

With the Ukraine war in its 17th month, ongoing stress can be exhausting. In Kyiv, the stress of a long fight weighs on everyone. Sign up for our California Politics newsletter to get the best of The Times’ state politics reporting and the latest action in Sacramento. They’ve engaged in a lobbying spree: According to an analysis by OpenSecrets, which tracks money in politics, 123 companies, universities and trade associations spent a collective $94 million lobbying the federal government on issues including AI in the first quarter of 2023. Technology interests, especially OpenAI, the nonprofit (with a subsidiary for-profit corporation) that created ChatGPT, have gone on the offensive in Washington, arguing for regulations that will prevent the technology from posing an existential threat to humanity. Members of Congress want to regulate artificial intelligence, and Big Tech is watching - and lobbying. It can also act as a fertilizer that grows more vegetation, which can later act as fuel for fires.Ĭongress wants to regulate AI. Studies have shown the retardant can harm plants, fish and other species. Fire authorities swear by the product, calling it indispensable.īut critics argue that officials are overlooking the product’s ecological risks. Phos-Chek is a sticky slurry of ammonium phosphate designed to coat vegetation and other fuels to deprive advancing flames of oxygen. Some environmental groups are taking aim at a commercial fire retardant that most residents have grown all too familiar with during recent, devastating fire years. The incident shook him deeply, forcing him to experience again what it is to be a Black man in South L.A., not a Black officer.įor weeks afterward, he found himself questioning the convictions that brought him to the Los Angeles Police Department in the first place.
