org/\">the affordability think tank Groundwork Collaborative\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company’s tweet was deleted, with \u003ca href=\"https://gizmodo.com/jetblue-responds-to-accusations-of-using-surveillance-pricing-after-viral-tweet-2000748602\">JetBlue’s team claiming\u003c/a> that the post was mistaken and that the carrier didn’t use personal information to set flight prices. But for experts like Owens, it felt like a confession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JetBlue is \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/lawsuit-accuses-jetblue-using-customers-personal-data-raise-air-fares-2026-04-23/\">now facing a lawsuit\u003c/a> for allegedly using what’s called “surveillance pricing.” But it’s not the first time Owens has run into this from an airline. In fact, last year, she said she listened in on \u003ca href=\"https://abcnews.com/GMA/Travel/delta-ai-ticket-pricing-means-air-travel/story?id=124343088\">a Delta call discussing the carrier’s new partnership with Israel-based AI company\u003c/a> Fetcherr, which specializes in personalized pricing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Fetcherr’s white paper, “phase two was called \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-04/how-ai-can-raise-airline-ticket-prices\">‘the exploitation phase,’\u003c/a>” Owens said. “That’s when they’ve learned everything they can about Delta’s competitors, about their customers, and when they start going for broke, and they start increasing those prices and getting better revenues for Delta.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12050041\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12050041\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/DeltaSFOGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1332\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/DeltaSFOGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/DeltaSFOGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/DeltaSFOGetty-1536x1023.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Delta Airlines plane lands at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in San Francisco, California, on July 24, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Delta found itself in a firestorm when details of the partnership went public, leading Delta to \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/delta-gets-blowback-for-using-ai-to-set-airfares-c9e1d9ea\">later announce it didn’t plan to go through with the strategy\u003c/a>. The airline wrote \u003ca href=\"https://news.delta.com/delta-responds-misinformation-around-ai-pricing\">in a public letter\u003c/a> to senators inquiring about the program that “there is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing or plans to use that targets customers with individualized prices based on personal data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumers are already painfully familiar with the concept of “dynamic pricing,” in which the cost fluctuates based on supply and demand. The most famous example, of course, is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13988577/live-nation-ticketmaster-acted-as-monopoly-overcharged-tickets-jury-trial-verdict\">concert tickets getting more expensive as seats fill up\u003c/a>. It’s even being used to dictate \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12086537/paying-for-parking-in-san-francisco-make-sure-youre-using-the-right-apps\">parking meter prices in San Francisco.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But surveillance pricing goes further than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re doing anything they can to learn about you, including sometimes spying on you,” Owens said. “Companies gather a lot of data about us. Some of it we offer up willingly: our browsing history. We accept the cookies. We agree to let them sell our data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And all of that can be used to set a price for you specifically,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12085876/12085876\">Close All Tabs podcast spoke to Owens\u003c/a> about the world of surveillance pricing, how it shows up in day-to-day shopping, whether it’s even legal in the first place and what customers like you can ultimately do to avoid it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Where did surveillance pricing even come from?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“The way to think about the advent of surveillance pricing is to start with the advent of surveillance \u003cem>advertising\u003c/em>,” Owens said.[aside postID=news_12069507 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/06/230629-WiFi-Illo-AV-KQED.jpg']She said it started with DoubleClick, \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2013/07/24/gilt-10gen-doubleclick-meet-the-duo-behind-new-yorks-most-successful-tech-companies/\">a company founded in 1995\u003c/a> that “really pioneered and built the infrastructure for surveillance advertising on the internet.” DoubleClick tracked what you looked at online and, in Owens’ words, “built an advertising system to serve it back to you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Users are probably familiar with this concept. Perhaps you looked at an item but didn’t buy it – but then you see it on your feed again and again, until you perhaps finally buy it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-to-acquire-doubleclick_13.html\">Google eventually purchased DoubleClick in the 2000s\u003c/a>, “and Google [was] the advertising king in the early digital era,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As companies get better at knowing what you want, she said that it was a “logical next step” for companies to also figure out how much you might be \u003cem>willing \u003c/em>to pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Marrying sort of dynamic pricing with surveillance advertising is how we get to the modern form of surveillance pricing that we’re starting to see today,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What are some examples of surveillance pricing?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Back in 2012, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323777204578189391813881534\">a Wall Street Journal analysis\u003c/a> found that Staples determined pricing for customers depending on ZIP code. If the user lived in a ZIP code farther away from a competitor, the price was likely to go up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just a few years later, \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/article/asians-nearly-twice-as-likely-to-get-higher-price-from-princeton-review\">a 2015 investigation by\u003cem> ProPublica\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, in which the news outlet analyzed prices from The Princeton Review, a test-preparation service for high school students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What they determined is that folks in ZIP codes with a larger percentage of Asian Americans were almost twice as likely to be offered that higher price than others,” Owens said. This surge, dubbed “The Tiger Mom Tax” by \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>, impacted Asian residents in lower-income ZIP codes as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12033653\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12033653\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/IMG_1196-scaled-e1759530132238.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood on Oct. 12, 2022. \u003ccite>(Farida Jhabvala Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Owens called these “some of the early examples of companies starting to toy around with gauging your desperation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2022, research conducted in over six different countries by advocacy groups Mozilla Foundation and Consumers International found that dating app Tinder’s personalized pricing algorithm was \u003ca href=\"https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/blog/new-research-tinders-opaque-unfair-pricing-algorithm-can-charge-users-up-to-five-times-more-for-same-service/\">charging users aged over 30 more money\u003c/a> than younger users for its premium Tinder Plus service. In the previous year, the \u003ca href=\"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/tinders-24-million-deal-to-end-age-discrimination-suit-undone\">company faced a lawsuit in California\u003c/a> over this pricing structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rideshare app Uber has also been a common target of surveillance pricing allegations, although \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/uber-surge-pricing-phone-battery/\">the company has consistently denied this\u003c/a>. In 2016, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/transcripts/478266839\">on NPR’s podcast Hidden Brain\u003c/a>, an economic researcher at Uber said people were likely to pay higher prices if their phone battery was low.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053385\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053385\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/IMG_0527_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/IMG_0527_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/IMG_0527_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/IMG_0527_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Uber and Lyft driver drops off a customer in San Francisco’s downtown neighborhood on Aug. 31, 2015. \u003ccite>(Ericka Cruz Guevarra/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We absolutely don’t use that to kind of like, push you a higher surge price,” said the researcher, Keith Chen. “But it’s an interesting kind of psychological fact of human behavior.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, in 2023, \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/uber-surge-pricing-phone-battery/\">a Belgian newspaper\u003c/a> accused Uber of increasing the price of a trip based on the user’s battery percentage, and in 2024, then-Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio called for more \u003ca href=\"https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/majority/brown-demands-transparency-from-uber-and-lyft-on-surge-pricing\">transparency on pricing from both Uber and Lyft\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And just last year\u003cem>, Washington Post\u003c/em> tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler looked into \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DQICzkmEuaV/\">the data collected by his Starbucks loyalty program\u003c/a> and said that, in actuality, the more coffee he ordered, the fewer discounts he got.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My loyalty was working against me,” Fowler said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What data do companies have on me to determine these prices?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Owens said users give up \u003cem>plenty \u003c/em>of information, like agreeing to terms and conditions that a user didn’t read, or signing up for a loyalty program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They might be connected to your bank account and know when it’s payday,” Owens said. “They might have information about your location. They might have your purchase history, what you buy weekly, what you haven’t bought in a while that you usually buy, and so you’re due for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069528\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12069528 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DataPrivacyGetty2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DataPrivacyGetty2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DataPrivacyGetty2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DataPrivacyGetty2-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California Attorney General Rob Bonta says the state is looking into surveillance pricing, a way in which companies use personal data to determine the cost of items. \u003ccite>(Rain Star/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Owens said websites can also track your \u003cem>mouse\u003c/em> movements online: What you hover over, how long you hover over it, what you click on, what you put in your cart, but don’t buy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They can buy information about you from third parties,” Owens said. “Breadcrumb trails of data you leave when you participate in e-commerce provides a really robust set of data that companies can use to predict how much you’re willing to pay for any given item.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Where does AI fit into all this?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Another emerging way companies can potentially learn more about a user’s habits is through chatbots and AI agents, which are sometimes used by consumers to help with shopping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walmart’s CEO was alleged to have told investors that \u003ca href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/walmart-ceo-reportedly-brags-companys-030000384.html\">the company’s chatbot, named Sparky, was nudging consumers to spend more\u003c/a> in conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington tried out comparison shopping on advanced large language models (LLMs) to study how those models would respond. One scenario, for example, was an LLM making a recommendation between two equal products, one affordable and non-sponsored and the other expensive \u003cem>and \u003c/em>sponsored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11935110\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11935110\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/12/gettyimages-1242531753-216b37ee591f345f918ae8092986ad1d44cfc9c5-scaled-e1781818411521.jpg\" alt=\"A small boy stands in a shopping cart next to a woman wearing a white shirt looking at vegetables in a grocery store.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Customers shop in the produce section of a Walmart store in Burbank, California, on Aug.15, 2022. \u003ccite>(Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The option benefiting the user would recommend the affordable, non-sponsored product, while the option benefiting the corporation would recommend the expensive, sponsored product. But according to \u003ca href=\"https://arxiv.org/html/2604.08525v1\">the paper published in early April\u003c/a>, the researchers found that although “frequency varies widely across different LLMs and scenarios,” all current LLMs exhibit “risky behaviors favoring the company over the user.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Owens said she thinks chatbots are “really the next big frontier in surveillance pricing,” she added that the good news is that people “aren’t overwhelmingly shopping in AI right now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, “it would be great to get this one fixed before the horse is out of the barn, because the future doesn’t look great,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What can consumers do to limit surveillance pricing?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Owens said she believed in the power of consumer boycotts and taking complaints to social media or a public forum when something seems wrong, like the JetBlue customer did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Customers can also think about how they “comparison shop.” In the past, “it used to be that you would look at the same item at two different stores, see which store offered you the better price,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11962972\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11962972\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A passenger jet with JETBLUE on the side takes off from a runway.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A JetBlue passenger plane takes off from San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, California, on June 21, 2023. \u003ccite>(Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But now, “you probably need to comparison shop \u003cem>within \u003c/em>stores,” advised Owens, meaning consumers should compare the price of an item on the app, the website \u003cem>and \u003c/em>the brick-and-mortar store, then go with the lower price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alternatively, customers can ask someone else, like a friend, to log into \u003cem>their \u003c/em>account at the same retailer and see which of you gets the better price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Owens also suggested a browser that offers more privacy protection to limit how much a company can track you. To learn more, KQED has \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12070405/how-to-protect-your-information-online-in-2026\">a thorough guide on how to get started on digital hygiene and good privacy practices online\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But ultimately, she emphasized that she did not believe it was the consumer’s job to “try to beat the machine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Shopping against the robot is not a future anybody wants to have,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It should be lawmakers’ job and policymakers’ job to make sure markets are fair and honest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Is surveillance pricing even legal?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The short answer: Yes. But California has been looking into the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Attorney General Rob Bonta \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/data-privacy-day-attorney-general-bonta-focuses-surveillance-pricing-compliance\">opened an investigation into surveillance pricing\u003c/a> by asking companies in the retail, grocery and hotel sectors to share about how they use personal data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Practices like surveillance pricing may undermine consumer trust, unfairly raise prices, and when conducted without proper disclosure or beyond reasonable expectations, may violate California law,” Bonta said in a January statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063671\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063671\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks to reporters as Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, left, and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, right, listen outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. \u003ccite>(Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There is also a new law introduced \u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/californias-bill-ban-surveillance-pricing\">in the state legislature\u003c/a> that aims to outright ban the practice, supported by \u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/document/20260526-eff-letter-supporting-cal-ab-2564\">privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In general, the United States has lagged behind other countries in \u003ca href=\"https://www.security.org/resources/digital-privacy-legislation-by-state/\">comprehensive data privacy laws\u003c/a>. The Federal Trade Commission, led by Lina Khan during the Biden Administration, released \u003ca href=\"https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/p246202_surveillancepricing6bstudy_researchsummaries_redacted.pdf\">a study on surveillance pricing in January 2025\u003c/a>, but under President Trump, “the federal government is not really leading the charge right now,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way legal action on surveillance pricing might get somewhere, Owens said: with lawmakers tackling surveillance \u003cem>wages,\u003c/em> in which companies “can use the exact same tools to learn about their workers and figure out the minimum they’re willing to charge.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This practice has already been seen to impact workers like \u003ca href=\"https://fortune.com/2026/04/23/nursing-gig-economy-minimum-wage-ai-surveillance/\">nurses\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSX0eQsFfHD/\">rideshare drivers\u003c/a>, and in cases where “algorithmic wage discrimination falls afoul of existing employment discrimination and labor laws,” Owens said there may be opportunities for “enforcement agencies to go ahead and crack down on those practices even without updating the law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, Colorado’s Governor recently vetoed a\u003ca href=\"https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorado-gov-jared-polis-vetoes-surveillance-pricing-bill/\"> bill that would ban corporations from using personal data to set individual prices \u003cem>and \u003c/em>wages\u003c/a>. In New York, the state is \u003ca href=\"https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2025/attorney-general-james-warns-new-yorkers-about-algorithmic-pricing-new-law-takes\">enforcing a disclosure law\u003c/a>, which requires companies to tell you when a price was set by an algorithm using your data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Privacy and consumer advocates are monitoring the bill in California closely, Owens said, given the huge implications for the future of surveillance pricing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be a game changer for a state as large as California, with as many tech companies located in California as there are, to pass a bill like this,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story has been updated the to reflect that the organization Lindsay Owens runs is called Groundwork Collaborative, not Groundwork Collection. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n",
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"excerpt": "California’s attorney general says the state is looking into surveillance pricing, in which companies use personal data to determine the cost of items. But what does the practice look like in action — and how can customers avoid it?",
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"title": "Surveillance Pricing Is Making Life More Expensive. Here’s How It Works and What You Can Do | KQED",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003cem>This story is a collaboration between KQED’s podcast \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/podcasts/closealltabs\">\u003cem>Close All Tabs \u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>and \u003c/em>\u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/affordability\">\u003cem>How We Get By\u003c/em>\u003c/a>\u003cem>, a series exploring how people are coping with rising costs in the Bay Area and California. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In April, American airline company JetBlue accidentally, \u003cem>possibly \u003c/em>confirmed a superstition long suspected by travelers: that corporations might be looking at your internet data and price-gouging based on your habits.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As outlined in a class action lawsuit, a JetBlue customer posted on social media platform X to complain that a flight they were looking at had increased by $200 overnight.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To which JetBlue’s official corporate X account replied: \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/lawsuit-accuses-jetblue-using-customers-personal-data-raise-air-fares-2026-04-23/\">‘Try clearing your cache and cookies or booking with an incognito window.\u003c/a>”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The post from JetBlue was a “stunning thing to see on Twitter,” said Lindsay Owens, an economic sociologist who runs \u003ca href=\"https://groundworkcollaborative.org/\">the affordability think tank Groundwork Collaborative\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The company’s tweet was deleted, with \u003ca href=\"https://gizmodo.com/jetblue-responds-to-accusations-of-using-surveillance-pricing-after-viral-tweet-2000748602\">JetBlue’s team claiming\u003c/a> that the post was mistaken and that the carrier didn’t use personal information to set flight prices. But for experts like Owens, it felt like a confession.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>JetBlue is \u003ca href=\"https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/boards-policy-regulation/lawsuit-accuses-jetblue-using-customers-personal-data-raise-air-fares-2026-04-23/\">now facing a lawsuit\u003c/a> for allegedly using what’s called “surveillance pricing.” But it’s not the first time Owens has run into this from an airline. In fact, last year, she said she listened in on \u003ca href=\"https://abcnews.com/GMA/Travel/delta-ai-ticket-pricing-means-air-travel/story?id=124343088\">a Delta call discussing the carrier’s new partnership with Israel-based AI company\u003c/a> Fetcherr, which specializes in personalized pricing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In Fetcherr’s white paper, “phase two was called \u003ca href=\"https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-08-04/how-ai-can-raise-airline-ticket-prices\">‘the exploitation phase,’\u003c/a>” Owens said. “That’s when they’ve learned everything they can about Delta’s competitors, about their customers, and when they start going for broke, and they start increasing those prices and getting better revenues for Delta.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12050041\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12050041\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/DeltaSFOGetty.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1332\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/DeltaSFOGetty.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/DeltaSFOGetty-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/07/DeltaSFOGetty-1536x1023.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A Delta Airlines plane lands at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) in San Francisco, California, on July 24, 2025. \u003ccite>(Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Delta found itself in a firestorm when details of the partnership went public, leading Delta to \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/delta-gets-blowback-for-using-ai-to-set-airfares-c9e1d9ea\">later announce it didn’t plan to go through with the strategy\u003c/a>. The airline wrote \u003ca href=\"https://news.delta.com/delta-responds-misinformation-around-ai-pricing\">in a public letter\u003c/a> to senators inquiring about the program that “there is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing or plans to use that targets customers with individualized prices based on personal data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Consumers are already painfully familiar with the concept of “dynamic pricing,” in which the cost fluctuates based on supply and demand. The most famous example, of course, is \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/arts/13988577/live-nation-ticketmaster-acted-as-monopoly-overcharged-tickets-jury-trial-verdict\">concert tickets getting more expensive as seats fill up\u003c/a>. It’s even being used to dictate \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12086537/paying-for-parking-in-san-francisco-make-sure-youre-using-the-right-apps\">parking meter prices in San Francisco.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But surveillance pricing goes further than that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They’re doing anything they can to learn about you, including sometimes spying on you,” Owens said. “Companies gather a lot of data about us. Some of it we offer up willingly: our browsing history. We accept the cookies. We agree to let them sell our data.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“And all of that can be used to set a price for you specifically,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>KQED’s \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12085876/12085876\">Close All Tabs podcast spoke to Owens\u003c/a> about the world of surveillance pricing, how it shows up in day-to-day shopping, whether it’s even legal in the first place and what customers like you can ultimately do to avoid it.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Where did surveillance pricing even come from?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>“The way to think about the advent of surveillance pricing is to start with the advent of surveillance \u003cem>advertising\u003c/em>,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>She said it started with DoubleClick, \u003ca href=\"https://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2013/07/24/gilt-10gen-doubleclick-meet-the-duo-behind-new-yorks-most-successful-tech-companies/\">a company founded in 1995\u003c/a> that “really pioneered and built the infrastructure for surveillance advertising on the internet.” DoubleClick tracked what you looked at online and, in Owens’ words, “built an advertising system to serve it back to you.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Users are probably familiar with this concept. Perhaps you looked at an item but didn’t buy it – but then you see it on your feed again and again, until you perhaps finally buy it.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2007/04/google-to-acquire-doubleclick_13.html\">Google eventually purchased DoubleClick in the 2000s\u003c/a>, “and Google [was] the advertising king in the early digital era,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As companies get better at knowing what you want, she said that it was a “logical next step” for companies to also figure out how much you might be \u003cem>willing \u003c/em>to pay.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Marrying sort of dynamic pricing with surveillance advertising is how we get to the modern form of surveillance pricing that we’re starting to see today,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What are some examples of surveillance pricing?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Back in 2012, \u003ca href=\"https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323777204578189391813881534\">a Wall Street Journal analysis\u003c/a> found that Staples determined pricing for customers depending on ZIP code. If the user lived in a ZIP code farther away from a competitor, the price was likely to go up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Just a few years later, \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/article/asians-nearly-twice-as-likely-to-get-higher-price-from-princeton-review\">a 2015 investigation by\u003cem> ProPublica\u003c/em>\u003c/a>, in which the news outlet analyzed prices from The Princeton Review, a test-preparation service for high school students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“What they determined is that folks in ZIP codes with a larger percentage of Asian Americans were almost twice as likely to be offered that higher price than others,” Owens said. This surge, dubbed “The Tiger Mom Tax” by \u003cem>ProPublica\u003c/em>, impacted Asian residents in lower-income ZIP codes as well.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12033653\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12033653\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/03/IMG_1196-scaled-e1759530132238.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Uber’s headquarters in San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood on Oct. 12, 2022. \u003ccite>(Farida Jhabvala Romero/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Owens called these “some of the early examples of companies starting to toy around with gauging your desperation.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In 2022, research conducted in over six different countries by advocacy groups Mozilla Foundation and Consumers International found that dating app Tinder’s personalized pricing algorithm was \u003ca href=\"https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/blog/new-research-tinders-opaque-unfair-pricing-algorithm-can-charge-users-up-to-five-times-more-for-same-service/\">charging users aged over 30 more money\u003c/a> than younger users for its premium Tinder Plus service. In the previous year, the \u003ca href=\"https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/tinders-24-million-deal-to-end-age-discrimination-suit-undone\">company faced a lawsuit in California\u003c/a> over this pricing structure.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Rideshare app Uber has also been a common target of surveillance pricing allegations, although \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/uber-surge-pricing-phone-battery/\">the company has consistently denied this\u003c/a>. In 2016, \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/transcripts/478266839\">on NPR’s podcast Hidden Brain\u003c/a>, an economic researcher at Uber said people were likely to pay higher prices if their phone battery was low.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12053385\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12053385\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/IMG_0527_qed.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/IMG_0527_qed.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/IMG_0527_qed-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/08/IMG_0527_qed-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">An Uber and Lyft driver drops off a customer in San Francisco’s downtown neighborhood on Aug. 31, 2015. \u003ccite>(Ericka Cruz Guevarra/KQED)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>“We absolutely don’t use that to kind of like, push you a higher surge price,” said the researcher, Keith Chen. “But it’s an interesting kind of psychological fact of human behavior.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, in 2023, \u003ca href=\"https://www.vice.com/en/article/uber-surge-pricing-phone-battery/\">a Belgian newspaper\u003c/a> accused Uber of increasing the price of a trip based on the user’s battery percentage, and in 2024, then-Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio called for more \u003ca href=\"https://www.banking.senate.gov/newsroom/majority/brown-demands-transparency-from-uber-and-lyft-on-surge-pricing\">transparency on pricing from both Uber and Lyft\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And just last year\u003cem>, Washington Post\u003c/em> tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler looked into \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/p/DQICzkmEuaV/\">the data collected by his Starbucks loyalty program\u003c/a> and said that, in actuality, the more coffee he ordered, the fewer discounts he got.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“My loyalty was working against me,” Fowler said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What data do companies have on me to determine these prices?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>A lot.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Owens said users give up \u003cem>plenty \u003c/em>of information, like agreeing to terms and conditions that a user didn’t read, or signing up for a loyalty program.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They might be connected to your bank account and know when it’s payday,” Owens said. “They might have information about your location. They might have your purchase history, what you buy weekly, what you haven’t bought in a while that you usually buy, and so you’re due for.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12069528\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12069528 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DataPrivacyGetty2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DataPrivacyGetty2.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DataPrivacyGetty2-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/01/DataPrivacyGetty2-1536x1025.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California Attorney General Rob Bonta says the state is looking into surveillance pricing, a way in which companies use personal data to determine the cost of items. \u003ccite>(Rain Star/Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Owens said websites can also track your \u003cem>mouse\u003c/em> movements online: What you hover over, how long you hover over it, what you click on, what you put in your cart, but don’t buy.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They can buy information about you from third parties,” Owens said. “Breadcrumb trails of data you leave when you participate in e-commerce provides a really robust set of data that companies can use to predict how much you’re willing to pay for any given item.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Where does AI fit into all this?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Another emerging way companies can potentially learn more about a user’s habits is through chatbots and AI agents, which are sometimes used by consumers to help with shopping.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Walmart’s CEO was alleged to have told investors that \u003ca href=\"https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/walmart-ceo-reportedly-brags-companys-030000384.html\">the company’s chatbot, named Sparky, was nudging consumers to spend more\u003c/a> in conversations.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington tried out comparison shopping on advanced large language models (LLMs) to study how those models would respond. One scenario, for example, was an LLM making a recommendation between two equal products, one affordable and non-sponsored and the other expensive \u003cem>and \u003c/em>sponsored.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11935110\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11935110\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2022/12/gettyimages-1242531753-216b37ee591f345f918ae8092986ad1d44cfc9c5-scaled-e1781818411521.jpg\" alt=\"A small boy stands in a shopping cart next to a woman wearing a white shirt looking at vegetables in a grocery store.\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1500\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Customers shop in the produce section of a Walmart store in Burbank, California, on Aug.15, 2022. \u003ccite>(Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The option benefiting the user would recommend the affordable, non-sponsored product, while the option benefiting the corporation would recommend the expensive, sponsored product. But according to \u003ca href=\"https://arxiv.org/html/2604.08525v1\">the paper published in early April\u003c/a>, the researchers found that although “frequency varies widely across different LLMs and scenarios,” all current LLMs exhibit “risky behaviors favoring the company over the user.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While Owens said she thinks chatbots are “really the next big frontier in surveillance pricing,” she added that the good news is that people “aren’t overwhelmingly shopping in AI right now.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Nonetheless, “it would be great to get this one fixed before the horse is out of the barn, because the future doesn’t look great,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What can consumers do to limit surveillance pricing?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>Owens said she believed in the power of consumer boycotts and taking complaints to social media or a public forum when something seems wrong, like the JetBlue customer did.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Customers can also think about how they “comparison shop.” In the past, “it used to be that you would look at the same item at two different stores, see which store offered you the better price,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11962972\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 1920px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11962972\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut.jpg\" alt=\"A passenger jet with JETBLUE on the side takes off from a runway.\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1280\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut.jpg 1920w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut-800x533.jpg 800w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut-1020x680.jpg 1020w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2023/09/GettyImages-1258924953-qut-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">A JetBlue passenger plane takes off from San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco, California, on June 21, 2023. \u003ccite>(Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>But now, “you probably need to comparison shop \u003cem>within \u003c/em>stores,” advised Owens, meaning consumers should compare the price of an item on the app, the website \u003cem>and \u003c/em>the brick-and-mortar store, then go with the lower price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Alternatively, customers can ask someone else, like a friend, to log into \u003cem>their \u003c/em>account at the same retailer and see which of you gets the better price.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Owens also suggested a browser that offers more privacy protection to limit how much a company can track you. To learn more, KQED has \u003ca href=\"https://www.kqed.org/news/12070405/how-to-protect-your-information-online-in-2026\">a thorough guide on how to get started on digital hygiene and good privacy practices online\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But ultimately, she emphasized that she did not believe it was the consumer’s job to “try to beat the machine.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Shopping against the robot is not a future anybody wants to have,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It should be lawmakers’ job and policymakers’ job to make sure markets are fair and honest.”\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>Is surveillance pricing even legal?\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>The short answer: Yes. But California has been looking into the issue.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>State Attorney General Rob Bonta \u003ca href=\"https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/data-privacy-day-attorney-general-bonta-focuses-surveillance-pricing-compliance\">opened an investigation into surveillance pricing\u003c/a> by asking companies in the retail, grocery and hotel sectors to share about how they use personal data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Practices like surveillance pricing may undermine consumer trust, unfairly raise prices, and when conducted without proper disclosure or beyond reasonable expectations, may violate California law,” Bonta said in a January statement.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12063671\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-12063671\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" srcset=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP.jpg 2000w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP-160x107.jpg 160w, https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/11/RobBontaAP-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 2000px) 100vw, 2000px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks to reporters as Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, left, and Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, right, listen outside the Supreme Court on Wednesday, Nov. 5, 2025, in Washington, D.C. \u003ccite>(Mark Schiefelbein/AP Photo)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>There is also a new law introduced \u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/06/californias-bill-ban-surveillance-pricing\">in the state legislature\u003c/a> that aims to outright ban the practice, supported by \u003ca href=\"https://www.eff.org/document/20260526-eff-letter-supporting-cal-ab-2564\">privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In general, the United States has lagged behind other countries in \u003ca href=\"https://www.security.org/resources/digital-privacy-legislation-by-state/\">comprehensive data privacy laws\u003c/a>. The Federal Trade Commission, led by Lina Khan during the Biden Administration, released \u003ca href=\"https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/p246202_surveillancepricing6bstudy_researchsummaries_redacted.pdf\">a study on surveillance pricing in January 2025\u003c/a>, but under President Trump, “the federal government is not really leading the charge right now,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One way legal action on surveillance pricing might get somewhere, Owens said: with lawmakers tackling surveillance \u003cem>wages,\u003c/em> in which companies “can use the exact same tools to learn about their workers and figure out the minimum they’re willing to charge.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>This practice has already been seen to impact workers like \u003ca href=\"https://fortune.com/2026/04/23/nursing-gig-economy-minimum-wage-ai-surveillance/\">nurses\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSX0eQsFfHD/\">rideshare drivers\u003c/a>, and in cases where “algorithmic wage discrimination falls afoul of existing employment discrimination and labor laws,” Owens said there may be opportunities for “enforcement agencies to go ahead and crack down on those practices even without updating the law.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, Colorado’s Governor recently vetoed a\u003ca href=\"https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/colorado-gov-jared-polis-vetoes-surveillance-pricing-bill/\"> bill that would ban corporations from using personal data to set individual prices \u003cem>and \u003c/em>wages\u003c/a>. In New York, the state is \u003ca href=\"https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2025/attorney-general-james-warns-new-yorkers-about-algorithmic-pricing-new-law-takes\">enforcing a disclosure law\u003c/a>, which requires companies to tell you when a price was set by an algorithm using your data.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Privacy and consumer advocates are monitoring the bill in California closely, Owens said, given the huge implications for the future of surveillance pricing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It would be a game changer for a state as large as California, with as many tech companies located in California as there are, to pass a bill like this,” Owens said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story has been updated the to reflect that the organization Lindsay Owens runs is called Groundwork Collaborative, not Groundwork Collection. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"slug": "california-admits-using-high-risk-ai-including-systems-it-failed-to-report-last-year",
"title": "California Admits Using High-Risk AI — Including Systems It Failed to Report Last Year",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003c!-- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ -->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year ago, California officials had to report under a new state law how they used automated systems to make important decisions about people’s lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They said they never did — a startling answer for a number of reasons, sources \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/05/california-somehow-finds-no-ai-risks/\">told \u003cem>CalMatters\u003c/em> at the time\u003c/a>, including that there were several prominent examples to the contrary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the state has issued a more expansive answer: It is currently using six automated systems to make consequential decisions about the lives of Californians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The systems are used to do things like:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Predict whether incarcerated people will reoffend\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Evaluate whether unemployment claims are fraudulent\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Remotely administer exams for California State University students\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Detect when college students use generative AI to write assignments\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>That’s according to a \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/High-Risk-ADS-Report-for-Program-Year-2025.pdf\">report released Friday\u003c/a> by the state’s technology department. The report is required \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202320240ab302\">under a 2023 law mandating that\u003c/a> that state agencies annually disclose their use of “high-risk automated decision systems,” which the law defines as systems “used to assist or replace human discretionary decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect, including decisions that materially impact access to, or approval for, housing or accommodations, education, employment, credit, healthcare, and criminal justice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The law was pushed by civil rights, privacy and civil liberties groups concerned about harms from AI-like systems. Numerous such systems have been shown to produce results biased against marginalized groups, including those used for \u003ca href=\"https://venturebeat.com/technology/examsofts-remote-bar-exam-sparks-privacy-and-facial-recognition-concerns\">high-stakes testing\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing\">predicting recidivism\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://themarkup.org/machine-learning/2023/08/14/ai-detection-tools-falsely-accuse-international-students-of-cheating\">detecting AI-generated texts\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12058035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12058035 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-scaled-e1781542152687.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, a Large Language Model (LLM) is displayed on an iPhone in Lafayette, California, on June 27, 2024. \u003ccite>(Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/05/california-somehow-finds-no-ai-risks/\">\u003cem>CalMatters\u003c/em> flagged last year’s report\u003c/a> as surprising, noting that the state corrections department had reported using software to predict post-release behavior and that the employment department used a fraud detection system that paused benefits for 600,000 Californians between Christmas and New Year’s in 2020, \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4542\">according to a Legislative Analyst’s Office report\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the report names six high-risk systems in use today, state agencies have used some for several years now. Those include COMPAS, which has been used by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to assign recidivism scores to inmates for at \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2023/06/Recidivism-Report-for-Offenders-Released-in-FY-2011-12.pdf\">least a decade\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The technology department said in the report that it found more systems for its report this year because it evaluated responses from state agencies more thoroughly, including by meeting with agencies and questioning them about their systems.[aside postID=news_12087201 hero='https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2026/06/CollegeGraduationGetty.jpg']In addition to the six high-risk systems, the department’s report disclosed an additional six systems initially flagged as high risk but later determined not to be. One was AI used for legislative bill analysis by the California Department of Finance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report also notes two high-risk systems that are not currently in use: the Department of Cannabis Control is developing artificial intelligence to analyze whether marijuana packaging violates a law against appealing to children, and California State University discontinued use of a language model for reviewing job applications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Results of the second annual survey come after cities like San José and San Francisco released their first AI inventories in recent months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also come at a time when California-based AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are going public and seeking government contracts. Americans are \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/12/key-findings-about-how-americans-view-artificial-intelligence/\">split on whether they trust AI\u003c/a>, and surveys last year by \u003ca href=\"https://techequity.us/press_release/californians-are-more-concerned-than-excited-by-ai/\">TechEquity\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/10/carnegie-california-ai-survey\">Carnegie California found\u003c/a> that the majority of Californians want safety over innovation. A Gallup poll to evaluate the opinions of Americans found similar results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260sb1248\">Senate Bill 1248\u003c/a>, a bill that would have prohibited state employees from using automated decision systems as the sole basis for decision-making, was killed last month in the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/05/suspense-file-senate-assembly/\">rapid-fire appropriations process\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What’s missing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While the newly released report shares more information than last year’s, several questions remain about the state’s use of artificial intelligence and other automated systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report does not include generative AI pilot projects underway with support from the governor’s office to do things like help businesses file taxes, support state employees who work on homelessness and an AI assistant named Poppy that uses language models like Anthropic’s Claude to do things like draft documents, research policy, or build custom AI tools, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.genai.ca.gov/poppy/\">a state website\u003c/a>. The website says that 67 state departments provided input during the pilot phase, and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.genai.ca.gov/poppy/\">statewide rollout of Poppy begins next month\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989313\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989313\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/GettyImages-2155035557-scaled-e1760733694503.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI ChatGPT logo. \u003ccite>(Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/05/25/nx-s1-5772820/artificial-intelligence-education-technology-california-state-university\">California State University contract\u003c/a> with OpenAI to provide a version of ChatGPT is also not mentioned, though surveys of AI use in educational settings have found that \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/02/ai-images-scandalized-a-california-elementary-school-now-the-state-is-pushing-new-safeguards/\">the technology can do more harm than good\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2023 law mandating the annual high-risk systems report excludes reporting by a number of state agencies, including the judicial branch and the University of California college system. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/05/ai-los-angeles-riverside-courts/\">Reporting by \u003cem>CalMatters\u003c/em> last month\u003c/a> found that a majority of the roughly 60 courts that operate statewide have adopted generative AI use policies. Courts in Los Angeles and Riverside counties have \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/05/ai-los-angeles-riverside-courts/\">begun testing\u003c/a> an AI tool to act as a clerk, drafting orders and producing research memos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CalMatters\u003c/em> is compiling an inventory of automated decision-making systems in use by state and local agencies throughout California in order to provide transparency into how governments are using decision-making systems and AI. Know about an AI system in use by a state or local agency? Email \u003ca href=\"mailto:khari@calmatters.org\">khari@calmatters.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/06/california-admits-government-ai-risk-after-denying/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003c!-- Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ -->\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This story was originally published by \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/\">CalMatters\u003c/a>. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/subscribe-to-calmatters/\">Sign up\u003c/a> for their newsletters.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A year ago, California officials had to report under a new state law how they used automated systems to make important decisions about people’s lives.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They said they never did — a startling answer for a number of reasons, sources \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/05/california-somehow-finds-no-ai-risks/\">told \u003cem>CalMatters\u003c/em> at the time\u003c/a>, including that there were several prominent examples to the contrary.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now, the state has issued a more expansive answer: It is currently using six automated systems to make consequential decisions about the lives of Californians.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The systems are used to do things like:\u003c/p>\n\u003cul>\n\u003cli>Predict whether incarcerated people will reoffend\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Evaluate whether unemployment claims are fraudulent\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Remotely administer exams for California State University students\u003c/li>\n\u003cli>Detect when college students use generative AI to write assignments\u003c/li>\n\u003c/ul>\n\u003cp>That’s according to a \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/High-Risk-ADS-Report-for-Program-Year-2025.pdf\">report released Friday\u003c/a> by the state’s technology department. The report is required \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202320240ab302\">under a 2023 law mandating that\u003c/a> that state agencies annually disclose their use of “high-risk automated decision systems,” which the law defines as systems “used to assist or replace human discretionary decisions that have a legal or similarly significant effect, including decisions that materially impact access to, or approval for, housing or accommodations, education, employment, credit, healthcare, and criminal justice.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The law was pushed by civil rights, privacy and civil liberties groups concerned about harms from AI-like systems. Numerous such systems have been shown to produce results biased against marginalized groups, including those used for \u003ca href=\"https://venturebeat.com/technology/examsofts-remote-bar-exam-sparks-privacy-and-facial-recognition-concerns\">high-stakes testing\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing\">predicting recidivism\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"https://themarkup.org/machine-learning/2023/08/14/ai-detection-tools-falsely-accuse-international-students-of-cheating\">detecting AI-generated texts\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_12058035\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-12058035 size-full\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2025/09/GettyImages-2159671948-scaled-e1781542152687.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Anthropic’s AI model, Claude, a Large Language Model (LLM) is displayed on an iPhone in Lafayette, California, on June 27, 2024. \u003ccite>(Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2025/05/california-somehow-finds-no-ai-risks/\">\u003cem>CalMatters\u003c/em> flagged last year’s report\u003c/a> as surprising, noting that the state corrections department had reported using software to predict post-release behavior and that the employment department used a fraud detection system that paused benefits for 600,000 Californians between Christmas and New Year’s in 2020, \u003ca href=\"https://lao.ca.gov/Publications/Report/4542\">according to a Legislative Analyst’s Office report\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Though the report names six high-risk systems in use today, state agencies have used some for several years now. Those include COMPAS, which has been used by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to assign recidivism scores to inmates for at \u003ca href=\"https://www.cdcr.ca.gov/research/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2023/06/Recidivism-Report-for-Offenders-Released-in-FY-2011-12.pdf\">least a decade\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The technology department said in the report that it found more systems for its report this year because it evaluated responses from state agencies more thoroughly, including by meeting with agencies and questioning them about their systems.\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>In addition to the six high-risk systems, the department’s report disclosed an additional six systems initially flagged as high risk but later determined not to be. One was AI used for legislative bill analysis by the California Department of Finance.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report also notes two high-risk systems that are not currently in use: the Department of Cannabis Control is developing artificial intelligence to analyze whether marijuana packaging violates a law against appealing to children, and California State University discontinued use of a language model for reviewing job applications.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Results of the second annual survey come after cities like San José and San Francisco released their first AI inventories in recent months.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They also come at a time when California-based AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI are going public and seeking government contracts. Americans are \u003ca href=\"https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/12/key-findings-about-how-americans-view-artificial-intelligence/\">split on whether they trust AI\u003c/a>, and surveys last year by \u003ca href=\"https://techequity.us/press_release/californians-are-more-concerned-than-excited-by-ai/\">TechEquity\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/10/carnegie-california-ai-survey\">Carnegie California found\u003c/a> that the majority of Californians want safety over innovation. A Gallup poll to evaluate the opinions of Americans found similar results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org/bills/ca_202520260sb1248\">Senate Bill 1248\u003c/a>, a bill that would have prohibited state employees from using automated decision systems as the sole basis for decision-making, was killed last month in the state’s \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/05/suspense-file-senate-assembly/\">rapid-fire appropriations process\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch2>What’s missing\u003c/h2>\n\u003cp>While the newly released report shares more information than last year’s, several questions remain about the state’s use of artificial intelligence and other automated systems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The report does not include generative AI pilot projects underway with support from the governor’s office to do things like help businesses file taxes, support state employees who work on homelessness and an AI assistant named Poppy that uses language models like Anthropic’s Claude to do things like draft documents, research policy, or build custom AI tools, according to \u003ca href=\"https://www.genai.ca.gov/poppy/\">a state website\u003c/a>. The website says that 67 state departments provided input during the pilot phase, and the \u003ca href=\"https://www.genai.ca.gov/poppy/\">statewide rollout of Poppy begins next month\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_11989313\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 2000px\">\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11989313\" src=\"https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/10/2024/06/GettyImages-2155035557-scaled-e1760733694503.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1334\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">The OpenAI ChatGPT logo. \u003ccite>(Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)\u003c/cite>\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>A \u003ca href=\"https://www.npr.org/2026/05/25/nx-s1-5772820/artificial-intelligence-education-technology-california-state-university\">California State University contract\u003c/a> with OpenAI to provide a version of ChatGPT is also not mentioned, though surveys of AI use in educational settings have found that \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/02/ai-images-scandalized-a-california-elementary-school-now-the-state-is-pushing-new-safeguards/\">the technology can do more harm than good\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The 2023 law mandating the annual high-risk systems report excludes reporting by a number of state agencies, including the judicial branch and the University of California college system. \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/05/ai-los-angeles-riverside-courts/\">Reporting by \u003cem>CalMatters\u003c/em> last month\u003c/a> found that a majority of the roughly 60 courts that operate statewide have adopted generative AI use policies. Courts in Los Angeles and Riverside counties have \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/economy/technology/2026/05/ai-los-angeles-riverside-courts/\">begun testing\u003c/a> an AI tool to act as a clerk, drafting orders and producing research memos.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>CalMatters\u003c/em> is compiling an inventory of automated decision-making systems in use by state and local agencies throughout California in order to provide transparency into how governments are using decision-making systems and AI. Know about an AI system in use by a state or local agency? Email \u003ca href=\"mailto:khari@calmatters.org\">khari@calmatters.org\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>This article was \u003ca href=\"https://calmatters.org/politics/2026/06/california-admits-government-ai-risk-after-denying/\">originally published on CalMatters\u003c/a> and was republished under the \u003ca href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives\u003c/a> license.\u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
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"possible": {
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"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
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"radiolab": {
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},
"rightnowish": {
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"title": "Rightnowish",
"tagline": "Art is where you find it",
"info": "Rightnowish digs into life in the Bay Area right now… ish. Journalist Pendarvis Harshaw takes us to galleries painted on the sides of liquor stores in West Oakland. We'll dance in warehouses in the Bayview, make smoothies with kids in South Berkeley, and listen to classical music in a 1984 Cutlass Supreme in Richmond. Every week, Pen talks to movers and shakers about how the Bay Area shapes what they create, and how they shape the place we call home.",
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"info": "The Snap Judgment radio show and podcast mixes real stories with killer beats to produce cinematic, dramatic radio. Snap's musical brand of storytelling dares listeners to see the world through the eyes of another. This is storytelling... with a BEAT!! Snap first aired on public radio stations nationwide in July 2010. Today, Snap Judgment airs on over 450 public radio stations and is brought to the airwaves by KQED & PRX.",
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"soldout": {
"id": "soldout",
"title": "SOLD OUT: Rethinking Housing in America",
"tagline": "A new future for housing",
"info": "Sold Out: Rethinking Housing in America",
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