{"id":40879,"date":"2026-05-16T09:19:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T09:19:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/40879\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T09:19:58","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T09:19:58","slug":"california-voice-children-are-in-the-crosshairs-of-artificial-intelligence-marin-independent-journal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/40879\/","title":{"rendered":"California Voice: Children are in the crosshairs of artificial intelligence \u2013 Marin Independent Journal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>He interviews AI doomers \u2014 who think AI will kill us all \u2014 then AI utopians \u2014 who think it will save us all. Finally, he seeks answers from CEOs of leading Bay Area AI companies: Sam Altman of OpenAI, Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind, and Dario and Daniela Amodei of Anthropic.<\/p>\n<p>In one of the film\u2019s most intense moments, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.humanetech.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Center for Humane Technology<\/a> co-founder Tristan Harris tells Roher: \u201cI know people who work on AI risk who don\u2019t expect their children to make it to high school.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This gut-punch of a line illustrates a core problem: the families of elementary school students recently killed in Iran already know their children won\u2019t make it to high school. The worst things AI doomers can imagine have already happened there.<\/p>\n<p>On the opening day of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, multiple Tomahawk cruise missiles struck the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/en\/latest\/news\/2026\/03\/usa-iran-those-responsible-for-deadly-and-unlawful-us-strike-on-school-that-killed-over-100-children-must-be-held-accountable\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Shajareh Tayyebeh elementary school<\/a> in Iran. At <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amnesty.org\/en\/latest\/news\/2026\/03\/usa-iran-those-responsible-for-deadly-and-unlawful-us-strike-on-school-that-killed-over-100-children-must-be-held-accountable\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">least 168 people were killed<\/a>, the majority of them children, according to Amnesty International.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Central Command has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/technology\/2026\/03\/04\/anthropic-ai-iran-campaign\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">used Palantir\u2019s Maven Smart System<\/a> for target identification throughout the campaign. Anthropic\u2019s flagship AI, Claude, is integrated with Palantir\u2019s systems and was used in Iran, as well as in the seemingly illegal U.S. military operation to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.axios.com\/2026\/02\/15\/claude-pentagon-anthropic-contract-maduro\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">capture Venezuelan President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Anthropic isn\u2019t the only AI firm involved with the Pentagon. In July 2025, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenation.com\/article\/world\/pentagon-ai-warfare-surveillance-autonomous-weapons\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the Pentagon awarded contracts of up to $200 million each<\/a> to Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and xAI.<\/p>\n<p>Roher puts the CEOs of these firms on camera, yet he never asks them about their military contracts or any of the well-documented harms of their AI systems. To be fair, the film was completed before the war in Iran began.<\/p>\n<p>But these companies building AI \u201ckill chains\u201d are also causing harm to people in California.<\/p>\n<p>A campaign by a group called <a href=\"https:\/\/purgepalantir.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Purge Palantir<\/a> highlights how Palantir powers the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportation machine targeting immigrant communities across the state and country. And massive new data centers are draining California\u2019s water and <a href=\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/environment\/2025\/11\/data-center-environmental-report\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">straining its energy grid<\/a> during a climate crisis.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/calmatters.org\/economy\/technology\/2024\/12\/california-lawmakers-want-to-ban-pricing-software\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AI tenant screening algorithms are driving up rents<\/a> and pushing people out of their homes in California.<\/p>\n<p>None of this appears in the film. The AI doomers, utopians and CEOs never mention existing AI harms. Consequently, the film ignores the myriad ways communities are already holding AI companies accountable. Resistance to harmful AI systems is real and growing in California.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/stoplapdspying.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stop LAPD Spying Coalition<\/a> has led the fight against predictive policing and won, forcing the Los Angeles Police Department to shut down both Operation LASER, built on the Palantir platform, and the PredPol program that uses AI to target Black and brown neighborhoods for extreme policing.<\/p>\n<p>The Writers Guild of America went on strike and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wga.org\/contracts\/know-your-rights\/artificial-intelligence\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">won groundbreaking protections<\/a> against the use of AI to replace creative workers.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.notechforapartheid.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">No Tech for Apartheid<\/a>, led by Google and Amazon workers in Silicon Valley, has built awareness of tech companies\u2019 military contracts with the Israeli Defense Forces in the mass killing of Palestinian people. And in September 2025, after sustained worker pressure under No Azure for Apartheid, Microsoft blocked Israel from using its cloud and AI services for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2025\/sep\/25\/microsoft-blocks-israels-use-of-its-technology-in-mass-surveillance-of-palestinians\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">mass surveillance of Palestinians<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In Monterey Park, residents blocked a massive AI data center and organized to put a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.montereypark.ca.gov\/1710\/Data-Center-Information\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">permanent ban on the June 2026 ballot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the film, Roher wants to know if it\u2019s a good time to bring a child into the world. The mothers of Minab in Iran want to know who will be held accountable for the AI-supported mass murder of their children.<\/p>\n<p>The question is not whether AI will harm \u201cour\u201d children someday. The question is whose children are already being harmed. And will we demand accountability?<\/p>\n<p>Sasha Costanza-Chock is a faculty associate at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet &amp; Society at Harvard Law School. Distributed by CalMatters.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He interviews AI doomers \u2014 who think AI will kill us all \u2014 then AI utopians \u2014 who&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,970,2524,369,10918,23771,2848,2849,2850,1651],"class_list":["post-40879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-california","tag-commentary","tag-iran","tag-marin-county","tag-marin-voice","tag-newsletter","tag-north-bay","tag-northern-california","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}