Dallas Morning News. March 24, 2024.
Editorial: Is bipartisanship dead in Austin? Not on artificial intelligence rules.
The need for an artificial intelligence law becomes more urgent each day.
Artificial intelligence technology is exploding into all facets of life, and while the technology has great promise in a wide variety of applications including medicine and science, it also poses serious dangers to businesses, privacy and personal data.
The challenges would be less daunting had the federal government gotten ahead of this technology with clear rules, much as the European Union has done to promote research and industrial efficiency while protecting safety and personal rights. In the absence of direction from Congress, Texas is wisely among a handful of states stepping up to set basic rules for the legal and ethical use of artificial intelligence.
In an important show of bipartisanship, the Innovation and Technology Caucus of the Texas Legislature, a group of 60 Democratic and Republican lawmakers from the House and Senate, are working on comprehensive regulations to govern the use of artificial intelligence in advance of the next legislative session.
The caucus is headed by state Rep. Giovanni Capriglione, R-Southlake, the driving force behind Texas’ soon to be enacted Texas Data Privacy and Security Act to regulate the collection, use, processing and treatment of consumers’ personal data.
Texans cannot take for granted that artificial intelligence will remain safe and used for public good and not for private nefarious ends. Even before artificial intelligence jumped into the public debate less than three years ago, the globally connected internet had become a conduit for dark forces on the web to pilfer personal data, distort political discourse and sow division and mistrust. Artificial intelligence adds another layer of concern, namely the way sophisticated algorithms can embed harmful bias and discrimination, track people without their knowledge or consent or otherwise threaten the personal freedom of Texans.
The caucus must effectively balance the benefits of artificial intelligence while also providing guardrails to protect Texans from abuse. Legislation must have a workable enforcement mechanism to discourage and punish abuses so that state lawmakers don’t repeat the mistake made when federal lawmakers last revised telecommunication law in 1996.
At that time, Congress insulated companies from liability for content on their platforms to encourage competition and innovation. Congress’ failure to update the law since has allowed many social media and internet sites to become dangerously unaccountable.
Broadly, Texas artificial intelligence legislation should build off of the core principles established in Texas’ data privacy law, providing consumers with more say on how data is used and recourse when companies abuse consumer trust. Companies and state government agencies that use artificial intelligence, associated algorithms and biometric information need to be held to clear rules on how the technology informs their decision-making.
Congress has failed to regulate artificial intelligence. Texas mustn’t.
___
Houston Chronicle. March 20, 2024.
Editorial: Geothermal could be the next ‘Texas miracle’ if Big Oil follows the federal road map
Houston knows how to dig holes. Perhaps when historians look back at this great city, when it has either returned to wetland prairie and piney woods or has advanced to its rightful place among the great cities of the world, it won’t be oil and gas per se that define us, but our general knack for poking, cracking, extracting and moving all manner of molecules into and out of the earth.
At least, that’s the idea behind the excitement over geothermal energy at CERAWeek, the so-called Super Bowl of energy conferences currently underway in downtown Houston. The low-carbon form of energy has “arrived” as one geothermal consulting company president posted on social media. Eleven geothermal companies are featured in the convention’s energy innovation program and on Tuesday the Department of Energy revealed a roadmap to ramp up domestic geothermal energy production to 90 gigawatts by 2050, a twenty-fold increase.
The economic promise is that geothermal will bring high-paying jobs for the Houston geologists, engineers and others at risk during a transition away from oil and gas to forms of energy that produce less greenhouse gas emissions. The reality, of course,is complicated.
The big geothermal plants already under operation require hot rock, fluids and underground cracks to naturally exist in order to create steam that turns electricity-producing turbines. There are only so many places with that combination — think California and Nevada. Yet that limitation appears to be on the cusp of being overcome. In recent years, startups have tested new technologies that borrow from the fracking revolution. By injecting fluids into manmade reservoirs, far more sites could be tapped to store or produce clean energy.
Fervo, a Houston-based company, offers proof of concept that advanced geothermal projects can be a significant source of carbon-free energy. Its geothermal pilot in Nevada is already supplying 3.5 megawatts of power — enough energy to power more than 3,000 homes. Fervo were part of a group of companies that received a $60 million grant from the Department of Energy, and the company’s geothermal success even caught the eye of billionaire oil and gas entrepreneur John Arnold, who kicked part of another $244 million raised.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm talked up the geothermal push during her CERAWeek keynote address on Monday as she did when she met with the editorial board last year, when she told us, “No matter where you are in the country, you go deep enough, there’s geothermal.” The expertise in getting that done, she noted, is “astonishing here.” Count us as fans of the federal government seeding free market innovations, especially ones that hit the trifecta of producing energy that’s cheap, reliable and clean — and doesn’t require wind or sunshine.
We’ve talked with skeptics in the industry. The transferable skills and jobs from oil and gas to geothermal may not be as seamlessas wide-eyed politicians and consultants seem to think, and the new tech is too expensive to deploy widely. What America needs, they say, is for the government to get out of the way, but instead the Biden administration has announced onerous rules on methane leaks and put a moratorium on new permits for liquefied natural gas exports. Is it a war on oil? We’ve argued that the White House has struck an appropriate balance. Despite the loud protestations by industry lobbying groups such as the American Petroleum Institute, their members seem to be doing just fine. The latest data shows the U.S. produced more crude oil than any nation ever has. Exxon, Shell and Chevron announced bumper profits last month.
Those oil windfalls are freeing energy giants to dip their toes in the geothermal pool. During a panel discussion at CERAWeek on Tuesday, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said the company is pursuing geothermal pilot projects in California and Japan, experimenting with conventional oil and gas drilling methods in less-favorable rock formations to extract underground heat for energy use.
As we noted in the days after Biden’s inauguration, when Gov. Greg Abbott issued a directive to state agencies to thwart the president’s climate reforms, now’s not the time for obstructive overreaction. Texas is already a leader in alternative energy and our biggest resource is the folks who continuously reinvent the energy industry.
Texas 2036, a nonpartisan think tank, studied four different pathways for the state’s energy future: the status quo, more emphasis on oil and gas, accelerated renewables and an “all-of-the-above” mix. They concluded that we could be on the brink of another “Texas miracle” — another sustained period of outpacing the rest of the country on jobs and prosperity — if we pursue “economic growth and environmental stewardship.”
Go inside the Exxon offices in Spring and the first thing you’ll see is a wall etched with the names of the company’s patent holders that stretches up half a dozen floors. There’s plenty of room for new names there and at companies across the city aiming to lead with new technologies. Let’s get digging.
___
AIM Media Texas. March 20, 2024.
Editorial: As refugee numbers grow, officials must stop politicking, address immigration crisis
People who have been to the U.S.-Mexico border, and even crossed into Matamoros, Reynosa or other northern Mexican cities, probably have seen a major demographic change. More people approaching our border, or waiting in Mexico to see if they are admitted into this country, are from Haiti; creole French is becoming increasingly common here.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, has been mired in gang-related chaos for years, and it’s getting worse. We can, and should, expect the flood of Haitian refugees to increase, and we must demand that our elected officials do something about it.
Americans have been fleeing the country to escape the increasing, and increasingly violent, gang warfare, and many have reported that it’s getting harder to reach airports and get out. The situation is raising images of the fall of Saigon in 1975.
Haiti essentially has no government. It has had no president since Jovenel Moise was assassinated in 2021, and no elections have been held since before then.
A coalition of officials from other Caribbean countries has been working to empanel a committee to schedule and hold elections and name interim officials; Prime Minister Ariel Henry last week announced his resignation from Puerto Rico, where he is living in de facto exile.
Refugees from the country already have temporary protected status in the U.S., meaning their requests for asylum are given more weight because of the dire conditions there. However, Haiti is just one of nearly 20 countries whose citizens have TPS here, ranging from Cuba to Afghanistan to Ukraine — and observers expect Ecuador to be added to the list soon as conditions there deteriorate also.
As much of the world appears to be falling apart, we can expect ever-growing numbers of people coming to this country seeking refuge. We can also expect more people without valid asylum claims to try to get lost in the crowd by requesting refugee status even if they don’t qualify.
All this only increases the strain on our overtaxed immigration system that has been neglected for decades. Our elected officials’ abject refusal to address the obsolete laws and unworkable bureaucracy has created a backlog of millions of people and years of wait times that only grow worse as the numbers of asylum seekers increase. And still, those officials, and other politicians seeking to replace them, prefer to use the crisis as a convenient campaign issue rather than look for solutions.
Our ineptitude and outright refusal to improve our immigration process has created that crisis — and yes, it’s a real crisis. And as we look across the border we have to ask ourselves: if we’ve already allowed things to get this bad, what would happen if the cartels finally gain control of Mexico, and the number of people queued up at our border seeking asylum turns from the current thousands to millions, all with valid claims?
It’s long past time to set absolute laws and policies to address such issues, and to improve the process of reviewing claims and rendering decisions in a matter of days rather than years.
Our flow of refugees isn’t likely to improve anytime soon. Our ability to deal with them has to.
END