I got this from the NDIA Listserv – and I double checked to make sure it wasn’t just for the Palmetto community…
Palmetto Goodwill is offering Google AI Essentials and Google Prompting Essentials at no cost! This training is designed to help individuals strengthen digital skills that are essential in today’s workforce. AI literacy is becoming a key requirement across many industries, and this training can open doors to better employment options—especially for those rebuilding their lives after incarceration.
Course Benefits:
Free access to a Coursera certificate course
Learn the fundamentals of AI, including real-world applications
Optimize AI interactions through effective prompting tactics
Self-paced online learning—complete on your own schedule
Earn a Coursera Certificate to boost your resume or LinkedIn profile
Those with a large number of interested learners may submit a list that includes each participant’s first and last name, along with their email address, to digitalskills@palmettogoodwill.org.
Feel free to enroll and share the opportunity within your organization and across your community networks.
America is in a race for global technology dominance in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), an important frontier of scientific discovery and economic growth. In this pivotal moment, the challenges we face require a historic national effort, comparable in urgency and ambition to the Manhattan Project that was instrumental to our victory in World War II and was a critical basis for the foundation of the Department of Energy (DOE) and its national laboratories. This order launches the “Genesis Mission” as a dedicated, coordinated national effort to unleash a new age of AI‑accelerated innovation and discovery that can solve the most challenging problems of this century. The Genesis Mission will build an integrated AI platform to harness Federal scientific datasets — the world’s largest collection of such datasets, developed over decades of Federal investments — to train scientific foundation models and create AI agents to test new hypotheses, automate research workflows, and accelerate scientific breakthroughs. The Genesis Mission will bring together our Nation’s research and development resources — combining the efforts of brilliant American scientists, including those at our national laboratories, with pioneering American businesses; world-renowned universities; and existing research infrastructure, data repositories, production plants, and national security sites — to achieve dramatic acceleration in AI development and utilization. We will harness for the benefit of our Nation the revolution underway in computing, and build on decades of innovation in semiconductors and high-performance computing. The Genesis Mission will dramatically accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, secure energy dominance, enhance workforce productivity, and multiply the return on taxpayer investment into research and development, thereby furthering America’s technological dominance and global strategic leadership. This executive order:
Establishes the Genesis Mission (Mission), a national effort to accelerate the application of AI for transformative scientific discovery focused on pressing national challenges.
The Secretary of Energy shall establish and operate the American Science and Security Platform (Platform) to serve as the infrastructure for the Mission with the purpose of providing high-performance computing resources, AI modeling and analysis frameworks, computational tools, domain-specific foundation models, secure access to appropriate datasets, experimental and production tools to enable autonomous and AI-augmented experimentation and manufacturing in high-impact domains.
Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Energy shall identify and submit to the Assistant to the President for Science and Technology (APST) a detailed list of at least 20 science and technology challenges of national importance that the Secretary assesses to have potential to be addressed through the Mission and that span priority domains.
The APST, through the National Science and Technology Council, and with support from the Federal Chief Data Officer Council and the Chief AI Officer Council, shall convene relevant and interested agencies.
Within 1 year of the date of this order, and on an annual basis thereafter, the Secretary shall submit a report to the President, through the APST and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, describing the Platform’s operational status and capabilities.
I have taught every age from preschool to graduate school, and while this post may seem a little adjacent to what I usually write, I couldn’t resist because I read it and was reminded myself that a dumb, legitimate question can turn out to be the smartest discussion starter. Politico asks Signal Foundation President Meredith Whittaker questions “about the hype, risks and data-privacy threat of AI.” Before founding Signal (an encrypted-messaging app), she worked for Google.
When you talk to policymakers now, whether about energy or national security or economic competitiveness, AI is inevitably part of the equation. What do you make of how big an impact AI is having?
I would dare you or anyone listening who has contacts with policymakers and politicians to just sit them down and say: What do you mean by AI? I think what you’ll get at that point is a lot of hype, a lot of fog, a lot of magical thinking. And that’s a big problem. We are seeing a wave of hype washing over critical institutions, governments, and key decision makers to trust these technologies with key functions that those who understand the technical reality, the limitations, the conditions for how these actually work would never have advised.
What’s the antidote to that? You also always hear this argument that Washington or policymakers don’t understand the technology well enough to regulate it, or put guardrails on it.
That old trope that all you need is tech brains in Washington to move aside the dusty policymakers and get things on the rails of modernization has been around for a very long time. But they’re not too old or too crusty to understand the domains in which they operate, be that education or health care or national security. And tech has a lot to learn on the fundamentals of those domains.
The antidote — there’s no one weird trick here, but just be brave enough to ask the dumb question. People are deeply afraid of being humiliated for being dumb about AI. And I will hear NATO chiefs, I will hear CEOs of Fortune 100 corporations, repeating as received wisdom claims about AI that make absolutely no sense.
These quote-unquote stupid questions, like, “How does this work? Do we have control over the data? What are the privacy implications? Are there vulnerabilities there?” These are just basic questions that should be the floor before entrusting critical decision making to obscure systems that often don’t, in my opinion, meet that bar for safety use in critical domains.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the product of high-speed computer analysis of vast data sets that results in
predictive guidance for users. It can be used across a wide range of industries and applications, including
broadband network management; medicine and health care; writing and content creation; and customer
service support. AI represents both an opportunity and challenge for rural broadband providers and the
communities they serve. AI promises efficiencies and other gains but also implicates privacy, data security
and labor market considerations.
This paper provides rural broadband operators with a practical introduction to AI and its applied use for
telecommunications and other industries in rural settings. We will explain fundamental AI concepts and
terminology while highlighting specific examples of how rural ISPs and other businesses can use AI across
business operations, including customer service and administrative management. At the same time, we will
explore practical considerations about costs, customer perceptions and the need for thoughtful AI policies to
help rural providers navigate these challenges successfully. By serving as both users and enablers of AI, rural
ISPs can contribute significantly to the economic development and quality of life in the areas they serve.
The Plan identifies over 90 Federal policy actions across three pillars – Accelerating Innovation, Building American AI Infrastructure, and Leading in International Diplomacy and Security – that the Trump Administration will take in the coming weeks and months.
Key policies in the AI Action Plan include:
Exporting American AI: The Commerce and State Departments will partner with industry to deliver secure, full-stack AI export packages – including hardware, models, software, applications, and standards – to America’s friends and allies around the world.
Promoting Rapid Buildout of Data Centers: Expediting and modernizing permits for data centers and semiconductor fabs, as well as creating new national initiatives to increase high-demand occupations like electricians and HVAC technicians.
Enabling Innovation and Adoption: Removing onerous Federal regulations that hinder AI development and deployment, and seek private sector input on rules to remove.
Upholding Free Speech in Frontier Models: Updating Federal procurement guidelines to ensure that the government only contracts with frontier large language model developers who ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.
“America’s AI Action Plan charts a decisive course to cement U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence. President Trump has prioritized AI as a cornerstone of American innovation, powering a new age of American leadership in science, technology, and global influence. This plan galvanizes Federal efforts to turbocharge our innovation capacity, build cutting-edge infrastructure, and lead globally, ensuring that American workers and families thrive in the AI era. We are moving with urgency to make this vision a reality,” said White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Michael Kratsios.
“Artificial intelligence is a revolutionary technology with the potential to transform the global economy and alter the balance of power in the world. To remain the leading economic and military power, the United States must win the AI race. Recognizing this, President Trump directed us to produce this Action Plan. To win the AI race, the U.S. must lead in innovation, infrastructure, and global partnerships. At the same time, we must center American workers and avoid Orwellian uses of AI. This Action Plan provides a roadmap for doing that,” said AI and Crypto Czar David Sacks.
“Winning the AI Race is non-negotiable. America must continue to be the dominant force in artificial intelligence to promote prosperity and protect our economic and national security. President Trump recognized this at the beginning of his administration and took decisive action by commissioning this AI Action Plan. These clear-cut policy goals set expectations for the Federal Government to ensure America sets the technological gold standard worldwide, and that the world continues to run on American technology,” said Secretary of State and Acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio.
Senate Republicans have made changes to their party’s sweeping tax bill in hopes of preserving a new policy that would prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence for a decade.
In legislative text unveiled Thursday night, Senate Republicans proposed denying states federal funding for broadband projects if they regulate AI. That’s a change from a provision in the House-passed version of the tax overhaul that simply banned any current or future AI regulations by the states for 10 years.
There are a few other telecommunications-related changes as well…
The GOP legislation also includes significant changes to how the federal government auctions commercial spectrum ranges. Those new provisions expand the range of spectrum available for commercial use, an issue that has divided lawmakers over how to balance questions of national security alongside providing telecommunications firms access to more frequencies for commercial wireless use.
Senators are aiming to pass the tax package, which extends the 2017 rate cuts and other breaks from President Donald Trump’s first term along with new tax breaks and steep cuts to social programs, later this month.
Minnesota communities face a common challenge: Making sense of crucial civic information buried in lengthy council meetings, complex public documents and scattered government websites.
At the same time, local news outlets have capacity constraints in the ways they currently operate.
This hackathon invites journalists, technologists, civic leaders and community members to come together to build AI-powered solutions that transform how residents access and engage with local information while centering important questions of ethics and equity in how these tools are used and deployed.
Join us to prototype the future of civic engagement — with cash prizes for the most promising solutions!
When: Friday and Saturday, Jan. 31 and Feb. 1
Where: University of Minnesota — Twin Cities campus
Who should attend: Anyone who cares about how communities share, access and assess information
Journalists and news technologists
Civic tech developers and designers
Local government staff
Community organizers
Students and researchers
Cost: The two-day hackathon, which includes a mixer on Friday and breakfast and lunch on Saturday, is free — but you must RSVP to join us
Some Minnesota educators have signed onto apps and platforms that use machine-learning algorithms to help translate websites, newsletters and even texts to parents into multiple languages.
The article reports on some high points and low points. It is a way to get information into many languages but without some quality control, you can’t be sure that the correct and full information is being shared. Ther are some plans for improvement…
After winter break, the district plans to roll out an app that will connect teachers to a live interpreter to help interpret conferences, or parent meetings, for example.
“That’s going to be such a resource for us,” said Danilo McCarthy , an English language support specialist for South Washington County schools. He also holds workshops for families on using those new technologies to best communicate with their child’s teacher.
Kourajian, the Mounds View middle school teacher, offered similar training for her fellow teachers on the translation app — called TalkingPoints — that allows her to translate quick messages to and from parents. The district first offered TalkingPoints to its staff in the 2022-23 school year, but it wasn’t immediately embraced by all, Kourajian said.
Usage has jumped this year and more than 23,000 messages have gone to families, most commonly in Spanish, Somali and Arabic. Still, only about 40 percent of staff are using the app.
Many years ago, I taught English in Catalonia, Spain. Lack of translation tools meant teacher, students and parents all learned quickly to communicate when necessary but some help would have been a gift. The old school version of AI was the boss writing down a dozen phrases in Catalan that I could use on report cards.
Lumen’s President and CEO Kate Johnson was surprisingly candid about the company’s legacy telecom business during its third quarter 2024 earnings call this week. She said the company’s current financial results, coupled with the fact that telcos are not talking about a turnaround, make it difficult to imagine long-term success for Lumen.
Ouch.
She also mentioned Lumen’s plan to cut costs by $1 billion by the end of 2027. The plan is to unify its four network architectures into one, allowing simplification of its product portfolio and IP estate. “While this work is incredibly complicated, given our long history of mergers and accumulation of tech debts, we are on track to developing the plan to execute,” said Johnson. “These cost-out efforts will require upfront spending with a back-end loaded cost takeout curve.”
Lumen is looking at growth based on the AI market and cloud computing. It will be interesting to see what happens to customers in areas served by Lumen (aka CenturyLink)…
“I want to be clear here. We are not here to find revenue growth in legacy telco. All of our transformation work is in service to customers who need and want to leverage technology like Gen AI to transform their business. And the legacy networks of yesterday just won’t serve tomorrow’s enterprise,” she concluded.
The United Nations has released a report on Governing AI for Humanity. It’s daunting because the topic is daunting, but the report is easy to read. They start by recognizing that one of the tasks is getting everyone to the table. AI has the power to make our jobs easier and harder, to create and eliminate jobs, to bring us together and push us apart. It fascinating and it can feel like science fiction but it’s no longer on the doorstep, it’s in our living rooms. What we can do to prepare our communities is to learn as much as we can and start conversations with diverse communities. Holding classes on understanding or implementing AI might be just as popular in senior living spaces as the schools.
I’ve pulled out the UN’s recommendations to get folks thinking about AI and perhaps thinking about what needs to happen at the local level to help your community benefit from the powers of AI…
Recommendation 1 An international scientific panel on AI
We recommend the creation of an independent international scientific panel on AI, made up of diverse multidisciplinary experts in the field serving in their personal capacity on a voluntary basis.
Recommendation 2 Policy dialogue on AI governance
We recommend the launch of a twice-yearly intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder policy dialogue on AI governance on the margins of existing meetings at the United Nations.
Recommendation 3 AI standards exchange
We recommend the creation of an AI standards exchange, bringing together representatives from national and international standard-development organizations, technology companies, civil society and representatives from the international scientific panel.
Recommendation 4 Capacity development network
We recommend the creation of an AI capacity development network to link up a set of collaborating, United Nations-affiliated capacity development centres making available expertise, compute and AI training data to key actors.
Recommendation 5 Global fund for AI
We recommend the creation of a global fund for AI to put a floor under the AI divide.
Recommendation 6 Global AI data framework
We recommend the creation of a global AI data framework, developed through a process initiated by a relevant agency such as the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law and informed by the work of other international organizations
Recommendation 7 AI office within the Secretariat
We recommend the creation of an AI office within the Secretariat, reporting to the Secretary[1]General. It should be light and agile in organization, drawing, wherever possible, on relevant existing United Nations entities. Acting as the “glue” that supports and catalyzes the proposals in this report, partnering and interfacing with other processes and institutions
The State Education Technology Directors Association (SETDA) released its third annual State EdTech Trends survey and report. With this survey of state education technology (edtech) directors, superintendents, commissioners of education, and other state-level policymakers, SETDA aims to catalog the way state education agencies are adapting to the opportunities and risks of increasingly ubiquitous technology.
Four Key Findings
The report presents four key findings based on the survey:
State agencies are stepping up to meet the demand for more support on the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in education.
For the second year in a row, cybersecurity is the top edtech priority among state leaders, but fewer state leaders believe their state is providing sufficient funding to support connectivity.
Anxiety about funding appears to increase as federal pandemic funds expire, while home connectivity and access remain the top unmet needs across states.
New survey questions reveal opportunities for state education leaders to support the effective and equitable use of edtech as states appear to invest more in their own capacity.
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Chairwoman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, along with Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and Tina Smith (D-MN) sent a letter to Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chair Lina Khan to highlight the risks that new generative artificial intelligence (AI) features pose to competition and innovation in digital content, including journalism, and to urge both agencies to investigate whether the design of these features violates the antitrust laws. “Recently, multiple dominant online platforms have introduced new generative AI features that answer user queries by summarizing, or, in some cases, merely regurgitating online content from other sources or platforms. The introduction of these new generative AI features further threatens the ability of journalists and other content creators to earn compensation for their vital work. While a traditional search result or news feed links may lead users to the publisher’s website, an AI-generated summary keeps the users on the original search platform, where that platform alone can profit from the user’s attention through advertising and data collection,” wrote the lawmakers. “Moreover, some generative AI features misappropriate third-party content and pass it off as novel content generated by the platform’s AI.”
“For the reasons outlined above, we urge the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether the design of some generative AI features, introduced by already dominant platforms, are a form of exclusionary conduct or an unfair method of competition in violation of the antitrust laws,” concluded the lawmakers.
So much is happening in the world of broadband these days – most of it related to the federal funding (IIJA/BEAD) coming into the states. Yet inherent in the funding are moments of waiting as the NTIA gets back to States at various parts of the application process. These are times when I think it’s helpful to step back and think broadly about what’s about to happen with this huge investment. The article from Light Reading on AI (artificial intelligence) and mobile broadband providers caught my eye…
During America’s Gilded Age, a handful of scrappy entrepreneurs built the nation’s railway system and in the process created huge piles of money by controlling shipping and travel lanes across the country.
Today, as AI hype begins consuming everything in sight, some are hinting that mobile network operators – and their equipment vendors – may be sitting in a similar position thanks to the data they own.
After all, AI models are only as good as the data they’re trained on. That’s why Google is reportedly paying Reddit $60 million every year.
And the telecom industry has an enormous amount of data.
“I think it’s extremely valuable,” said Jonathan Davidson, in discussing the amount of data owned by telecom companies. Davidson is the EVP and GM of Cisco Networking, and he made his comments during a media event here on the sidelines of the MWC Barcelona trade show. “We are doing billions of [network] measurements every single day… We have a view into all of these networks that no one else has.”
On Wednesday, Klobuchar, the chairwoman of the Senate Rules Committee, held a hearing to determine what Congress can do to prevent artificial intelligence from undermining elections and attacking a democratic process, especially as the contest for the next U.S. president is heating up.
“Like any emerging technology, AI comes with risk, and we’d better be ready,” she said.
Earlier this month, Klobuchar introduced the Protect Elections from Deceptive AI Act,bipartisan legislation that would prohibit the distribution of materiallydeceptive AI-generated audio, images, or video relating to federal candidates in political ads or fundraising efforts. It would require that this content be taken down and allows its victims to seek damages in federal court.
Klobuchar is also the sponsor of another bill, the REAL Political Ads Act, which would require a disclaimer on political ads that use images or video generated by artificial intelligence.
But, in finding the best way to combat the increasing threat posed by AI to American elections, Klobuchar must fend off arguments that new regulations would erode First Amendment rights to free speech.
“As we learn more about this technology, we must also keep in mind the important protections of free speech in this country. These protections are needed to preserve our democracy,” said Sen. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, the top Republican on the Rules Committee.
A witness at Wednesday’s hearing was Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, who said “we are talking about an old problem – election misinformation and disinformation – that can now more easily be amplified.”
Simon said some disinformation could come, not from an attempt to willfully hurt a political opponent, but simply through “an innocent circumstance.”
Sometimes I like to step onto my librarian soapbox. Regulating AI will be difficult, and politics is only one area where AI may be used to persuade consumers to change thoughts or actions. Another way to approach AI is preparing the consumers with digital and information literacy. Making it harder to manipulate consumers.
This isn’t an either/or proposition but with Digital Equity money coming into the State through federal funds, now is a good time to invest in education. Learning how to use email and getting a computer of your own doesn’t guarantee a person will be able to recognize real from AI but having those tools will help.
It reminds me of the old ads for Memorex (see below). I don’t know that I could ever train my years to hear the difference between recorded and live without context. But even with limited context, I can probably figure out that Ella Fitzgerald is not playing at my prom in St Paul. A lot of information literacy is looking at context and a lot of digital skills is having the tools to investigate or confirm context. Same skills that can help us recognize AI today.
