Wilderness rescuers notice an uptick in AI causing people to get lost in wild spaces

Artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a reason why hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts are getting lost or otherwise not following forestry rules in outdoor spaces, reports Christine Peterson of High Country News.

Nick Meyers, U.S. Forest Service program manager at the Mount Shasta Wilderness Climbing and Avalanche Center, told Peterson a story about three 20-somethings who recently got lost on the mountain after making a series of bad decisions they blamed in part on Google's A.I. chatbot, Gemini. "To these guys’ credit, they did try," Meyers said. "But I think they kind of turned their brains off."

That is likely what literally happened, according to Clemson University professor Chris Flathmann, who studies A.I. and search and rescue. He told Peterson that using AI can lead to something called, "cognitive surrender," when one uses AI. "so deep they give up thinking critically for themselves." 

Back at Mount Shasta, "another visitor pitched her tent near a 'No Camping' sign, insisting she had a right to do so because AI told her she could." Meyers said he and his team "also encountered a man wandering around at a trailhead with an AI-generated map that showed prominent features on the wrong side of a nearby mountain." Foresters in Grand Teton National Park have noticed "a marked uptick over the past year in the percentage of visitors who report using AI for travel information," up from 0% in 2025 to 26% in 2026.

Californians are using AI to scour hours of footage looking for wildfires and hoping to prevent their spread

Californians hope artificial intelligence and solar-powered cameras installed in remote areas will help spot wildfires before they get out of control, reports John Branch of The New York Times. The cameras will be placed in some of the most fire-prone areas of rural California, and will be pointed at "the blind spot that local fire officials wanted to see."'

"These are the fire spotters of today — remote, high-tech cameras attached to communication towers, old lookouts or purpose-built tripods on high vantage points," Branch writes. The cameras — being installed by ALERTCalifornia — "have become a vital tool for firefighters and a ubiquitous presence in emergency coverage." 

ALERTCalifornia installs the cameras, and AI scours the footage, often finding wildfires before 911 calls are made, Branch reports. Officials use the feeds to monitor fires and coordinate teams to get to the scene. Live-feeds of the footage are publicly available on ALERTCalifornia's website. The organization is a "public safety program" based at the University of California San Diego specifically focused on technological responses to and prevention of wildfires.

"This system has changed the world of response," Napa County deputy fire chief, J.C. Greenberg told Branch. “We have instant visibility and instant information that we need to make response decisions.”

McClatchy lays off 30% of its unionized, local journalists

Newspaper publisher McClatchy, which owns several local newspapers throughout the United States, laid off more than 90 journalists and media workers across 17 publications on Sept. 10. Those laid off account for 30% of McClatchy’s unionized workers, according to The News Guild.  

The layoffs impact several local papers that serve as watchdogs for rural interests, regions and governments. Laying off staff at larger newspapers leaves fringe suburban and rural areas at risk of becoming news deserts. 

Affected newsrooms include the Bellingham Herald, The Olympian, Tacoma News Tribune and Tri-City Herald (Washington); Bradenton Herald (Florida); Centre Daily Times (Pennsylvania); Charlotte Observer (North Carolina); Fort Worth Star-Telegram (Texas); Fresno Bee, Modesto Bee and Sacramento Bee (California); Idaho Statesman (Idaho); Kansas City Star (Missouri and Kansas); Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky); Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald (Florida); and The State (South Carolina). 

“The departure of these talented reporters, visual journalists and writers will immediately leave gaping holes in local coverage for dozens of communities across the United States,” The News Guild writes. “They lost their jobs, cut by a company that should spend as much time figuring out how to use high-skilled employees as it does replacing their work with AI.” McClatchy, a subsidiary of the Chatham Asset Management hedge fund, launched a new A.I. "tool that can summarize articles and create different versions for different audiences" at the beginning of this year, Joe Sonka reported for Kentucky Public Radio.

The Idaho Statesman lost 10 of its 18 journalists, for example. The Lexington Herald-Leader, one of Kentucky’s two remaining statewide newspapers, laid off half of its staff, including its only environmental reporter for Eastern Kentucky. The cut leaves the paper with only two reporters who currently cover state and city government.

The State lost its only environmental reporter, who covered the entirety of South Carolina. The Centre Daily Times frequently reported stories that would become national headlines, as was the case with their coverage of Penn State's off-campus cocaine ring. After staff cuts, they were left with five reporters. 

Kentucky mother and daughter stand firm against data center; decline $26 million offer for 500 acres of family land

   

The artificial intelligence boom has introduced the potential
for data centers into communities across America, pitting
technology against humanity and neighbor against neighbor.
(Photo by Igor Omilaev via Sunsplash)

The news about controversies surrounding data centers in one state has become so frequent that one outlet has started publishing a regular story updating the proposals in big cities and small. The Kentucky Lantern announced the new feature this week. It not only ticks off the list of recent activity but provides an interactive map of proposals statewide.

The conflict is no more evident than in rural Mason County, near Maysville, where a mother and daughter are fighting off an attempt to buy their land for more than $26 million. In a Wall Street Journal report by Erich Schwartzel, a community became divided when Delsa Bare, 54, and “nearly blind” from diabetes, and her mother Ida Huddleston, 83, were offered the fortune by a company that remains unidentified but is believed to be Meta. 

At first they agreed to the deal but when they learned that their land would be used to build a massive data center, in support of artificial intelligence, they changed their minds. “I believe artificial intelligence will be the destruction of the human race,” Bare told Schwartzel. They were further insulted by the request that they sign a non-disclosure agreement to seal the deal. The loss of the more than 500 acres owned by Bare and Huddleston has thwarted plans for the 2,000-acre project, affecting the futures of people on both sides of the issue.

Schwartzel observes, “Town meetings still start with the Pledge of Allegiance but often end in insults. Sisters have found themselves on opposite sides of the issue. And local officials who normally update constituents on the sideline of a football game now say they are legally barred from sharing what they know.”

Neighbors have filed lawsuits against neighbors, resulting in the company “holding back checks worth tens of millions of dollars to Maysville farmers who’d expected a windfall,” Schwartzel reported. The owner of a bar frequented by less fortunate residents says many in the community need the 400 jobs the data center would bring, not to mention those needed to build it, and Maysville needs the taxes, which could be tripled. One local official says the company has promised an additional $15 million for local emergency services and $80 million to upgrade the water system.

Meanwhile, Bare gets pats on the back from local data center opponents and letters of encouragement from strangers. Despite her eyesight, she was able to guide the reporter around the farm just by the feel of the ground. Schwartzel reported that Bare knows the data center may still be built, perhaps nearby, but she stands by her decision.

“On the Judgment Day, I’m only called to account for what I was supposed to be responsible for,” she told Schwartzel. “That’s the only way it can go on Judgment Day. What were you responsible for?”

AI giants ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok all 'pilfer' stories from Canadian news outlets, a new audit finds

AI companies chose not to attribute their source materials.
(Photo by Markus Winkler, Unsplash)

ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Grok all hijack Canadian news stories to use in their databases without adding legal attributions to stories pilfered from authors or arranging for copyright payment to publishers, according to an AI audit by Canadian researchers at McGill University, reports Brier Dudley, Free Press editor for The Seattle Times.

Professors Taylor Owen and Aengus Bridgman at McGill "tested four major AI models to see how much they knew about current news stories in Canada and how much credit they give to outlets that originally reported the stories," Dudley explains. The audit proved that tested AI models were "quite knowledgeable about current news stories. But in queries involving web searches, they provided no source attribution in 82% of the responses."

Owen and Bridgman write, "They have [taken and used content] without compensation, without attribution, and without any obligation to sustain the infrastructure they are drawing from. The result is a system that accelerates the economic decline of the journalism it relies on.”

The lack of attribution by AI companies is intentional. "When asked about a story from a specific outlet, the responses named the source 74% to 97% of the time," Dudley adds. "That indicates the companies are technically capable of naming sources but are making a 'design choice' not to, the audit states."

AI's pilfered stories let people get news without visiting the publisher's site or paying for a subscription. Dudley writes, "AI companies get the subscription and advertising revenue, instead of news sites that paid to report, edit and publish the stories."

Through the Online News Act, Canada now requires tech behemoths like Google and Meta that profit from using news sources to compensate publishers. With the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, the U.S. tried to pass protections similar to those adopted in Canada, but the bill faded in Congress in 2023. 

Dudley writes, "It’s past time for a new version of the JCPA, addressing how AI companies are changing the way people get information and preventing them from suffocating the local news industry. . . . To help get the ball rolling, I encourage academics in the U.S. to connect with Owen and Bridgman, who are willing to share their models, and produce similar audits here."

An interactive session about rural communities and AI data centers is scheduled for March 4

While many rural residents may know that a large AI data center can bring potential gains and losses to their communities, many details remain unclear. To address potential knowledge gaps and help rural residents stay informed, the Rural Assembly is offering a 90-minute interactive session, “What Rural Communities Need to Know about AI Data Centers,” that clarifies disputed issues about data mega builds and their potential impact on smaller communities.

Date & time: March 4, 2 p.m. EST
Register here.

The session will cover:

• Who pays for all the electricity a data center will need during construction and once the build is completed?
• What community agreements can and cannot secure.
• How federal and state politics and legislation on data center development are evolving.
• Tools communities can use to maintain local decision-making power, including zoning and permitting strategies, rate class separation, and transparency demands. 
• This online Zoom event will begin with hearing from attendees about what their community has already heard or experienced.

The session will wrap up with a small group discussion about concrete next steps. Whether you’re facing a proposal now or want to prepare before developers arrive, attendees will gain a clearer picture of how the AI boom can impact their neighborhoods and learn the leverage points available to rural communities.

Newsrooms in Kentucky discuss using artificial intelligence in local reporting

Marlowe's opinion on using AI to help with reporting 
has changed. (Photo by Lily Burris, WKMS)

News organizations in Western Kentucky are looking for ways to use artificial intelligence to improve reporting without sacrificing audience trust. 

Journalists at WKDZ, which is a part of Edge Media Group along with stations in Hopkinsville, Madisonville, Princeton and Elkton, are "figuring out how to integrate the newer technology into their workflow," reports Lily Burris of WKMS in Murray, Kentucky.

Edge Media Group’s CEO and owner, Beth Mann, told Burris, "AI is a technology that's changing. … We discuss AI every single day, and it is part of our conversation and training in all of our weekly meetings.”

Mann isn't alone in her search for the proverbial where, when, how and why of AI implementation in community reporting. Chris Evans, publisher and editor of the Crittenden Press in Crittenden County, regularly uses AI to get his job done. Burris reports, "A series of Associated Press webinars about AI usage in journalism made Evans feel more comfortable with the tool and helped him establish his 'guardrails.'"

Alex Mahadevan, director of the AI Innovation Lab at the Poynter Institute, "advises newsrooms on the ethics of implementing AI," Burris writes. "He said the big question in journalism is how much AI-generated content audiences should see and how to disclose when it’s used to maintain trust with them."

Over time, some reporters have changed their minds about using AI. "Edward Marlowe, a reporter at WKDZ since mid-2021, said two years ago he would’ve told someone it was out of the question if they’d asked him about AI. … Now [he] uses it for certain tasks," Burris adds. 

Evans thinks that as smaller news outlets get used to AI alongside their audiences, it may help local news services stay afloat. "Cost is a major factor in why Evans believes smaller newspapers could benefit from AI, especially those that can’t afford another employee," Burris adds. 

A 'hyperscale' data center proposal divides a small town, but few details are known about the project

Residents pack a November meeting of the Bessemer City Council.
(Photo by Lee Hedgepeth, Inside Climate News)

A sprawling data center plan in Bessemer, Alabama, has divided the small town of 25,000 people, who know very few details about the project. 

Despite the lack of public knowledge about the build, the Bessemer City Council approved "rezoning hundreds of acres of forested land at the city’s edge to make way for a 4.5 million square foot data center," reports Lee Hedgepeth of Inside Climate News. Council members, some of whom signed nondisclosure agreements, voted 5-2 to allow the $14.5 billion project to move forward.

Two Bessemer City Council members, Cleo King and Donna Thigpen, "voted against the proposal, called 'Project Marvel,' which has been nearly universally opposed by the residents who live near the site," Hedgepeth writes.

King told Hedgepeth that he didn't think the Bessemer City residents stand to benefit anything from having "a data center [that will] include 18 buildings the size of Walmart Supercenters and consume a massive amount of water and electricity" move into their community.

Bessemer residents, both for and against the project, have attended city council meetings, with those opposing the build complaining that they receive only vague responses to their questions. Residents supporting the project say opponents are "anti-growth."

King said "even as a council member, he has not seen any additional planning documents answering the questions raised by residents and environmental groups," Hedgepeth writes.

"Several representatives of the local school system have testified in favor of the data center proposal," Hedgepeth reports. The developer behind the project reassured council members that Project Marvel will be a "financial boon for Bessemer and will cause no negative impacts for either residents or the environment."

It's hard for Bessemer residents on both sides to get the full measure of the proposal. Ryan Anderson, a staff attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center, an environmental nonprofit, said that "she was shocked by how little is still publicly known about the project after months of public hearings," Hedgepeth reports. She told him, "You can’t answer the most basic questions about what company is building a data center here."

Data center developments offer plenty of community reporting opportunities

U.S. data center infrastructure, with the relationship between the data center locations, transmission infrastructure and fiber optic networks. (NREL map, click to enlarge)

While rural areas may receive an economic boost from data center development in their community, the sprawling energy and water needs that AI hubs require can impact an entire region.

Data centers are a "relatively new kind of industrial infrastructure that environmental journalists may want to pay attention to," writes Joseph A. Davis for the Society of Environmental Journalists.

In areas that experience extremes of heat or cold, power-hungry AI can strain local electrical grids that may already be struggling to meet daily demand for local businesses and homes.

In addition to energy-gobbling, data centers also require enormous amounts of fresh water. Many communities across the U.S. are grappling with ongoing droughts and depleted aquifers. A data center build could leave its community thirsty.

According to Davis, here are story ideas to consider and ways to gather information:

• Find the data center(s) nearest you. Ask the PR people for a tour. There are helpful maplike resources from the National Renewable Energy Labs, Datacenters.com and Visual Capitalist.
• What is the power situation in your data center region? Do you ever have brownouts or energy conservation requests during AC season? Talk to your nearby electric utilities about load management.
• What zoning and permits do your burgeoning data centers need in order to build and operate? Have they got all the approvals they need? Did local authorities make any concessions to usual rules? Tax breaks?
• Where does the cooling water for your local data center, if any, come from? Are permits needed? What happens to the water that is discharged, and what are the heat effects on aquatic systems?
• How many jobs will be created during the construction of the data center? How many jobs after it is operating? Can local people fill them?
• Is your planned data center creating its own power plants to operate? Are they fossil-fueled? Green-powered? Nuclear? What are the environmental consequences?

Reporting resources:

• Data Center Coalition: This trade and lobbying group calls itself “The Voice of the Data Center Industry.”
• Utility companies: Power for many data centers comes from local electric utilities. Check in with your local utilities to see what requirements they have imposed (or waived) for the data center. Here’s a starting list.
• Zoning or planning boards: Siting of industrial facilities often requires approval from such bodies, or city and county councils. Find out what actions are pending and go to the meetings.
• Public utility commissions: Every state has a PUC that regulates local utilities. Check in with your PUC to see if your data center meets requirements. Here’s a list.

Trump Administration wants to revive the coal industry, including mining on federal land and reducing regulations

Photo by Dominik Vanyi on Unsplash

The Trump Administration’s plans to revive the coal industry include leasing 13.1 million acres of federal land for coal mining and reducing the royalty rate for coal, Brad Plumer and Lisa Friedman of The New York Times reported.

Additionally, regulations that “curb carbon dioxide, mercury and other pollutants from coal plants” will be repealed by the Environmental Protection Agency, Plumer and Friedman wrote.

This has led to concerns from environmental groups, activists and politicians about the harmful impacts of coal mining on the environment and its contribution to climate change.

Yet a surge in American electricity needs was already threatening climate goals, due to the inability for renewable and other sources of energy to keep up to demands.

The rise in usage of artificial intelligence has led to the construction of data centers that consume enormous amounts of electricity. More than 50 coal plants that were set to close have remained open to meet this demand.

Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior, cited China’s expansion of coal plants and the threat of losing the “AI arms race” as reasons that the United States needed to invest in coal.

However, unlike the U.S. which is boosting coal while rolling back renewable energy efforts, China is also investing renewable energy and as a result has managed to sink carbon emissions by around 1% despite its usage of coal.

AI isn't coming for 'blue-collar' jobs. The skilled trades sector boasts 'high-tech, 21st-century, rewarding, well-paying jobs.'

Human work may change as AI enters
new markets. (Unsplash graphic)

Artificial intelligence may upend parts of the U.S. labor market, but "blue-collar" jobs are growing and expected to be less vulnerable to AI intrusion. "AI is supposed to displace millions of workers in the coming years — but when your toilet won't flush at 2 a.m., you're not going to call ChatGPT," reports Ben Berkowitz of Axios. "Companies are already boasting of saving hundreds of millions of dollars a year by using AI instead of humans."

AI might be able to regurgitate its "white-collar work" programming with razor-like precision, but putting on a new roof or installing electrical wiring won't be its domain. "The 40 most-vulnerable jobs (translators, historians, sales reps, etc.), basically all of them office work," Berkowitz writes. "The 40 least-vulnerable jobs (dredge operators, roofers, etc.), just about all of them manual labor."

Reinvigorating American labor and manufacturing has "become a key Trump administration economic talking point: Blue-collar wages are rising faster now than at the start of any other administration going back to Nixon," Berkowitz reports.

Even before the AI mega-data center expansions, there was a skilled trade worker shortage. "AI will, ironically, only make [the shortage] worse," Berkowitz explains. "Factories alone are short about 450,000 people a month, per the National Association of Manufacturers."

Jay Timmons, the CEO of NAM, told Berkowitz, "We're really talking about high-tech, 21st-century, rewarding, well-paying jobs. Manufacturers are really embracing what's coming, and they accept the responsibility."

Efforts to ramp up the number of American trade workers "will require a large-scale, national effort — not just for up-and-coming students, but for mid-career folks forced into a pivot," Berkowitz explains. "Everyone from politicians to CEOs recognizes just how badly they need tradespeople to keep the economy running." 

A small town saves its local newspaper with citizen-led fundraising and a 2-year search for a new owner

There's a new paper in town for La Conner, Wash.

When their small-town newspaper closed, the citizens of La Conner, Wash., didn't sit idly by and let their community become another "news desert." Instead, town activists "raised $70,000 and worked for two years to find someone to save it," reports Eric Wilkinson of KING-TV. Last week, the newly revived paper celebrated its "first day of delivery as the La Conner Community News, keeping a journalistic tradition that has connected townspeople for more than a century."

The newspaper's new owner, Kari Mar, said she bought the paper because she "saw an opportunity to make a difference at a time when facts and accuracy are critically important," Wilkinson writes. She told Wilkinson, "The pain of not having a local newspaper was pretty widely felt. There was no place to send an obituary. The town council didn't have a way to get the word out. Firefighters were having a fundraiser. They couldn't tell anybody about it. The need for the paper was palpable."

Small newspaper closures have become almost commonplace. Wilkinson reports, "Over the past 20 years, more than 3,200 newspapers have vanished, nationwide. Since 2004 Washington state has lost 20% of its local papers. . . . The situation is so dire, that a bill is being considered [in Washington] that would tax social media platforms and search engines to help fund the state's struggling newsrooms."

Meanwhile, folks in La Conner are celebrating a special win for local journalism. "The La Conner Community News already has more than 900 subscribers in a community of fewer than 1,000 people," Wilkinson writes. Mar told him, "We have almost everybody. . . .That's pretty good."

How much referral traffic to publishers do AI chatbots provide? Practically zero.

'AI presents an existential threat to the news and
media industry.' (AI image by AI)

AI chatbots steal and repost news created and paid for by humans while failing to refer any meaningful traffic to the publications, a new report finds. Chatbot click-through rates, or CTRs, to original content, are abysmal.

"Tollbit, an analytics and licensing platform for publishers and AI companies, has released its first AI User Agent Index, a quarterly report that tracks overall trends in the scraping habits of the AI industry," reports News/Media Alliance. "The report details that the click-through rates for AI chatbots are 95.7% lower than traditional Google search, with a referral rate of just 0.37%." According to industry figures, 3% is considered the average CTR from a Google search, and anything above this is good.

For many publishers and writers, AI content theft is not surprising; however, "Tollbit's data confirms what publishers have known for years — generative AI chatbots are not providing anywhere near the amount of traffic as traditional search," News/Media Alliance CEO Danielle Coffey said in a statement. "By illegally scraping our content, repackaging it and giving it to consumers without adequately directing them to our sites, AI companies are using our own content to undermine our businesses."

When chatbots "redeliver" news via the web without a click-through to the original publication, news and media organizations miss out on subscription and advertising income. In essence, bots steal original content, which costs publications what a consumer may have paid to read it, and they remove to possibility of future income when no click-through traffic is provided.

“With AI click-through rates almost 96% lower than traditional search, which we believe is already at inadequate return rates, the shift to AI presents an existential threat to the news and media industry," Coffey said. "Something has to change. But that doesn’t mean we want to stop the growth of AI. . . .We’re just asking for responsible AI. Artificial intelligence companies must compensate publishers for the content they use, for the long-term health of both of our industries.”

Opinion: AI doesn't make writing better. 'Letting a robot structure your argument. . .is dangerous.'

Photo by Robert Rieger, Connected Archives
via The New York Times

Nobody ever asks me about language. They ask the DeLillos and the Updikes and the Styrons, but they don’t ask popular novelists. Yet many of us proles also care about the language, in our humble way, and care passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper.
-- From On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Now ask yourself: Could artificial intelligence ever make that observation? What does a robot know about language? Very little, and yet, no matter who is writing, a robot is reworking words and removing human originality from the page. In her opinion essay for The New York Times, Margaret Renkl eschews AI as a better way to write. Edited portions of her essay are shared below.

"Letting a robot structure your argument, or flatten your style by removing the quirky elements, is dangerous. It’s a streamlined way to flatten the human mind, to homogenize human thought. We know who we are, at least in part, by finding the words — messy, imprecise, unexpected — to tell others, and ourselves, how we see the world. The world which no one else sees in exactly that way.

"Sure, there’s a difference between writing a poem and cleaning up a garbled email, between writing a love letter and a Google ad. For some tasks, employing an A.I. assistant might save time without levying a commensurate cost in humanity. Maybe. . . .I’m still not sure."

Sometimes the need for a perfect word can send a writer on a deep dive for the exact word a phrase or verse needs. Renkl shares, "I was outside. . . sitting with my thesis director, the poet James Dickey. I remember that particular meeting because of one ill-chosen word. In a poem that was otherwise finished, a single adjective was clearly wrong. We batted alternatives back and forth across the desk, but none was right.

"Hours later, the right word came to me, popping up out of the depths while my mind was occupied with something else. It was so apt. . . I opened the phone book, and looked up Mr. Dickey’s number. When he answered, I said, ‘Pale.’ The word is ‘pale.’. . .Mr. Dickey was overjoyed about that word, every bit as jubilant as I was. If only for a moment, the world made a kind of sense it hadn’t made before."

''No robot may harm a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm' reads Isaac Asimov’s first law of robotics. But what if the existence of robots itself is what robs us of our humanity? Is that not a way of bringing humans to harm?"

Policymakers and legislatures work to contain the harm AI and deepfakes could do in this year's elections

(Graphic by Sean Westwood/DALL-E artificial intelligence
via Dartmouth)

AI and deepfake political ads are easy to disseminate and pose a threat to U.S. elections. Policymakers have been hard at work trying to get ahead of the problem. "The Federal Communications Commission announced it would move forward with a proposal to require that TV and radio advertisements disclose on air when AI is used," reports Chris Teale of Route Fifty. "The timeline for the rule’s implementation is unclear, but it is expected to go into effect by November."

The proposal's green light wasn't unanimous. Teale writes, "Commissioner Brendan Carr said in a statement that the FCC’s proposal, which will be subject to a vote later this year, is a 'recipe for chaos' that can 'only muddy the waters.'. . . 'Suddenly, Americans will see disclosures for AI-generated content on some screens but not others, for some political ads but not others, with no context for why they see these disclosures or which part of the political advertisement contains AI."

One deepfake trick is to generate robocalls to voters. Before the "New Hampshire presidential primary election, a robocall purportedly featuring President Joe Biden discouraged voters from going to the polls, and instead told them to wait until November’s general election to vote," Teale explains. "The call turned out to be a deepfake generated by artificial intelligence."

The FCC's rule is "one of many efforts in recent weeks to get ahead of the potential threat deepfakes pose. State and local election offices have already seen how AI-generated content could be used to spread misinformation and disinformation," Teale reports. "President Joe Biden has already been the subject of much AI-generated content, including a video on Facebook that made it look like he inappropriately touched his granddaughter’s chest after they voted in the 2022 midterms."

AI leaves voters unsure of who's saying what and possibly defaulting to believing nothing anyone says. In response, policymakers and legislatures are working through the best ways to help create clarity where there could be chaos. Teale writes, "Already, several state legislatures have passed laws requiring disclosure of AI’s use in elections and campaigns, with only Minnesota and Texas outright banning it. More than three dozen states are in various stages of considering similar disclosure bills."

Walmart, a big warehouser, starts shifting to robots

Walmart transitioned to using autonomous forklifts.
(Photo by Thomas Simonetti, The Wall Street Journal)

"Please, A.I., don't take our jobs, take our tasks," Talib Babb mused in his New Yorker "Daily Shout." He must have shouted gustily, because someone at Walmart heard him. "Inside a sprawling Walmart warehouse here, hundreds of jobs slinging boxes are changing into roles managing robotic arms, conveyor belts and screens, report Sarah Nassauer and Dave Cole of The Wall Street Journal. "The central Florida warehouse in Brooksville, is surrounded by cow pastures and housing developments, has been one of this county's largest private employers since it opened in 1991, say local officials. By the end of the year, it will be the first U.S. Walmart warehouse of its kind to use automation to handle most products."

The center marks a dramatic change in warehouse labor; robots are doing the heavy lifting, and employees are directing the bots. José Molina has been "a Brooksville warehouse worker for 25 years. Three months ago, he became an autonomous forklift operator in the facility after years unloading semi trucks the manual way with a pallet jack," the Journal reports. Molina told reporters: "Now I'm watching the robots unload the truck. I'm behind the robot taking care of the issues. It's a big change. The work is less manual, there is more software knowledge involved, and he has more energy at the end of a shift, he said. Workers who make the leap to automated jobs generally don't earn higher pay. Walmart's supply-chain workers earn an average of $25.50 an hour."

The shift to automation was met with mixed responses. "Skepticism and fear of layoffs among workers are common when a warehouse first transitions to automation, said Piyush Sampat, a supply-chain consultant from Deloitte," the Journal reports. "Many workers are excited about a new challenge, but others leave, he said. Employers automate, in part, to cut labor costs, so losing some workers during the process helps avoid the need for layoffs, said Sampat. As Walmart automates, it doesn't expect its overall U.S. workforce to shrink as it hires for new roles, but it will grow more slowly than in the past, executives said." To encourage employees to try new roles, managers have framed the change as healthier and offering more promotion opportunities.

"Because of Walmart's scale, its plan to make automation standard in more of its supply chain is likely to affect how smaller competitors invest in their own facilities and what a U.S. warehouse job becomes," the Journal reports. "Workers receive around six weeks of training when they transition, learning about software, fixing issues as they arise and how to track inventory as it is passed between robots. . . . David Guggina, executive vice president of supply chain for Walmart, said what this technology does for us is increases capacity, increases the accuracy of our loads, increases the speed of the supply chain and lowers cost."