logo
Democrat mayor slammed for spending tens of thousands of taxpayer money on AI to do city employees' jobs

Democrat mayor slammed for spending tens of thousands of taxpayer money on AI to do city employees' jobs

Daily Mail​19-07-2025
A California politician is slammed after spending tens of thousands of taxpayer money on AI to do his employees' jobs.
San Jose Mayor, Matt Mahan, spent more than $35,000 to purchase 89 ChatGPT licenses - at $400 per account - for city workers to use.
By next year, the city intends to have 1,000, or about 15 percent of its workers, trained to use AI tools for a variety of tasks, including pothole complaint response, bus routing, and using vehicle-tracking surveillance cameras to solve crimes.
Mahan staff even used it to help draft talking points before a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new business, and he used it to help write a $5.6billion budget for the new fiscal year.
Mahan is now pushing a growing number of the nearly 7,000 government workers running Silicon Valley's biggest city to embrace artificial intelligence technology.
'The idea is to try things, be really transparent, look for problems, flag them, share them across different government agencies, and then work with vendors and internal teams to problem solve,' Mahan said in an interview. 'It's always bumpy with new technologies.'
Mahan said adopting AI tools will eliminate drudge work and help the city better serve its roughly 1million residents, but some residents are angry he's spending money on the program when the city is already in a deficit.
He is not the only public or private sector executive directing an AI-or-bust strategy, though in some cases, workers have found that the costly technology can add hassles or mistakes.
While some government agencies have been secretive about when they turn to chatbots for help, Mahan is open about his ChatGPT-written background memos that he turns to when making speeches.
'Historically, that would have taken hours of phone calls and reading, and you just never would have been able to get those insights,' he said. 'You can knock out these tasks at a similar or better level of quality in a lot less time.'
However he added that 'you still need a human being in the loop. You can't just kind of press a couple of buttons and trust the output. You still have to do some independent verification. You have to have logic and common sense and ask questions.'
However, not everyone is happy about his purchase.
'Here's a real idea for AI that works: Replace Matt Mahan with AI,' one wrote on X. 'After all, AI has been writing Mahon's speeches & possibly X posts & replies! An 'authentic' mayor, indeed.'
'If AI is being used in San José government, the results are invisible to the taxpayers footing the bill. Mahan's obsession with tech gimmicks is just a distraction from his failure to lead on the issues that matter: public safety, housing, and restoring pride in our neighborhoods,' another wrote.
'San José doesn't need more tech talk. It needs results.'
Another complained of the deficient the city is in.
However, not everyone is happy about his purchase. 'Here's a real idea for AI that works: Replace Matt Mahan with AI,' one wrote
'Matt, pass that good stuff you are smoking. SJC is in a recession, a $43 million SJ budget deficit & all factors blamed r Sanctuary/ DEI related,' they wrote.
One of San Jose's early adopters was Andrea Arjona Amador, who leads electric mobility programs at the city's transportation department. She has already used ChatGPT to secure a $12million grant for electric vehicle chargers.
Arjona Amador set up a customized 'AI agent' to review the correspondence she was receiving about various grant proposals and asked it to help organize the incoming information, including due dates. Then, she had it help draft the 20-page document.
Arjona Amado started using it to help save time.
'The way it used to work, before I started using this, we spent a lot of evenings and weekends trying to get grants to the finish line,' she said. The Trump administration later rescinded the funding, so she pitched a similar proposal to a regional funder not tied to the federal government.
Arjona Amador, who learned Spanish and French before she learned English, also created another customized chatbot to edit the tone and language of her professional writings.
With close relationships to some of the tech industry's biggest players, including San Francisco-based OpenAI and Mountain View-based Google, the mayors of the Bay Area's biggest cities are helping to promote AI adoption.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced a plan Monday to give nearly 30,000 city workers, including nurses and social workers, access to Microsoft's Copilot chatbot, which is based on the same technology that powers ChatGPT.
San Francisco's plan says it comes with 'robust privacy and bias safeguards, and clear guidelines to ensure technology enhances - not replaces - human judgment.'
San Jose has similar guidelines and hasn't yet reported any major mishaps with its pilot projects. Such problems have attracted attention elsewhere because of the technology's propensity to spew false information, known as hallucinations.
ChatGPT's digital fingerprints were found on an error-filled document published in May by US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr.'s 'Make America Healthy Again' commission.
In Fresno, California, a school official was forced to resign after saying she was too trusting of an AI chatbot that fabricated information in a document.
Earlier this year, when OpenAI introduced a new pilot product called Operator, it promised a new kind of tool that went beyond a chatbot's capabilities. Instead of just analyzing documents and producing passages of text, it could also access a computer system and schedule calendars or perform tasks on a person's behalf.
Developing and selling such 'AI agents' is now a key focus for the tech industry.
More than an hour's drive east of Silicon Valley, where the Bay Area merges into Central Valley farm country, Jamil Niazi, director of information technology at the city of Stockton, had big visions for what he could do with such an agent.
These include allowing the parks and recreation department to use an AI agent to help residents book amenities or check how busy they are before visiting.
Six months later, however, after completing a proof-of-concept phase, the city didn't buy a full license for the technology due to the cost.
The market research group Gartner recently predicted that over 40 percent of 'agentic AI' projects will be canceled before the end of 2027, 'due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.'
San Jose's mayor remains bullish about the potential for these AI tools to help workers 'in the bowels of bureaucracy' to rapidly speed up their digital paperwork.
'There's just an amazing amount of bureaucracy that large organizations have to have,' Mahan said. 'Whether it's finance, accounting, HR or grant writing, those are the kinds of roles where we think our employees can be 20 [to] 50 percent more productive - quickly.'
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Lauren Boebert's son charged with child abuse in incident she described as a ‘miscommunication'
Lauren Boebert's son charged with child abuse in incident she described as a ‘miscommunication'

The Independent

time25 minutes ago

  • The Independent

Lauren Boebert's son charged with child abuse in incident she described as a ‘miscommunication'

Rep. Lauren Boebert's son has been charged with child abuse following an incident involving her grandson that she described as a 'miscommunication.' Tyler Boebert, 20, the eldest son of the MAGA congresswoman, was cited for criminal negligence where no death or injury occurred, which is a misdemeanor, for the July 11 incident, according to Windsor Police Department records obtained by Denver Westword. Authorities have not yet shared details about the incident, which the 38-year-old congresswoman brushed off as 'a miscommunication on monitoring my young grandson that recently led to him getting out of the house.' In a statement, the congresswoman described her son's legal trouble as a 'one-time incident,' noting there was 'no injury or physical abuse involved.' Child Protective Services met with the family, the congresswoman added. Despite this, it's not the first run-in with the law for the congresswoman's 20-year-old son, whose girlfriend became pregnant with his child when he was just 17. In September of 2022, Tyler Boebert flipped his father's SUV into a creek, leaving the person in his passenger seat with multiple concussions and a severely lacerated hand. He was ticketed for careless driving. The case was eventually dropped down to a 'defective vehicle for headlights' ticket under a plea deal. Then, in January 2024, he called the police to report that his father, Jayson, was assaulting him, leading to his arrest. During the incident, the father 'pushed Tyler to the ground and pushed his thumb into his mouth,' according to the arrest affidavit. A month later, Tyler was slapped with more than a dozen felony charges for a series of thefts from vehicles – and for using stolen credit cards at local gas stations. Tyler Boebert pleaded guilty last October to a single charge of attempting to commit identity theft and was given a two-year deferred judgment, allowing his felony to be cleared from his record after completing his 24-month probation term. He was required to complete 80 hours of community service and was banned from using controlled substances. It was not immediately clear whether the most recent citation would be a breach of his probation. He is due in Weld County Court on September 8.

Trump announces 'very powerful deal' with the EU
Trump announces 'very powerful deal' with the EU

Daily Mail​

time26 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

Trump announces 'very powerful deal' with the EU

Published: Updated: President Donald Trump announced he had reached a 'very powerful' trade deal with the European Union that would lower barriers to U.S. exports and bring new European investments into the U.S. Trump called it 'a very powerful deal' as well as 'a very big deal. It's the biggest of all the deals.' He also called it 'the biggest deal ever made.' Speaking from his Turnberry golf course, Trump said European Union countries would purchase $750 billion of energy from the U.S. and provide an additional $600 billion in U.S. investments. 'All of the countries will be opened up to trade with the United States at zero tariff, and they're agreeing to purchase a vast amount of military equipment,' Trump added. 'We don't know what that number is.' It came after Trump inveighed against 'one-sided' trade with Europe as he sat down at his Turnberry golf course with the EU Commission president, while raging against windmills and saying there were prospects for reaching a deal imminently. 'We wanted to rebalance the trade relations,' said EU Commission Chair Ursula von der Leyen, confirming the agreement while sitting alongside Trump. Trump flashed his anger when a reporter asked if turmoil over the Jeffrey Epstein story had contributed to the rush to get the deal done. 'Oh, you've got to be kidding. No – had nothing to do with it. Only you would make that. That had nothing to do with it,' Trump responded. Both leaders made nice – after the 'Liberation Day' tariffs Trump rolled out in April threatened to cleave the powerful allies. Trump had more recently threatened a 30 percent tariff on the EU – providing an incentive to negotiate it down. Trump, upon arriving here in Scotland, said the powerful trade bloc must 'buy down' the number. 'Basically the European market is open,' said von der Leyen. 'It's 450 million people, so it's a good deal. It's a huge deal. Was tough negotiations. I knew it at the beginning, and it was indeed very tough, but we came to a good conclusion from both sides,' she said. The number comports with what had already been floated. 'We are agreeing that the tariff straight across for automobiles and everything else' would be 15 percent, said Trump. The agreement – with details still to be revealed – comes after Trump announced other agreements with Japan and other nations, while firing off a series of trade 'letters' announcing new tariffs he is imposing on other nations. Japan, too, would face a 15 percent rate on its auto exports to the U.S. After many economists warned that Trump's tariffs could break the alliance, the two leaders proclaimed new cooperation after they had agreed to broad terms. 'This deal will bring us very close together actually. It's a partnership in a sense,' Trump said. The progress came about an hour after Trump complained about the trade relationship. 'It's been a very one-sided transaction – very unfair to the United States,' he complained alongside von der Leyen, keeping her hands in her lap and her expressions muted. 'It's been a very, very one-sided deal, and it shouldn't be,' Trump fumed. He said a deal, if it can be reached, would be the biggest deal 'ever struck by anybody.' 'This is the biggest deal. People don't realize – this is bigger than any other deal. And it could happen – should happen,' he said. Fielding questions at a press event that put the 'working' in what his team calls a 'working visit,' Trump went off on a number of topics. His attacks quickly changed to wind turbines he said obstruct the view from his Scottish golf course. 'It ruins the landscape. It kills the birds. They're noisy,' Trump complained. He said what he terms windmills in Massachusetts were 'driving them loco – driving them crazy.' 'Today I'm playing the best course, I think, in the world: Turnberry ... And I look over the horizon and I see nine windmills. I say isn't that a shame,' he said. On immigration, another tension point, Trump said: 'We've sealed our borders. We have nobody coming in ... I think they're going to end up in the same place. You might as well go there quicker.' Von der Leyen shared his assessment on the chance of reaching an agreement, putting it at 50 percent. Trump got asked at one point if he could do better than 15 percent – the amount of a tariff on European imports that has been floated as a potential final number in an agreement. 'Better meaning lower? No,' Trump said flatly. But the former German politician showed some give in her own remarks and kept her composure even as Trump tore into European policies on trade, energy, and immigration.

Top medical body concerned over RFK Jr's reported plans to cut preventive health panel
Top medical body concerned over RFK Jr's reported plans to cut preventive health panel

The Guardian

time26 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

Top medical body concerned over RFK Jr's reported plans to cut preventive health panel

A top US medical body has expressed 'deep concern' to Robert F Kennedy Jr over news reports that the health secretary plans to overhaul a panel that determines which preventive health measures including cancer screenings should be covered by insurance companies. The letter from the the American Medical Association comes after the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday that Kennedy plans to overhaul the 40-year old US Preventive Services Task Force because he regards them as too 'woke', according to sources familiar with the matter. During his second term, Donald Trump has frequently raged against organizations and government departments that he considers too liberal – often without any evidence. The US president, and his cabinet members such as Kennedy, have also overseen huge cuts and job losses across the US government. The taskforce is made up of a 16-member panel appointed by health and human services secretaries to serve four-year terms. In addition to cancer screenings, the taskforce issues recommendations for a variety of other screenings including osteoporosis, intimate partner violence, HIV prevention, as well as depression in children. Writing in its letter to Kennedy on Sunday, the AMA defended the panel, saying: 'As you know, USPSTF plays a critical, non-partisan role in guiding physicians' efforts to prevent disease and improve the health of patients by helping to ensure access to evidence-based clinical preventive services.' 'As such, we urge you to retain the previously appointed members of the USPSTF and commit to the long-standing process of regular meetings to ensure their important work can be continued without disruption,' it added. Citing Kennedy's own slogan of 'Making America healthy again,' the AMA went on to say: 'USPSTF members have been selected through an open, public nomination process and are nationally recognized experts in primary care, prevention and evidence-based medicine. They serve on a volunteer basis, dedicating their time to help reduce disease and improve the health of all Americans – a mission well-aligned with the Make America Healthy Again initiative.' According to the Affordable Care Act, public and private insurance companies must cover any services recommended by the Preventive Services Task Force without cost sharing. In a statement to MedPage Today, Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon did not confirm the reports, instead saying: 'No final decision has been made on how the USPSTF can better support HHS' mandate to Make America Healthy Again.' Reports of Kennedy's alleged decision to overhaul the taskforce come after the American Conservative published an essay earlier this month that described the taskforce as advocating for 'leftwing ideological orthodoxy'. It went on to accuse the panel of being 'packed with Biden administration appointees devoted to the ideological capture of medicine', warning that the 'continued occupation of an important advisory body in HHS – one that has the capacity to force private health insurers to cover services and procedures – by leftwing activists would be a grave oversight by the Trump administration'. In response to the essay, 104 health organizations, including the American Medical Association, issued a separate letter to multiple congressional health committees in which they urged the committees to 'protect the integrity' of the taskforce. 'The loss of trustworthiness in the rigorous and nonpartisan work of the Task Force would devastate patients, hospital systems, and payers as misinformation creates barriers to accessing lifesaving and cost effective care,' the organizations said. In June, Kennedy removed all 17 members of a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention panel of vaccine experts. Writing in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, he accused the committee of having too many conflicts of interest. Kennedy's decision to overhaul the immunization panel was met with widespread criticism from health experts, with the American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin calling the ouster 'a coup'. 'It's not how democracies work. It's not good for the health of the nation,' Benjamin said.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store