When HealthCare.gov crashed at launch, Obama’s response wasn’t to vilify Silicon Valley — he called in tech leaders to fix the mess. That instinct captured something deeper about the old Democratic-tech relationship: a shared faith in progress, and a belief that innovation could lift people up rather than leave them behind.

Something shifted after the 2016 election. What started as anger at Facebook over its perceived role in Hillary Clinton’s defeat spread into a broader distrust of the entire tech industry — founders, venture capitalists, startups, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, even the basic notion that disruption could be a good thing.

Silicon Valley took notice.

Today, a growing number of founders and investors say they no longer feel welcome in the Democratic Party. Many have concluded that Democrats still want their campaign contributions but have lost respect for their expertise, drive and success.

The tech world didn’t swing sharply to the right. Rather, Democrats stopped speaking the language of innovation that once defined them.

The contrast between the Obama and Biden eras is striking. Obama’s White House actively courted technologists, met regularly with industry leaders, and built the U.S. Digital Service to modernize federal systems — treating Silicon Valley as a genuine partner in keeping America competitive.

The Biden administration, by comparison, often kept the industry at arm’s length. Meetings with tech executives grew rare or politically charged, and by some accounts simply stopped happening. Officials seemed more preoccupied with activist backlash than with grasping the technologies reshaping the American economy.

Over time, Democratic politics took on a tone that many in the tech world read as reflexively hostile to innovation itself. Venture capital became something to view with suspicion. Cryptocurrency was treated less as an industry needing sensible regulation and more as a moral failing. Conversations about artificial intelligence too often began with fear instead of possibility. Antitrust enforcement drifted from protecting consumers toward simply punishing companies for being large.

This shift comes at a costly moment. The country is on the cusp of its biggest technological transformation since the invention of the internet — one driven by artificial intelligence, robotics, defense technology, energy innovation and biotech that will define economic and geopolitical power for decades to come. Yet Democrats have positioned themselves as the party most wary of that change.

The irony is that rank-and-file Democratic voters remain enthusiastic about technology. They use Silicon Valley’s products constantly and want innovation applied to healthcare, transportation, education and public services. Their frustrations with Big Tech companies don’t add up to a broad rejection of technology itself.

Yet many party leaders fell into what might be called the “techlash trap” — blaming tech companies for the country’s political troubles while discarding the optimism that once made Democrats synonymous with the future.

Politically, that has backfired. The party alienated founders, engineers, investors and a good share of younger voters, none of whom were asking for anti-tech populism.

Ironically, some of the Biden administration’s clearest successes proved the opposite approach works better. The CHIPS and Science Act, which funneled federal grants and tax incentives into semiconductor manufacturing, succeeded precisely because officials worked hand-in-hand with industry experts and private-sector talent. Defense innovation programs thrived for the same reason — by partnering with startups and technologists rather than treating them with suspicion. Industrial policy worked best when government saw innovation as something to harness, not something to fear.

That’s the lesson Democrats should carry forward. The party’s future shouldn’t be built on anti-tech populism, but on what might be called pro-innovation progressivism — one that promotes competition, safeguards consumers, and pushes for American technological leadership, while still applying reasonable guardrails where they’re needed.

Silicon Valley understands something the Democratic Party seems to have forgotten: innovation is messy, disruptive and sometimes arrogant — but it remains essential to America’s prosperity. If Democrats hope to reclaim their identity as the party of the future, they’ll need to stop treating the people building that future as adversaries.

Original source: CalMatters

The post Silicon Valley Has Turned Its Back on Democrats — Can the Party Win It Back? appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.

After state officials declared, under a 2023 transparency law, that California government agencies were not using any “high-risk” automated decision-making systems, it has now come out that at least six such systems are, in fact, in use. These tools help determine outcomes that can profoundly affect people’s lives — from whether a family qualifies for cash aid to whether someone can access housing assistance or necessary medical care.

For those who have followed the rollout of Assembly Bill 302, the revelation is hardly shocking. The law, signed three years ago, directs the California Department of Technology to compile an annual inventory of high-risk automated systems used or proposed by state agencies. Last year, after the department’s first report claimed no such systems existed, a public records request turned up remarkably thin evidence to support that conclusion — a single spreadsheet listing every agency with the word “no” typed next to a column asking whether automated decision systems were in use. There was no indication that state officials had dug any deeper.

This year, a handful of agencies finally acknowledged using high-risk systems after being interviewed by the technology department. But that shift only highlights a deeper flaw in the law: AB 302 relies entirely on state agencies to police and report on themselves, with no independent verification process and no consequences if they fail to disclose accurately.

Compounding the problem is a lack of clarity over which systems even qualify as “high risk” in the first place. The law broadly defines such systems as those that replace or assist human judgment in decisions with significant legal consequences — including those affecting housing, education, employment, credit, health care and the criminal justice system. Yet tools already known to shape major outcomes for Californians were left out of the state’s accounting. Among them is the Uniformity Assessment System, which has been tied to reduced In-Home Supportive Services hours for people with disabilities, and the Risk Segmentation, Stratification and Tier model used to predict health risks and service usage among Medi-Cal recipients.

This pattern isn’t unique to California. Similar transparency measures have stumbled elsewhere. In New York, the Public Oversight of Surveillance Technology Act was intended to give residents insight into the New York Police Department’s use of surveillance tools. But watchdog groups and the city’s own inspector general have found that the NYPD routinely exploits vague legal language to avoid real scrutiny — including its use of unsettling robotic devices for policing.

Community oversight laws governing police surveillance technology across the country have run into similar walls. Because law enforcement agencies typically control how their own tools are described, such laws can end up reinforcing favorable narratives rather than fostering genuine accountability. As University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo has noted, this dynamic can cause lawmakers to focus narrowly on whatever technology is presented to them, rather than grappling with the broader implications of automated decision-making.

Perhaps the deeper issue is philosophical rather than procedural. Transparency-focused laws like AB 302 start from an assumption that government agencies should be allowed to adopt automated systems in the first place — then build costly bureaucratic apparatus to monitor their use after the fact. Rather than serving as a check on these tools, such frameworks often end up normalizing and entrenching their presence within government operations.

If California is serious about reining in high-risk uses of artificial intelligence by state agencies, transparency alone won’t cut it. AB 302 represented a well-intentioned but ultimately insufficient first step. It’s time for state lawmakers to move beyond disclosure requirements and pursue real safeguards that protect Californians from unchecked automated decision-making.

Original source: CalMatters

The post California’s AI Transparency Law for State Agencies Was Doomed From the Start appeared first on The Hemet & San Jacinto Chronicle.