Latest news with #Markey
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
State-level AI regulation ban emerging as D.C. flashpoint
BOSTON (SHNS) – Governors and legislatures 'won't be happy' if the federal government bars them from enacting any state-level regulations on artificial intelligence for the next decade, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey said Wednesday while pledging an effort to get the policy rider tossed from a funding bill. The junior senator from Massachusetts convened civil rights activists and academic experts for a virtual event, where they escalated their opposition to a provision in the U.S. House-approved reconciliation package imposing a 10-year moratorium on state AI restrictions. Markey said that when the bill emerges in the U.S. Senate, he will try to have it eliminated 'as a violation of the Senate rules for reconciliation.' 'We have to be clear about the provision: rather than proposing any plan to address the risks of AI, [the bill would] say you can't do anything about it. But governors are not going to be happy with that, state legislatures won't be happy with it, and I think increasingly, Republicans and Democrats are not going to be happy with it,' Markey said Wednesday. Alondra Nelson, a former Biden administration science official who is now a professor at Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study, argued that governments cannot wait another decade before pursuing limitations on the use of AI and automated decision-making systems. 'AI systems are already, today, reshaping equality and opportunity in real people's lives. We know that IRS algorithms have disproportionately targeted black taxpayers for audits. We know that facial recognition systems are already leading to wrongful arrests. We know already that insurance companies are using surveillance data that creates discriminatory pricing for different Americans. We know that the uses of AI in health care are sometimes missing cancer in darker-skin patients while detecting it in other patients,' Nelson said. 'These aren't hypothetical future risks. They're certainly not risks that we can wait for 10 years to address. These are documented harms that are happening to members of the American public right now.' The U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee added the moratorium language to the budget reconciliation bill. At a markup hearing last month, committee chair Rep. Brett Guthrie of Kentucky said the proposal would implement 'guardrails that protect against state-level AI laws that could jeopardize our technological leadership.' However, the proposal has drawn some bipartisan pushback. Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said Tuesday she did not know the 10-year AI regulation ban was in the bill when she voted to advance it and is 'adamantly OPPOSED to this.' She added that she would not vote in favor of the finalized bill — which cleared the House by a one-vote margin — if it returns from the Senate still containing the moratorium. Forty attorneys general, both Democrats and Republicans, jointly penned a letter to congressional leaders on May 16 announcing opposition to the provision, warning that its impact 'would be sweeping and wholly destructive of reasonable state efforts to prevent known harms associated with AI.' Attorneys general previously called for federal AI governance to focus on 'high risk' systems with emphasis on transparency, testing and enforcement. Attorney general letter on AI moratoriumDownload 'Rather than follow the recommendation from the bipartisan coalition of State Attorneys General, the amendment added to the reconciliation bill abdicates federal leadership and mandates that all states abandon their leadership in this area as well,' the 40 AGs wrote in the letter circulated by the National Association of Attorneys General. 'This bill does not propose any regulatory scheme to replace or supplement the laws enacted or currently under consideration by the states, leaving Americans entirely unprotected from the potential harms of AI. Moreover, this bill purports to wipe away any state-level frameworks already in place.' Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell was among the letter's signatories. On Beacon Hill, elected officials have been weighing the potential risks of AI against the economic upsides of a fast-growing industry. Lawmakers and Gov. Maura Healey last year included $100 million in an economic development bond bill to create a Massachusetts AI Hub, which Healey's office said would 'facilitate the application of artificial intelligence across the state's ecosystem.' Lawmakers targeted AI in several bills pending this term, proposing new guardrails around its use in health care decision-making, additional consumer protection measures, a study on greenhouse gas emissions from the electrically demanding technology, and more. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
1News
17 hours ago
- Health
- 1News
Perth jogger spotted defecating outside health clinic four times
A jogger has been caught on camera fouling the doorstep of a Perth health clinic four times since December last year. CCTV footage taken from the outside the Osbourne Park clinic showed the person dropping their pants to relieve themselves beside the building before jogging off. Asbestos Diseases Society of Australia chief executive Melita Markey described the actions as "extremely distressing" for clinic staff. She told 9News that staff initially believed it was an isolated event when it first happened in December, 2024. "We thought, oh, someone's obviously got in a bit of distress and did what they had to do," she said. ADVERTISEMENT However, the person has since returned three more times in March, April and just last week. CCTV footage taken from the outside of the clinic. (Source: Nine) "It is a biohazard, and they are putting people at risk, putting our staff at risk, our clients at risk, and also themselves," Markey told 9News. The health clinic has reported the incidents to the police and the local council, and has reportedly engaged professional cleaners. Markey expressed some sympathy with the woman. "I believe it's a cry for help, why she targets us," she said. "We'd love her to come in and see our GP and see if we can do something to help her." ADVERTISEMENT Its not the first offending of this nature in Australia. Corporate manager Andrew Douglas Macintosh, 64, was dubbed the "poo jogger" after being photographed with his pants down on a suburban street in 2018. The story generated enormous interest on the internet. He was charged by authorities after a disgruntled resident set out to catch the jogger suspected of relieving himself on the footpath outside an apartment block more than 30 times. In 2019, celebrity publicist Roxy Jacenko publicly shamed an alleged repeat offending "poo-jogger" outside the Sydney chief executive's offices. Jacenko posted videos to her Instagram page at the time, showing the woman stopping and appearing to relieve herself between two cars.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Markey, advocates call out ban on states' AI oversight in Trump's ‘Big Beautiful Bill'
It's not often that you find uber-progressive U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA loyalist, on the same side of an issue. But when it comes to language that's now in President Donald Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill,' that would ban states from regulating artificial intelligence, the conservative firebrand from Georgia and the Malden lawmaker are — surprisingly — onside. And on Wednesday, Markey, of Malden, convened a roundtable discussion of tech and civil liberties experts to warn against the 'dangerous and unprecedented' language in the House-passed bill that's now before the Senate. If it's approved finally, the language would open the door to algorithm-driven housing and job discrimination and further the growth of deep-fake pornography and child sexual abuse material, they warned. " It would be devastating if we did not act," Markey, who's sponsoring legislation that would put 'guardrails' on the AI industry, said. In a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday, Markey blasted the provision, even as he argued that the nation 'can have an AI revolution while also protecting the civil rights and liberties of everyday Americans.' Greene, an ardent loyalist for President Donald Trump, has said she was unaware that the language was in the bill the Republican-controlled House approved by a single vote last month. She's now calling on the majority-Republican Senate to remove the language, and has threatened to vote against the Republican president's signature domestic policy proposal if the provision stays in, according to published reports. And that's just fine with Markey and the other advocates who gathered for Wednesday's call. They stressed the need for legislation that balances innovation against vigorous regulation of an exploding industry. Alondra Nelson, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, noted that the iPhone has been on the market for not quite 10 years, and has grown and changed exponentially in that time. Then she asked her fellow panelists and the audience to imagine how much AI, which is already growing by leaps and bounds, could further grow and change during a similar interval — but without any oversight from state governments. The moratorium in the mega-bill is an 'unprecedented and dangerous attempt to strip states of their constitutional authority to protect their citizens from at precisely [the] moment when such protection is most urgently needed,' she said. Wednesday's panelists also rejected what they described as industry arguments that state laws would create a regulatory patchwork that would make it difficult for companies to operate from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Recent polling from Common Sense Media/Echelon Insights found that a majority of Americans are against the moratorium, including 50% of self-identified Republican respondents. And more than 7 in 10 respondents (73%) to the poll of 1,022 voters said they want both the state and federal governments to have a hand in regulating artificial intelligence. 'The public hates this on a bipartisan basis,' pollster James P. Steyer, who participated in Wednesday's forum, observed. Damon Hewitt, the president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, offered a similar sentiment, noting that communities of color and underrepresented communities could be particularly impacted. Those same communities have often found themselves foreclosed from equal opportunities in housing and employment because of discrimination. Unregulated artificial intelligence could only exacerbate it, he said. 'We live in a world today where much of our lives are actually lived ... through online interactions, including looking for jobs, applying for college, looking for vital information, sometimes information about ourselves. And so it is critical that we have online protections.' And " to the extent that extant federal civil rights laws at the federal and state level can still be [applied] to AI, absent comprehensive legislation, we suspect that there are some in the industry who would actually try to block general enforcement of civil rights laws that are already on the books," he continued. 'That is something we cannot have.' On Tuesday, a group of 260 state lawmakers wrote to House and Senate members to alert them to the AI provision, warning it would 'undermine ongoing work in the states' on tech regulation, The Hill reported. Some Senate lawmakers also are warning that the language won't pass what's known as The Byrd Rule, which prohibits 'extraneous matters' from being included in reconciliation packages, according to The Hill. That includes provisions that do not 'change outlays or revenues,' the online news outlet reported. For Steyer, that's the bottom line: 'This is not a budget matter,' he said. 'The Senate parliamentarian should strip it from the bill.' Mass. Sen. Warren has a few questions — OK, 66 of them — for Trump's Ed. Department boss Super PAC coordination allegations heat up Boston's mayoral showdown Late-night comics hope Trump, Musk can make up 'False narratives': Mass. US attorney blasts Boston Mayor Wu over remarks on ICE Math is hard. Midterm math is harder. The lessons Mass. needs to learn for 2026 | John L. Micek Read the original article on MassLive.
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
New poll: MA residents support Harvard in Trump fight but unsure on governor's re-election
Six in ten Massachusetts residents support Harvard University in its fight with President Donald Trump, revealed a new poll from the University of New Hampshire Survey Center. In April, Harvard rejected a list of policy demands from the Trump administration, setting up a showdown between the university and the administration. Since then, the fight has escalated as Trump has threatened to take away Harvard's nonprofit status, freeze over $3 billion in federal grant dollars, bar the university from enrolling foreign students and increase taxes on university endowments. Per the poll, 60% of Massachusetts residents disapprove of the Trump administration's threats to cut federal spending at Harvard, including 88% of Democrats and 66% of Independents. 89% of Republicans approve of the threats. Bay Staters largely disapprove of Trump's performance overall and other policies as well. 65% disapprove of Trump's performance, 66% disapprove of his handling of the economy and 62% disapprove of his handling of foreign affairs. More: What is President Donald Trump's approval rating amid pardons, clash with Harvard 65% think it's inappropriate for Trump to receive a luxury jet from Qatar, and 56% think the United States is not supporting Ukraine enough in the war with Russia. The poll also looked at what Massachusetts residents think of Gov. Maura Healey and Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. Healey has a slight positive approval rating in Massachusetts of +4. But it's down from +11 in March, and Bay Staters are split on whether the first term governor deserves another. Healey has announced she will seek a second four-year term in 2026, but only 37% of Massachusetts residents say she deserves re-election, while 40% think she doesn't deserve re-election. 23% are unsure. Per the poll, 60% of Democrats believe she should be re-elected, but only 32% of Independents and 4% of Republicans agree. Markey has also said that he will seek a third term in the U.S. Senate in 2026, but only 33% of Massachusetts residents (including 54% of Democrats) say he should be re-elected. Markey will be 80 years old when the 2026 election takes place, and 55% of respondents say they are somewhat or very concerned about his age. 71% of those that don't think Markey should be re-elected felt that way. This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: What's Trump's approval rating in MA? See stats amid Harvard fight
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mass. Sen. Markey, Rep. Neal call on feds to keep Springfield Small Biz Admin office open
A cadre of Massachusetts pols is calling the head of the U.S. Small Business Administration to keep the agency's satellite office in Springfield open and fully staffed after it was 'inexplicably" targeted for closing by the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency. The office, currently located at 1 Federal St. in Springfield, was among 17 leases that the quasi-governmental DOGE terminated during a flurry of actions in March, MassLive previously reported. The lease on the 894-square-foot space had been set to end in June 2028. The decision leaves Western Massachusetts, and the Pioneer Valley specifically, 'without access to vital SBA services and support,' Democratic U.S. Sens. Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren wrote to SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler in a letter shared exclusively with MassLive. 'With this office closure, the Trump administration is continuing its nonsensical war against small businesses, dismantling the infrastructure that supports them and undermining the foundation of American entrepreneurship,' Markey and Warren wrote in the letter set to be made public on Wednesday. They were joined on the letter by U.S. Reps. Richard Neal, D-1st District, and James P. McGovern, D-2nd District, whose constituents would be hit by the office's closing. Loeffler, a former corporate executive, former Republican U.S. senator from Georgia, and a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, has been making deep cuts at an agency that's a critical resource for small business owners across the country, The New York Times reported last week. The changes, which include rolling back access to credit, have hit businesses run by women, immigrants, and people of color, as the Republican White House also rolls back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts across the government, the newspaper reported. Markey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate's Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, has pressed Loeffler for information on the changes. But she has ignored those inquiries, the Malden Democrat told the newspaper. 'It's unconscionable that the Trump administration would treat such a vital agency so callously,' Markey told the Times. 'They're destroying the areas where they do have expertise and it's vital to invest, and then moving over areas where the agency is going to wind up overwhelmed,' Markey continued. That includes inheriting a $1.66 trillion student loan portfolio from the mostly gutted U.S. Department of Education, according to the Times. In their letter Loeffler, Markey and the other Bay State pols noted that the lease for the Springfield SBA office costs less than $61,000 a year, and that there are no longer any workers in that office because they've since left. And there are no current plans to relocate it or to hire new employees, they wrote. Without an outpost in Springfield, the nearest extant SBA office is in Boston, they wrote. Shuttering the Federal Street office 'will place a tremendous burden on small business owners, forcing them to take time away from their work and drive hours — in some cases a six-hour round trip," they wrote. The half-century-old agency expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic, swelling to 10,000 employees, which dropped to 6,000 under the former Biden administration, the Times reported. It was expected to contract more after that. The agency's lending arm doled out $56 billion last year, and its flagship loan program is generally supposed to operate without a government subsidy, the newspaper reported. In March, the Trump administration announced it was cutting the agency's staff by 43%, or about 2,700 employees. Current and former agency employees told the Times that the reductions were not organized. In addition to their plea, the Massachusetts lawmakers also sent Loeffler a series of questions, giving the SBA until Friday to respond. They include identifying the person, or persons, who approved the decision to spike the Springfield lease, the justification that was provided for that decision, whether there are plans to relocate it, and how the agency intends to serve small business owners in the western part of the state. 'The SBA's physical presence in Springfield, Massachusetts, ensures that entrepreneurs in underserved communities, particularly those in rural areas, have the resources they need to compete,' the lawmakers wrote. 'Closing the Springfield district office is a grave mistake that will hurt small businesses, harm job creation, and weaken the economic foundation of our region,' they wrote. A 'historic battle': Mass pols protest Medicaid cuts in 'Big Beautiful Bill' | John L. Micek Trump administration orders pause on scheduling student visa applicant interviews 'Worth fighting for': Community members, fellow students rally to Harvard's cause 'Devastating impact': Trump's attacks on Harvard could cost Mass. millions, Healey warns Gaming Commission grants Western Mass $3.2 million in casino mitigation funds Read the original article on MassLive.
