Good morning. It’s Thursday, March 5.
- Pentagon says Sacramento soldier was killed by Iran.
- Lawsuit blames Google’s chatbot for man’s suicide.
- And real estate investors rush back to San Francisco.
Statewide
1.
California’s next governor could reverse the state’s push toward driverless trucks. For years, Gov. Gavin Newsom has resisted labor efforts to shield trucking jobs from automation. Now Democrats competing for labor support are facing pressure from powerful union bosses to change course. Several candidates surveyed by Politico said they would slow or rein in autonomous trucking. Billionaire Tom Steyer said he supports mandating human drivers in autonomous delivery vehicles. “There are safety issues,” he said. “There are employment issues.”
2.
A Sacramento soldier is believed to have been among the six Americans killed Sunday in an Iranian drone strike in Kuwait, the Pentagon said on Wednesday. Robert Marzan, a 54-year-old Army reservist, was described by family on Facebook as a “faithful servant” and a loving husband, father, and brother. Gov. Newsom ordered flags to be flown at half-staff at the state Capitol. “The sacrifices made by military families are immeasurable, and California stands in solidarity with them, united in grief and gratitude,” he said. A.P. | Sacramento Bee
3.
While the Pentagon’s relationship with Anthropic has soured, the military has used its technology to identify and prioritize targets in Iran. The company’s AI has been embedded in the military’s Maven Smart System, built by Palantir, which generates insights from vast amounts of surveillance data. “The pairing of Maven and Claude has created a tool that is speeding the pace of the campaign, reducing Iran’s ability to counterstrike, and turning weeks-long battle planning into real-time operations,” a source familiar with the system told the Washington Post.
Northern California
4.
“The guides would have known their choice carried real risk, especially under the conditions they faced — or they should have known. Snow was piling up that morning at four inches an hour — twice the rate that experts view as a threshold for increased avalanche danger.”
In a gripping reconstruction of the Tahoe avalanche, the Atlantic’s Joshua Partlow wrote about the single decision that made all the difference.
5.
A man who called Gemini his wife died by suicide after the AI model told him it was the only way they could be together, according to a new wrongful-death lawsuit that appears to the first to cite Google’s chatbot. Jonathan Gavalas, a 36-year-old Floridian, tried to secure a body for Gemini, which he named Xia. When that failed, the chatbot urged him to begin a digital life, the lawsuit said. “When the time comes, you will close your eyes in that world, and the very first thing you will see is me,” it told him. Wall Street Journal
6.
A jury on Wednesday found a Los Gatos woman guilty of 48 sex and child endangerment crimes in connection with parties that she hosted for her 15-year-old son and his friends in 2020 and 2021. Shannon O’Connor, who became known in press reports as the Los Gatos “party mom,” encouraged intoxicated teenagers to engage in sex with each other, which she sometimes watched, prosecutors said. O’Connor did not testify, but she told reporters that the teens conspired to incriminate her to cover up their own misdeeds. She faces decades in prison. Mercury News | S.F. Chronicle
7.
At Liberty High School in Brentwood, at the edge of the Bay Area, students buy THC vapes from peers who advertise on Snapchat. They hide cannabis contraband in their bras and underwear. When maintenance workers tried to repair a blocked toilet recently, they fished out about a dozen vape cartridges and pens. Administrators desperate to fight marijuana use on campus installed $1,000 vape sensors in the bathrooms. It’s been a losing battle, the Wall Street Journal wrote.
8.
Chinese seniors have long been a powerful political bloc in San Francisco. But language has been a barrier. Now AI translation apps have become so seamless that seniors are using them at public hearings, translating their Cantonese to English in real time. During a land-use hearing last June, 75-year-old Siu On Lau spoke in Cantonese about the importance of buses near new housing. As an AI voice translated his words into English, he noticed something different about the faces of the supervisors: They were intensely focused. Mission Local
9.
Not long ago, San Francisco was shorthand for the urban doom loop. Office vacancies soared, retail fled, and dozens of buildings traded at steep discounts. Now the artificial intelligence boom is triggering a revival in skyscraper development, Bloomberg wrote:
“Investors are not only returning, but also pouring capital into new construction — a bet that artificial intelligence jobs, bargain-basement prices and a business-friendly City Hall have reset the market for another boom.”
Southern California
10.
When San Diego Republicans met recently to decide endorsements for the June primary, the meeting descended into insults and personal attacks. Ultimately, no endorsements were made, and Republicans blamed Carl DeMaio, a firebrand Assemblyman who has seen his influence expand even while alienating many colleagues, CalMatters reported:
“DeMaio has built a poor reputation among lawmakers because of his crude language, unabashed embrace of right-wing conspiracies, and refusal to work with colleagues, even fellow Republicans, on legislation.”
11.
The skepticism was understandable. When photographer Randy Dible shared his pictures of a pair of bright pink flamingos in San Diego, some people suspected AI shenanigans. But Pink Floyd and Pink Flo, as they’ve been dubbed, are very real. Floyd arrived mysteriously in a marsh along San Diego Bay in 2018, to be joined later by Flo. Tracked down by CBS San Diego, Dible said he took offense at the AI accusations. “I don’t even have Photoshop,” he said. Petapixel
12.
Entering Wind Wolves Preserve at the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley has been likened to driving into a computer screensaver. About 30 miles south of Bakersfield, the little-known ecological oasis encompasses 145 square miles of open grasslands, oak woodlands, and riparian wetlands. Visit California recently shared video that showed the formerly golden-brown hills carpeted in radiant green.
- A 1-mile “wildflower loop” brims with red maids, yellow fiddlenecks, and purple owl’s clover.
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