Latest news with #698
The Star
2 days ago
- Business
- The Star
ChatGPT helps prepare this mayor's talking points. Now he wants a thousand city workers using AI
Before the mayor of San Jose, California, arrives at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new business, his aides ask ChatGPT to help draft some talking points. "Elected officials do a tremendous amount of public speaking,' said Mayor Matt Mahan, whose recent itinerary has taken him from new restaurant and semiconductor startup openings to a festival of lowriding car culture. Other politicians might be skittish admitting a chatbot co-wrote their speech or that it helped draft a US$5.6bil (RM23.7bil) budget for the new fiscal year, but Mahan is trying to lead by example, pushing a growing number of the nearly 7,000 government workers running Silicon Valley's biggest city to embrace artificial intelligence technology. Mahan said adopting AI tools will eliminate drudge work and help the city better serve its roughly 1 million residents. He's hardly 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. "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.' By next year, the city intends to have 1,000, or about 15%, 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. 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 US$12mil (RM50.9mil) grant for electric vehicle chargers. Arjona Amador set up a customised "AI agent' to review the correspondence she was receiving about various grant proposals and asked it to help organise the incoming information, including due dates. Then, she had it help draft the 20-page document. So far, San Jose has spent more than US$35,000 (RM148,592) to purchase 89 ChatGPT licenses – at US$400 (RM1,698) per account – for city workers to use. "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 the type of AI adoption that the tech industry is striving for, while also promising guidelines and standards to avoid the technology's harms. 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. 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.' He added, however, 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.' 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. Perhaps the parks and recreation department could let an AI agent help residents book a public park or swimming pool for a birthday party. Or residents could find out how crowded the pool was before packing their swim clothes. 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% of "agentic AI' projects will be cancelled 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 organisations 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% more productive – quickly.' – AP ——— The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement that allows OpenAI access to part of AP's text archives.
Gulf Today
6 days ago
- Business
- Gulf Today
Female employee awarded Dhs132,500 and flight home after company failed to pay wages
Abu Dhabi Labour Court of First Instance obligated a company to pay Dhs132,587 and an airway ticket at up to Dhs1,492 to a female employee for failing to pay her due wages for several consecutive months. Earlier, a female employee filed a lawsuit against the company she was working for in which she requested the court to obligate the company to pay her back wages and wage differences for several months totaling Dhs120,889 plus an end-of-service bonus of Dhs11,698, an airway ticket at Dhs1,492 dirhams and the incurred expenses. The plaintiff requested the court's judgment to be with immediate enforcement, based on the claim that she worked for the company for about 3 years with a basic salary of Dhs8,000 and a total salary of Dhs16,000. The court explained that article 22 of federal decree-law no. 33 for 2021 regulating labour relations outlines that the wage, or its type (e.g. hourly, daily, monthly), must be specified in the employment contract. If not specified, the competent court will determine it in labor disputes. The employer is obligated to pay wages on the due dates according to the Ministry's approved systems and regulations, it added. The case papers were devoid of anything indicating that the company paid the agreed-upon wage and hence, the employee was entitled to her delayed wage for this period, the court said. The plaintiff's service period lasted for about 3 years and the papers were devoid of anything indicating that the company had paid the end-of-service gratuity, and accordingly the employee was entitled to the Dhs11,698 she was demanding, it added. It is also stipulated in accordance with article 13/12 of federal decree-law no. 33 for 2021, which regulates labour relations, that a worker is entitled to an airway ticket to be paid for by the employer to the place from which he was recruited or mutually agreed upon. Whereas the employee terminated the employment relationship with her company due to the failure of the latter to pay her due wages as stipulated above, therefore she is entitled to an airway ticket unless she joins another job.
GMA Network
06-06-2025
- General
- GMA Network
No winners of major lotto draws on Friday, June 6, 2025
There were no winners of either of the major lotto jackpots offered on Friday, June 6, 2025, the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO) announced. No bettor chose the winning combination of 29-57-06-10-33-12 picked for the Ultra Lotto 6/58 jackpot prize of P100,698,625.60. There was also no winner of the Megalotto 6/45 jackpot of P8,910,000.00, with the winning combination of 36-12-02-27-21-14. Click here for the complete lotto results. — BAP, GMA Integrated News
Barnama
26-05-2025
- General
- Barnama
PETRA,TNB To Install Solar PV Systems In Mosques, Promoting Energy Transition
PASIR PUTEH, May 26 (Bernama) -- The Energy Transition and Water Transformation Ministry (PETRA), through Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) corporate social responsibility initiative, will install solar photovoltaic (PV) systems at two mosques with an allocation of RM130,698. PETRA secretary-general Datuk Mad Zaidi Mohd Karli said the mosques, Masjid Al-Hijrah at the Fishermen Resettlement Area (PSN) in Tok Bali, Pasir Puteh, Kelantan, and Masjid Al Huda in Kampung Rantau Abang, Dungun, Terengganu, received allocations of RM41,999 and RM88,699 respectively. He said the installations would reduce monthly electricity bills, promote environmental sustainability, raise community awareness, and help lower carbon emissions by replacing conventional energy sources with solar power. "These CSR projects are crucial in our efforts to bring the energy transition closer to the people, and solar power is one of the key initiatives under PETRA. "We call on other companies to follow TNB's example and take part in this energy transition efforts," he said when met at Masjid Al-Hijrah recently. He said the solar PV systems will be installed under the Net Energy Metering (NEM) GoMen scheme, whereby solar energy generated during the day will be used for electricity, and any excess energy will be exported to the TNB grid. "The exported excess will be recorded and reimported for use at night," he said. Meanwhile, the imam of Masjid Al-Hijrah PSN Tok Bali, Amirul Mukminin Mohd Roslan, said the solar project would benefit more than 1,200 residents. "InsyaAllah, there will be more programmes and activities at the mosque, especially at night, once the solar system is installed. It will also help reduce the monthly electricity bill," he said.
Gulf Today
22-05-2025
- Business
- Gulf Today
Bayt Al Khair spent Dhs10,504,184 on humanitarian initiatives last month
Bayt Al Khair revealed that its total expenditure for April 2025 amounted to Dhs10,504,184, bringing the cumulative spending for the first four months of 2025 to Dhs85,954,842. Humanitarian support programmes topped the list, with expenditures totaling Dhs39,698,079 during the same period. These programmes aim to alleviate the hardships faced by individuals struggling with their livelihoods, addressing deficiencies beyond their financial capabilities. This expenditure is in addition to the monthly cash assistance projects targeting low-income Emirati families, which amounted to Dhs5,569,620 during the same period. The emergency assistance project falls under the "Fazaa" community solidarity programme, dedicated to relieving the burdens of modest families and those facing sudden crises or disabilities, enabling them to overcome their challenges and resume their normal lives. Through this initiative, "Bayt Al Khair" also provides humanitarian support to patients, both citizens and residents, via the "Treatment" project, which spent Dhs13,192,508 by the end of April. Additionally, the programme assists individuals burdened by debts they cannot repay through "Al Gharimin" project, which has expended Dhs3,118,087 so far.
