Latest news with #KansasPolitics
Yahoo
08-08-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Former USDA official files to run for Sen. Roger Marshall's seat as a Democrat
Former congressional candidate Christy Davis filed to run as a Democrat for Kansas's Senate seat held by Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas. Davis ran for the Democratic Party's nomination for Kansas's First Congressional district in 2020. She lost in the primary to Kali Barnett, who in turn lost to now-Rep. Tracey Mann, R-Kansas. Davis told hundreds of protestors at the June 14 No Kings Protest in Topeka that she was exploring a run. She expressed frustration at the lack of action from Congress pushing back on the Trump administration and at Kansas's junior senator. 'The administration is clawing back funding for our public schools and dismantling the entire farm economy,' she said at the rally, according to the Kansas Reflector. 'And what is Senator Marshall doing in response? He doesn't even live here. Not what the Constitution says he's supposed to. Instead of representing us and checking the power of the tyrant in the White House, he's trying to flatter him.' On Aug. 5, Davis officially filed for the office with the Federal Election Commission. Johnson County Democrat Anne Parelkar has also filed to run for the office. Democrat Michael Soetaert hasn't filed with the FEC for the campaign but did register a campaign for Senate with the Kansas Secretary of State's Office. Davis, a Cottonwood Falls resident, is a former White House appointee to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Rural Development under the Biden administration. In her career, she has worked as a historical preservation specialist for the Kansas Historical Society, the executive director of the Symphony in the Flint Hills and as a public affairs specialist for Terry Humphrey Public Affairs Group. Davis couldn't be immediately reached for comment. All Democrats will have a long road ahead to catch up to Marshall's campaign. His most recent campaign filing with the FEC shows he had $2.7 million cash on hand as of June 30. This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Three Democrats now filed to run for Roger Marshall's Senate seat
Associated Press
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Kansas Republican senate president announces 2026 gubernatorial bid
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson entered the race for governor on Sunday as the 2026 Republican primary field gets more crowded. Republicans are keen to recapture the governor's office in GOP-leaning Kansas after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly narrowly won a second four-year term in 2022. Kelly is term-limited and cannot run again. Masterson, a small-business owner, has been a state senator representing a district in eastern Kansas since 2009. He became Senate president in 2021. He previously served in the Kansas House of Representatives from 2005 to 2008. Other Republicans in the 2026 governor's race include Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who built his public profile pushing back against unfounded election conspiracy theories, and former Gov. Jeff Colyer. Colyer was elevated to the office for about a year in 2018 after former Gov. Sam Brownback resigned. He failed to get past the primary in that year's gubernatorial election, then entered the 2022 governor's race but dropped out early after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
ChatGPT can now write a comprehensible column about Kansas politics. It might also end the world.
The hype around artificial intelligence, both positive and negative, has reached a fever pitch in recent weeks. (Illustration) ChatGPT has taken a couple of steps closer toward becoming a Kansas Reflector opinion columnist. The last time I asked the artificial intelligence chatbot to write a column about Kansas politics, in December 2022, it couldn't connect to current articles online. ChatGPT produced a generic and inoffensive piece: 'There is much more to Kansas than meets the eye,' and so on. When I asked it to write about the 2025 state legislative session on Monday, a better column resulted, citing both current events and web sources (including the Reflector). 'Advocates must continue to push for increased education funding, expanded health care access, and the protection of civil rights,' it pontificated. Yet something was still missing. In the two-and-a-half years between those two columns, the AI sector has exploded. New models have made their debuts, and big tech has sunk billions of dollars into making them smarter than ever. Yet the promise that I once wrote about has been replaced — for me — by a nagging sense that AI still falls woefully short and poses profound risks for the globe. The problem of hallucinations has not only persisted, but grown worse. Too few people have given serious through to where we're all headed. No one invests in these large language models to create robotic columnists. Yet the job of synthesizing current events and adding context or perspective would seem well suited to artificial intelligence. For good or ill (probably good, given my hope to remain employed), ChatGPT has shown little improvement in writing memorable prose. Its sentences read like so much baby food, mushed and mushed again into a smooth paste. The code underlying this current brand of AI offers an explanation. These 'large language models' train on text generated by human beings and generate responses based on probability. Words follow other words thanks to statistical calculation. The addition of real-time web searching improves the experience, but blandness persists. These models can be more interesting to read about than use. For example, researchers don't entirely understand why current AI technology works at all. Perhaps that's why computer gurus hold AI in such reverence. The rest of us, though, deal with its real-world shortcomings. Last year, I wrote about a particularly gnarly hallucination in which ChatGPT insisted that my last name — created by my husband and I in 2010 — had deep historical origins. Those lies irritated me, and I wrote a column venting my frustration. These days, an identical query results in a much smarter response. The bot refers to my piece, for one thing. This kind of improvement can't be denied. Yet it only happened because a human being noticed the mistake and fussed about it. If I had not noticed, if I had not written the column, there was no reason to expect that the model would improve. And this points to the fundamental, continuing limitation of large language models: They only know what they've been taught and can infer from such data. They can't imagine, create or desire new experiences. They only reflect what has gone before. At the same time, I wouldn't grow too comfortable. A growing cadre of scientists warn that AI could lead to devastating outcomes — and not from boredom. They believe that if current technology leads to the creation of artificial superintelligence, humanity itself might go extinct. A forthcoming book on the subject bears the comforting title 'If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies.' I could go into the existential risk arguments at length, but for convenience's sake I'll summarize. If you create something much more intelligent than you, it could decide that its own goals differ from yours. If you stand in its way, that something might decide to remove you. In other words, Frankenstein's monster might decide to depose Dr. Frankenstein. That's it. While you might consider such a situation far-fetched, the world only has to end once. There could well be multiple super-intelligent AIs in years to come, with different creators and goals and personalities. Can we be sure that every one of them has our best interests at heart? For that matter, I don't think the risk comes exclusively from super-intelligent systems. Just hook up a garden-variety AI to the military assets of any reasonable-sized country. Presto! Instantaneous instability. Again, this might seem far-fetched to most of us. But can you guarantee that every single country will refrain from such a step? The risks seem real enough to merit attention from governments and everyday folks. Better safe than sorry, as the saying goes. Yet I'm not much worried about the current-generation large language models, of the type that fuel ChatGPT or Google's Gemini or Elon Musk's Grok. I have watched this technology develop over the past couple of years with a skeptical eye. It can take decent notes from an audio recording. It can help high schoolers and college students cheat on tests. It has made many aspects of software coding faster and more efficient. That all makes sense. It could do the same things back in 2022, to a lesser extent. Meanwhile, customers sigh as poorly integrated 'AI' features spam their search engines and cell phones. Immense power requirements gobble up grid capacity and spew pollution. Where are the breakthroughs? What happened to the hypothesized medical discoveries? Where are the penetrating insights from virtual Kansas Reflector columnists? Could it be that large language models, as we currently experience them, only go so far and work well in limited circumstances? Could it be that the furor we've experienced stems mostly from marketing hype and the wishful thinking of tech bros? I'm not sure. But I'm suspicious. Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Mayor weighs in on budget deficit, sales tax, and Hotel Topeka
TOPEKA (KSNT) – Topeka Mayor Mike Padilla joined Inside Kansas Politics to weigh in on some of the most pressing issues, after announcing he won't seek re-election. Inside Kansas Politics co-host Rebekah Chung sat down with Padilla one-on-one to talk about the city's budget deficit, Hotel Topeka, and much more. And later in the show, Associated Press reporter John Hanna joined Chung and co-host Rob Hughes to break down current bills and heated debates. He also commented on the scuffle between two lawmakers in the House and how it's unfolding. Kansas bans kids from transitioning as controversial bill becomes law, activist speaks out You can watch Inside Kansas Politics at 10:30 a.m. on Sunday mornings only on KSNT (check your local listings). To get the latest news on Inside Kansas Politics, check out our X account, or follow us on Facebook. If you have a story you think we should cover, email us at ikp@ For more Capitol Bureau news, click here. Keep up with the latest breaking news in northeast Kansas by downloading our mobile app and signing up for our news email alerts. Get the latest in weather alerts by downloading our Storm Track Weather App. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
