Providence Technology Group

Late last month, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg invested $50 million in California State University, Sacramento to boost STEM laboratories, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and to establish a new Artificial Intelligence center. California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that the multimillion-dollar donation will fund the renovation of three vacant state buildings on Capitol Mall, converting them into a new university district with affordable housing and academic centers for students and faculty at Sacramento State. Keep Reading This Article at AS.com

(FOX40.COM) — The City of Rancho Cordova is supporting local high school students in city-funded AI programs as they present AI projects built for Rancho Cordova and SMUD. Since September, 32 local students have participated in an artificial intelligence program to demonstrate how early exposure to technology can lead to real-world impact. Keep Reading This Article at Yahoo News

In the past year, state and local governments have implemented numerous AI-based processes, transforming everything from traffic management and law enforcement to procurement and permitting. “AI is affecting all of our cities,” Sunnyvale, California, Mayor Larry Klein — whose city sits in the heart of Silicon Valley — said during a press conference opening the U.S. Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 28. And, he added, “we’re all in learning mode” and “looking at it with a wary eye.” Agreeing that AI is “on the forefront of everything,” Rancho Cordova, California, Mayor Garrett Gatewood said during the press conference that the technology is “the future of governance as a whole.” Keep Reading This Article at Yahoo News

New research anticipates hijacking against AI systems in order to create defenses for a more secure future. As a self-driving car cruises down a street, it uses cameras and sensors to perceive its environment, taking in information on pedestrians, traffic lights, and street signs. Artificial intelligence (AI) then processes that visual information so the car can navigate safely. But the same systems that allow a car to read and respond to the words on a street sign might expose that car to hijacking attacks from bad actors. Text placed on signs, posters, or other objects can be read by an AI’s perception system and treated as instructions, potentially allowing attackers to influence an autonomous system’s behavior through the real world. Keep Reading This Article at UCSC News

A startup specializing in carbon-negative artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure powered by renewable energy systems has acquired the idled Buena Vista Biomass Power facility in Ione, California, and plans to convert the legacy wood-burning plant into a 41-MW “carbon-negative AI factory.” The redevelopment announced on Jan. 14, which New York-based NewYork GreenCloud (NYGC) is executing with biomass-to-pyrolysis engineering firm BucSha Energy, seeks to convert the existing 18-MW biomass facility into a 41-MW plant that will supply renewable baseload power directly to on-site AI training and inference operations. Keep Reading This Article at Power

The California Privacy Protection Agency has officially launched the Delete Request and Opt-out Platform, or DROP. This new state-run system allows Californians to demand that more than 500 registered data brokers delete their personal information and stop selling it, all through a single centralized website. Keep Reading This Article at FOXLA.com

California is shifting from traditional traffic stops to automated radar systems that can clock a speeding car, capture its license plate and trigger a ticket with little or no human involvement. The move reflects a broader effort to cut deadly crashes on some of the state’s most dangerous roads by relying on cameras and software instead of patrol cars and sirens. As cities begin to deploy these systems, the debate is no longer about whether automated enforcement is coming, but how it will work and who it will affect. Keep Reading This Article at MSN.com

Startups flush with cash are building AI-assisted laboratories to find materials far faster and more cheaply, but are still waiting for their ChatGPT moment. The microwave-size instrument at Lila Sciences in Cambridge, Massachusetts, doesn’t look all that different from others that I’ve seen in state-of-the-art materials labs. Inside its vacuum chamber, the machine zaps a palette of different elements to create vaporized particles, which then fly through the chamber and land to create a thin film, using a technique called sputtering. What sets this instrument apart is that artificial intelligence is running the experiment; an AI agent, trained on vast amounts of scientific literature and data, has determined the recipe and is varying the combination of elements. Keep Reading This Article a...[Read More]

Data centers that power AI use massive amounts of water and electricity. Here’s how companies are working to reduce their strain on resources If you haven’t noticed, data centers have been sprouting up all over. And they’re mighty thirsty. Inside these secured, windowless compounds, where servers hum and data never sleeps, AI systems guzzle millions of gallons of water (a single large data center can consume as much water as a town of 10,000 people, or even more) just to stay cool. Keep Reading This Article at Comstock Magazine

California’s Chief Information Officer and Department of Technology (CDT) Director Liana Bailey-Crimmins is using the state’s Digital Identity Gateway to rally agencies and vendors around a shared approach to online identification. As the gateway moves from pilot to platform, she is encouraging more departments to build on the service so residents can use a single digital identity to reach a growing set of state programs. Keep Reading This Article at MobileIDWorld

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA‑E) has awarded UC Davis researchers a $3 million grant to develop a bio‑based process that selectively captures rare earth elements from acidic mine‑influenced and industrial wastewater streams. Keep Reading This Article at Electronics Weekly

Waymo’s self-driving vehicles now have the go-ahead to operate in the capital region, following a decision quietly made last week by the California Department of Motor Vehicles to expand the company’s driverless testing territory beyond the Bay Area and Los Angeles. But don’t expect to hail an autonomous taxi just yet. Keep Reading This Article at MSN.com