Senators Martin Looney, Bob Duff and James Maroney for a legislative conference on Artificial Intelligence. The three Democrats are listed as participants at State Legislative Leaders Foundation 2024 Spring Leadership Summit on Artificial Intelligence this Thursday through Saturday.

The trio will join 52 other legislators from around the nation. Corporate participants include Alliance for Automotive Innovation, SoftBank Group, Western Governors University, Google T-Mobile, Mastercard, Visa, eBay, Abbott, StubHub, Diageo, National Beer Wholesalers Association, Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America, Apple, Farmers Insurance, The Proctor & Gamble Company, Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals, Sony Interactive Entertainment, The Entertainment Software Association and United States Fireworks Safety Commission.

The Senate will not meet while the three senators are in California. The AI bill to be considered in Connecticut remains in formation.

Published April 23, 2024.

Artificial Intelligence will hold the attention of legislators and other interested parties for some of the final 15 days of the regular session of the legislature. CT Mirror’s Mark Pazniokas reported the challenges facing state Senator James Maroney as he tries to find a consensus on the way forward. Governor Ned Lamont may understand Connecticut could be diminished by the state becoming known more for its regulations than its opportunities.

The challenges of regulating expanding AI are being addressed by optimists and dystopians around the world. Jim Armitage, business editor of The Sunday Times, explained the dramatic differences he sees in approaches between the United States and Europe.

He wrote:

The US is leading the way on capitalising, and creating, the technology so far. Primarily, that’s because it has the most money and the biggest concentration of brains to do so. But also, it’s down to the lighter touch its policymakers take against the private sector as it explores and invests.

Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Index Report last week showed that EU regulators enacted no fewer than 32 AI rules last year. In 2021 it was 46, an extraordinary achievement of bureaucratic productivity amid the distractions of the pandemic.

Yet in the US, the global cradle of AI breakthroughs, they pushed through a paltry 25 and that was Washington’s highest ever. Meanwhile, and perhaps as a result, since 2017, US investment in AI has outstripped the UK and EU’s combined efforts in all but one of 25 sectors, from healthcare and financial technology to customer services. The exception? That red tape lover’s haven: data protection monitoring.

While we may be able to boast of being the safest regions in the western world, Britain and Europe also risk being the most technologically stifled. Where America innovates, we regulate.

The latest regulatory assault on the industry comes from Britain’s Competition & Markets Authority (CMA). Far from hiding its head under the duvet following its wrongheaded banning, then approval of, Microsoft’s merger with games maker Activision Blizzard, it is now blustering about how anti-competitive it is that big US tech companies are — horror of horrors — working with each other on AI.

Well, there’s a reason for that. The American tech giants are collaborating because building AI models is so vastly expensive — and financially risky — that it wouldn’t otherwise happen. Some context:

Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s GPT-4 upgrade used $78 million of computing power (or “compute” in the jargon) to train itself, while Google’s Gemini Ultra used $191 million.

Between 2017 and 2023, America — largely via its tech giants — spent some $18 billion on AI infrastructure compared with the EU and UK’s $100 million, the AI Index Report says.

So, when the CMA darkly proclaims that it has uncovered 90 AI partnerships and strategic co-investments involving Google, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Nvidia, I say: good. Bring it on.

Monopoly regulators across the western world are appalled that back in the day they dozily allowed Mark Zuckerberg to buy Instagram and WhatsApp. But those deals were about swallowing up smaller rivals’ existing technologies. This is now about pooling the vast resources needed to build the infrastructure of a completely new technology. One that could speed cures for cancer and the common cold, which is more than can be said for the worrywarts at the CMA.

Rather than try to stifle this new infrastructure, or vainly attempt to block its access to British and European markets, we should embrace it and invest in figuring out how to use it to create products and services the world will love, and pay us handsomely for.

Published April 23, 2024.

Connecticut State Colleges and Universities Board of Regents Chair JoAnn Ryan  “notified Vice Chair McCarthy and Chancellor Cheng that she would be stepping back from her Board duties for several weeks to focus on getting some much-needed rest after exceptionally busy times both at CSCU and at Northwestern CT Chamber of Commerce.”

The announcement was shared with Regents and others on Tuesday. Ryan made her announcement to McCarthy and Cheng last week. Ryan’s break from duties comes at an intense time for CSCU as it attempts to navigate the disagreement between Governor Ned Lamont and some legislative leaders over higher education funding.

Those “exceptionally busy times” referred to in the message sent by Associate Director of Board Affairs Pam Heleen have not included scrutinizing high lever hiring decisions by Cheng, who has shown a distinct taste for cronyism. The Regents have refused to require him to conduct traditional searches to find the most qualified candidates to work for the system.

Ryan’s stepping back is expected to last for several weeks. In the meantime, the Board’s affairs will be handled by McCarthy and Heleen, according to Heleen.

Published April 19, 2024.

At the conclusion of a four and a half hour termination hearing, suspended Chief Public Defender TaShun Bowden-Lewis’s lawyer was caught on a microphone revealing his strategy and his client’s strategy: delay. Thomas Bucci, counsel for Bowden-Lewis, engaged in an exchange with Public Defender Services Commission Chairman Richard Palmer over date on which the hearing would resume.

”Let’s keep you on the payroll for as long as possible.” Bucci, a former mayor of Bridgeport, was caught saying to Bowden-Lewis. In her state of suspension, Bowden-Lewis continues to be paid. That will end if she is removed from the job she has held for two tumultuous years. Removal appears to be the likeliest outcome as Bowden-Lewis seemed to have no support among the six members of the commission. Throughout the hearing, various members expressed exasperation boarding on astonishment at Bowden-Lewis’s evasive and unresponsive answers to questions. It was a festival of non-sequiturs as Bowden-Lewis often contended that her authority as chief was unlimited. Bowden-Lewis was unable to provide a creditable reason for having a technology staffer provide her with Palmer’s emails to and from the agency’s counsel. She testified that she could not recall reading the messages she’d gone to considerable lengths to obtain.

Palmer, a retired associate justice of the state Supreme Court, offered Bucci the choice of continuing the hearing Tuesday another three and a half hours until 10 p.m. or reconvening at another date—-soon.

Little business was thought to have been moved in the state’s criminal courtrooms as both public defenders and prosecutors watched the final act of Bowden-Lewis’s bewildering tenure at the head of the nation’s oldest public defender public agency.

Published April 16, 2024.

Yale Graduate Students for Palestine (GSP) plans to commence a hunger strike if Yale University president Peter Salovey refuses or ignores the group’s demands that Yale divest its pension funds from arms manufacturers that do business with Israel. In a Tuesday night email to members of the press, GSP announced that 48 hours after an unsatisfactory or no response is received from Salovey, “around 12 members of the Graduate Students for Palestine will begin a hunger strike.”

According to the Yale Daily News, the dozen hunger strikers will be drawn from both undergraduate and graduate students.

The hunger strike is timed to “coincide with Bulldog Days, when prospective undergraduate students come to visit Yale,” according to GSP. The time and location of the hunger strike, the GSP message message concludes, “will hopefully bring even more attention to the strikers, and to the ongoing genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli military.”

Abraham Wyner, Professor of Statistics and Data Science at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and Faculty Co-Director of the Wharton Sports Analytics and Business Initiative, casts considerable doubt on the frequently cited claims by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry that 30,000 civilians have been killed during the six months of war. He writes, “The total civilian casualty count is likely to be extremely overstated. Israel estimates that at least 12,000 fighters have been killed. If that number proves to be even reasonably accurate, then the ratio of noncombatant casualties to combatants is remarkably low: at most 1.4 to 1 and perhaps as low as 1 to 1.”

Wyner explained his analysis on the April 10th episode of Dan Senor’s essential Call Me Back podcast.

American university campuses have seen an explosion of anti-Israeli and antisemitic protests against Israel’s right to defend itself since the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel. Hamas continues to hold more than 100 hostages, though the number who have died while in captivity is uncertain.

A February hunger strike by 17 Brown University students also seeking a change in investment policies ended after eight days. More than 30 Harvard students went on a 12 hour fast to show their support for the Brown University students.

Published April 11, 2024.

Refusing to cooperate with US News in its gathering of information for law school rankings is paying off for the University of Connecticut School of Law. The law school moved from 2023’s dismal 64th spot to 55th this year out of 196.

Dean and Professor of Law Eboni S. Nelson wrote last year, “The decision not to participate derives from our long-held belief that the U.S. News rankings do not appropriately measure or adequately capture UConn Law’s strengths and values or the life-transformative education experience we offer our students.” If Nelson’s assessment was correct the improvement in UConn Law’s rank may reflect the survey not capturing the life-transformative education experience at other schools.

Published April 10, 2024.

Lieutenant Governor Susan Bysiewicz’s PAC raised $104,000 from donors in the first quarter of the year, according to its most recent campaign finance report. The Power of Women PAC was heavy on the $1,000 maximum donors. Donors ponying up $1,000 each accounted for $90,000 of the Bysiewicz’s haul.

The PAC serves as a staging areas for what would be Bysiewicz’s fourth campaign for governor should Ned Lamont decide not to seek a third term in 2026. Lamont, a prolific self-funder in his four statewide campaigns since 2006, has not donated to his partner in government’s PAC.

The committee’s $8,000 in expenses included contributions to Groton, Newington, and Rocky Hill Democratic town committees. The PAC also contributed $1,000 to Bethany for Governor, Delaware Democrat Bethany Hall-Long’s campaign committee.

The committee also made a $1,000 contribution to the Denise D’Ascenzo Foundation.

Bysiewicz has a complicated history with campaign financing. She was a loud critic of Ned Lamont spending a small portion of his big fortune on his 2018 campaign–until she joined Lamont as his running mate shortly before that year’s Democratic nominating convention. She will have little to say that is credible if 2026 sees a free spending candidate with his or her own fortune enter the 2026 race. The major political parties have nominated one or both self-funding candidates in the last four gubernatorial elections.

Published April 10, 2024.

State Representative Robyn Porter (D-New Haven) took a victory lap with an email to constituents that announced in its subject line, “Call Me Ma, Mom, Mommy or Mother.” Porter explained the memorable debate ignited by her modest proposal to add “expectant mother” to a bill before the Appropriations Committee.

The email is posted above. In its second paragraph, Porter expands on the debate that broke out over the meaning of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies. She writes, “…DEI should not come at the expense of EXCLUDING the foundation creation–our mothers. So, to be told that the term [pregnant persons] is inclusive is blatantly inaccurate.” During her two pregnancies, Porter continues, she identified “as an expectant mother, not a pregnant person.”

Such was the power of Porter’s argument last week that stories published in Connecticut were picked up, as she notes in the conclusion to her email, by the Daily Mail and the New York Post–two publications Democratic legislators rarely send their constituent to.

One day perhaps Porter will regale constituents with the debate in the Democratic caucus that preceded Thursday’s meeting. The air, according to at least one participant, was thick with sanctimony.

Published April 9, 2024.

Old Saybrook Republicans got a glimpse of the future Wednesday night at their Lincoln Day dinner. The Republican-leaning town was host to two ambitious Republicans, Heather Somers and Erin Stewart.

Somers was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in 2014. She and gubernatorial candidate Tom Foley lost to incumbent Democrats Dannel P. Malloy and popular Democrat Nancy Wyman. Somers, a former mayor of Groton, was elected to the state senate in 2016. She’s serving her fourth consecutive term in the shrinking Republican caucus.

Stewart was elected mayor of New Britain in 2013, defeating a Democratic incumbent. She has been re-elected to five consecutive two-year terms, at times showing significant coattails for the rest of the local Republican ticket. She ran for the Republican nominations for governor and lieutenant governor in 2018, placing second in the LG primary. Stewart sometimes was, sometimes was not a contender for the 2022 Republican nomination for lieutenant governor. Gubernatorial nominee Bob Stefanowski had some trouble making up his mind and settled on Fairfield Republican Laura Devlin.

Democrats eager to run for governor in 2026 have in varying degrees been discreet or indiscreet in their desire to shove aside popular two-term Governor Ned Lamont. Luke Bronin, the former mayor of Hartford, appears to have won full marks for observing the informal rules of civility and respect.

Republicans face different considerations. Lamont would be a formidable opponent if he sought a third term, perhaps winnowing the Republican field. For now, it’s a season to accept every invitation and to encourage some that were not offered.

A Stewart-Somers contest would showcase two candidates with different records and appeal. Stewart, as the chief executive of a city has compiled a list of achievements. Somers, in the minority for all but two years of her seven years in the legislature, has been able to do a lot of talking. Those make for very different platforms. If Somers can coral the support of her 11 senate colleagues, she will show her appeal reaches beyond southeastern Connecticut. If Stewart is able to apply some campaign discipline to her energy and reshuffles her circle of campaign advisers she will be the early frontrunner for her party’s nomination.

It has begun.

Published April 5, 2024.

A pitched battle in the culture wars broke out at the Legislative Office Building Thursday afternoon. The Appropriations Committee was considering House Bill 5454, An Act Concerning Mental Health Services for Young Children and Their Caregivers.

The purpose of the bill is “to maximize federal resources for mental health services for young children, their caregivers and pregnant persons.” Representative Robyn Porter (D-New Haven) offered an amendment to add “expectant mothers” to the bill. Porter explained she was offering the amendment to add equity and inclusion to women, like herself, who have a womb.

Representative Jillian Gilchrest (D-West Hartford) was first up for excluding expectant mothers, explaining to Porter, a Black woman, that pregnant persons is the inclusive term. This, Gilchrest concluded, is the way she and others hope we are moving in this country.

Other legislators offered their notions of who gives birth and what a mother is.

Committee co-chair Representative Toni Walker (D-New Haven) offered a typically sensible note when she said the bill is about mental health but why not add “expectant mothers”?

Gilchrest returned to the debate by seeming to suggest that adding “expectant mothers” would damage the mental health of LGBTQ+ people.

Much debate followed, mostly in support of adding “expectant mothers.” There was no suggestion that “pregnant persons” should not be included, only that “expectant mothers” should be excluded.

Senator Martha Marx (D-New London) suggested adding “pregnant fathers” to the bill. Expect Marx’s moment to garner extended attention.

Senator Saud Anwar (D-South Windsor) said it was important that the language of the bill not be changed. Adding “expectant mothers” would be counterproductive to what the bill seeks to accomplish. You shall not, it seemed, speak of mothers in H.B. 5454.

Gilchrest returned to the debate to claim adding mothers to the bill was beyond the jurisdiction of the committee. Gilchrist’s committee voted to refer the bill to appropriations.

After a huddle, presiding co-chair state Senator Cathy Osten (D-Sprague) ruled the amendment and then the bill would be voted on.

The committee voted 32-16 in favor of adding “expectant mothers” to the bill, a proposal that many may be surprised raised such determined opposition in one committee that includes more than 25% of the membership of the General Assembly.

Published April 4, 2024.