Governor Brown signed a bill yesterday making California the only state to eliminate bail for suspects waiting trial. We discuss the landmark decision and check in on the status of other circulating bills. We also speak with experts on the militarization of AI; take your calls on your worst gym class memories; and more.
Surprising primary results from Florida and Arizona, and what they say about the midterms
Democrats hope to turn antipathy toward President Trump into party flips in the swing states of Arizona and Florida.
A couple of fascinating races are now set. In Arizona, two women with compelling backgrounds face off for Jeff Flake’s Senate seat. In Florida, the governor will be either a Bernie-aligned or a Trump-aligned. What are the implications for November?
Guests:
Luige del Puerto, editor and associate publisher of the Arizona Capitol Times; he tweets
John Kennedy, State Capital reporter in Florida for Gate House Media, a newspaper organization with 13 daily newspapers in the state; he tweets
Zachary Courser, research director of the Dreier Roundtable and visiting assistant professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College; he tweets
It’s been a year since the big Amazon-Whole Foods merger — how has it changed the supermarket industry?
It’s been a year since Amazon bought Whole Foods, and thought the organic supermarket chain isn’t all that different, the partnership has prompted changes to others players in the grocery business.
Competitors such as Kroger, Costco, Walmart and Target have all taken measures both online and in their brick-and-mortar stores to prevent losing customers by keeping prices low, expanding online and in-store pickup options and making technological changes. One growing trend is the “click-and-collect” option, a hybrid e-commerce model where people can buy groceries online and then pick them up in a brick-and-mortar location, at their convenience.
What other changes have supermarkets made in light of the Amazon-Whole Foods merger?
Guests:
Phil Lempert, a supermarket and consumer behavior analyst with the Santa Monica-based publication SupermarketGuru.com; he tweets
Burt P. Flickinger, III , managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a consumer industry consulting firm in New York; he tweets
What’s your worst gym class memory (and has it affected your exercise habits?)
Too short shorts, dodgeballs to the face and endless laps around the football stadium.
While some students may have enjoyed physical education, for many it was an embarrassing ordeal — and according to a new study from Iowa University in Ames, the kind of experience you had in P.E. might be indicative of your exercise habits today.
The correlations are not surprising. According to the study, people who didn’t enjoy gym class as kids are less likely to exercise as adults and those who did like P.E. choose to be more active. As part of the survey, participants were also asked to describe their worst and best memories of gym class, and researchers were surprised that even many decades later, these memories were vivid and charged with emotion.Which gave us an idea…
Tell us your stories of minor injuries and major embarrassments, of torn shorts and bruised egos and the gym coach from hell. What’s the horrible gym class memory that you haven’t been able to repress? And how has it affected your exercise habits as an adult?
Guest:
Paddy Ekkekakis, professor of exercise psychology at Iowa State University and co-author of the study “My Best Memory is When I Was Done With It’: P.E. Memories Are Associated with Adult Sedentary Behavior”; he tweets
Check in on California bills after Brown signs controversial bail reform and renewable energy proposals into laws
California will become the first state to eliminate bail for suspects awaiting trial under a bill signed by Gov. Jerry Brown.
The bill signed Tuesday will replace bail with a risk-assessment system, although it's still unclear how the system will work. It will go into effect in October 2019. Brown's signature gives the state's Judicial Council broad authority to reshape pretrial detention policies. Each county will use the council's framework as a basis to set its own procedures for deciding whom to release before trial.
Meanwhile, California would set a goal of generating 100 percent of the state's energy from carbon-free sources under legislation approved by the state Assembly. The bill approved Tuesday would accelerate California's renewable energy mandate from 50 percent to 60 percent by 2030. It would then set a goal of phasing out all fossil fuels by 2045, but it does not include a mandate or penalty.
It was one of hundreds of bills voted on Tuesday by the Senate and Assembly ahead of a Friday deadline. There is the net neutrality bill, the mental health diversion measure, among others. Here is a roundup of California bills.
With files from the Associated Press
Guests:
Alexei Koseff, reporter for the Sacramento Bee covering state politics, who has been reporting on the bills; he tweets
Jeremy White, Bay Area-based reporter for POLITICO and co-author of POLITICO’s California Playbook; he tweets
Countries around the world are developing national strategies for AI – is it time for a US strategy, and what would that look like?
The United States has been a world leader in researching, developing and deploying cutting edge technologies for decades.
Artificial intelligence is no different, with companies like Google, Intel and others leading the way in Silicon Valley. But across the country, little is being done to advance America’s national strategy when it comes to A.I., and that has the attention of at least one defense official in the Trump administration.
The New York Times recently reported on a memo that Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis sent to President Trump in May urging him to look into developing a national strategy for A.I. To not do so, he argued, would continue to put the U.S. at a disadvantage compared to countries like China, one of America’s main technological rivals and a country that has been open about its military working with commercial and academic institutions.
What would a U.S. national strategy on A.I. realistically look like?What factors would be most important to keep in mind when developing one? And how involved should Silicon Valley be in helping create this policy? What kind of ethical concerns should we consider when it comes to allowing machines to make decisions that a human would normally make, like whether to drop a bomb or fire a missile?
AirTalk invited the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to participate in our discussion but they declined our interview request.
Guests:
Will Knight, senior editor for artificial intelligence at the MIT Technology Review; he tweets
Oren Etzioni, chief executive officer of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a Seattle-based research institute conducting high-impact research and engineering in the field of A.I. and professor of computer science at the University of Washington; he tweets
Elsa B. Kania, adjunct fellow at the Center for A New American Security; she tweets
What are California’s craziest roadside attractions?
The boom of the auto industry in the U.S. went hand in hand with the rise of a more peculiar American staple: the roadside attraction.
From Big Donut Drive-In in Inglewood to an ice-cream parlour shaped like an owl in San Gabriel, California was and is home to some of the strangest roadside anomalies, meant to entice drivers to stop in for a snack or just to snap a photo.
The new edition of “California Crazy: American Pop Culture” (Taschen America, 2018) pays tribute to these kitschy structures and the history they represent.
Guest:
Jim Heimann, executive editor for TASCHEN America and author of “California Crazy: American Pop Culture” (Taschen America, 2018)