AI as game-changer, AI as a tool of political control
Seattle News:
This week I had an article at The Urbanist about a state bill that is trying to circumvent SPOG and free the CARE alternative response teams to do their jobs. I was able to talk at some length with both the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Shaun Scott, and CARE Chief Amy Barden about their thoughts on why this bill is necessary.
Since the article’s publication, there have been updates. The bill was heard in executive committee on Tuesday and replaced with a substitute. The substitute changes the applicable population for the bill from cities of more than 500,000 to any political subdivision (cities, counties, towns) of 200,000 or more. It passed out of the committee on a purely partisan vote, and so onwards through the legislative process it goes.
Seattle Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, who called for the formation of a Select Committee on Federal Administration and Policy Changes to monitor how the actions of the Trump administration and Elon Musk might impact the City, spoke at a protest on Monday.
Here is a quote from Rinck’s speech: “Local government is the last line of democracy. The city has a role to play, and it is time for our city to step up to safeguard our democracy and protect this city. Continue to call upon your local leaders to be stepping up to this challenge, to make sure we’re continuing to fund and find ways to protect these programs that people know, love, and depend on. To protect our civil liberties, it will need all of us. We know that we don’t need billionaires. We need each other.”
The first meeting of that select committee is on March 6, and I will be covering it. In addition to impacts for kids and adults seeking gender-affirming care and immigrant and refugee communities, there is a real danger of budgetary impacts at every level of government, including the City. King County will be meeting next week to review potential budgetary impacts on an already gaping budget hole for their 2026-2027 budget.
In election news, Eddie Lin, who currently works as an Assistant City Attorney at the Seattle Attorney’s Office under Ann Davison, is running for the open D2 city council seat. Lin had applied for the vacant D2 seat at the beginning of the year and became a finalist, but ultimately the Council chose SPD’s Mark Solomon to fill the vacancy until the November election.
You can read a summary of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s State of the City address here, or just go ahead and read the entire transcript. People on the internet seemed really upset about Harrell’s joke about the Sonics.
Both KUOW and The Seattle Times reported on an arrest on Harrell’s record back in 1996, which he says was a result of racial profiling. Perhaps the most noteworthy thing here is that this incident only came to light now, after Harrell has gone through several election cycles since 2008, first for city council and now for mayor.
The co-chair of the City’s Community Surveillance Working Group, René Peters, had an op-ed in The Seattle Times last week, in which he shared his disappointing experience reviewing AI-enabled CCTV cameras last year, a process which he’d hoped would be collaborative with the City Council and Mayor’s Office. His takeaway? “We need young, well-informed thinkers, especially those from underrepresented communities, to engage in technology policy at every level.”
Burien and WA State News:
Last week I mentioned that the lawsuit brought against Burien by the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness and several homeless residents was having a hearing on February 14. PubliCola wrote about how that hearing went.
InvestigateWest and Cascade PBS reached out to all 39 sheriffs in Washington State to ask how they were planning to deal with conflicting state and federal laws in enforcing immigration law. Washington State is a sanctuary state with a law on the books that restricts how much local law enforcement can participate in federal immigration enforcement activities.
Responses were mixed, with many sheriffs either not responding or returning a canned response from the Washington Association of Sheriffs & Police Chiefs. 15 of the 39 emphasized they’d be following the state sanctuary law, including King County’s Sheriff Patti Cole-Tindall.
The Communications Office at the King County Sheriff’s Office provided a statement, which said in part, “As to specific policies and actions, King County adheres to the Keep Washington Working Act, which limits cooperation with federal immigration enforcement and prohibits county departments, including the King County Sheriff’s Office, from assisting ICE without a court-issued warrants. Additionally, the county council passed an ordinance in 2017, which limits the immigration-related information that county employees can share or collect. It also restricts ICE’s access to this data, and ensures employees aren’t required to share data unless legally necessary.”
Unfortunately, Sheriff Keith Swank of Pierce County wrote the following: “The Pierce County Sheriff Office will abide by all enforceable US immigration laws and legal mandates. Law enforcement agencies are obligated to honor applicable federal detainers. I believe there will be more legal guidance in the near future.”
As you can see, he made no mention of the Keep Washington Working Act.
Meanwhile, Washington is bracing itself for potential budgetary impacts from the federal funding freeze and potential retaliation against a Blue state from President Donald Trump, a situation not improved by the $11-15 billion deficit the state is already facing over the next four years.
The state received $27 billion in federal money in fiscal year 2024, which was 32% of the fiscal state budget. While $13 billion of that was in Medicaid reimbursements, which aren’t impacted by the freeze, they could be affected if Republicans take a knife to the federal Medicaid program, as is currently being discussed. Washington State has approximately 2.4 million total Medicaid enrollees whose health care could be impacted by any cuts.
Potential cuts that would be impacted by the federal freeze add up to at least $3.4 billion for 2026, and would impact transportation projects; child care and education, including special education and school lunches, foster care, allergy and disease research, and substance abuse treatment programs, among many other programs.
National:
I’ve been taking an interest in AI, at least partly because we can expect to see AI expanding further into the public safety space in the future. Last year Seattle approved AI-enabled surveillance cameras, for example, and that’s just one of many possible (and concerning) use cases.
As such, it seems appropriate to share this discussion of AI and the part it’s playing in Elon Musk’s current plans regarding the federal government, with more about it here. It looks like Musk may be seeking to make government systems reliant on AI technology. This would be great news for big tech, who would then profit from lucrative government contracts. It would also be good news for those, like Musk, who wish to consolidate political power, displace labor, and exercise tighter government control.
It would be bad news for those of us who value democracy, a dedicated nonpartisan public service workforce, and robust public services.
From Eryk Salvaggio’s piece: “AI then becomes a tool for replacing politics. The Trump administration frames generative AI as a remedy to "government waste." However, what it seeks to automate is not paperwork but democratic decision-making.”
From there, one can engage in a thought exercise about what decisions these AI algorithms could potentially be making. There is already a lawsuit against UnitedHealthcare, a large health insurance company; the plaintiffs allege that UnitedHealth was using an AI program instead of medical doctors to make decisions about denying claims, which sometimes led to declining health and the deaths of the involved patients. Imagine if similar AI systems were used to make decisions regarding Medicare and Medicaid, food stamps, or, Heaven forbid, the criminal legal system.
If we narrow our focus down to Seattle and King County, many of the programs and services we’ve discussed in Notes from the Emerald City have the potential to be negatively impacted by the incorporation of AI. Last year’s CCTV cameras and real time crime center could be just the beginning.
Harrell currently sits on the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board. Geekwire reported in November that “Harrell said he’s looking at ways AI can help his city, from protecting infrastructure to more simple tasks like filling out police reports. He pointed to existing AI-related projects, such as Google’s traffic light project. “You all know AI is a game-changer, right?” the mayor said Tuesday.”
As I was writing this, a new piece about AI arrived in my inbox that is also relevant. Brian Merchant writes about J.D. Vance’s speech last week at an international AI summit in Paris: “But the speech, with its saber-rattling, its calls to end oversight and regulation, its declaration of intent to further concentrate power, and its equating of American might with industrial AI supremacy, stuck with me. It echoed what was (and is) unfolding back home, where Elon Musk and the DOGE boys are at work excitedly gutting the federal government under the auspices of an “AI-first strategy.”
Merchant went on to interview Kate Crawford, who is a leading AI scholar, and she had this to say: “You’re aware of the alignment problem, as it’s referred to in the AI world, which is that an individual AI system might become misaligned with human values and ethical values and intentions. What we saw at the summit was a different type of alignment problem, which was a misalignment from very concentrated corporate power and the interests of civil society in general.”
Combine those two alignment problems, and I think you can see why current developments are concerning. This, of course, doesn’t even take into account the severe environmental impacts of AI.
(Side note: Brian Merchant used to be a tech columnist at the LA Times and has now struck out on his own with his newsletter. If you appreciate independent journalism in the AI space, you might consider supporting his work.)
As with any new technology with the potential for huge impacts, it behooves us as a society to think carefully about in what ways we are comfortable deploying AI and what kind of guardrails and fail safes we want to adopt. This includes us in Seattle and King County having a deliberate discussion about the potential benefits and dangers of any AI technology. René Peters above was exactly right in calling for folks to engage with tech policy, with a focus on ethics and equity, as we move forward into a future shaped by what Kelly Hayes has called “the AI industrial complex.”
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