Sunnyvale residents who don’t speak English have a new way to engage and participate in city meetings. The city is piloting an artificial intelligence-based translation service upon request for public meetings through Wordly. The technology offers live translation in more than 50 languages. Using AI is more cost effective and efficient than human translators, according...
Santa Clara County expands use of license plate readers
License plate reading cameras are about to become more common along Silicon Valley roadways. The Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday unanimously approved an expansion of license plate reading cameras, adding coverage of unincorporated county areas that have not been annexed into neighboring cities. The expansion was approved without funding, which the Santa...
Silicon Valley lawmaker targets AI political misinformation
Before election season heats up, one state lawmaker wants to eliminate potential threats from artificial intelligence spreading misinformation in political advertising. Assemblymember Gail Pellerin, who represents District 28, plans to introduce a bill in the coming weeks to ban political advertising materials deceptively altered through AI. District 28 includes Santa Cruz, Los Gatos and parts of San Jose,...
San Jose hosts a futuristic vision of mass transit
The future of transportation arrived in San Jose via a conference centered on automated, sustainable forms of public transit for the region and beyond. The 2023 Podcar City transit innovation conference took place Friday at San Jose City Hall, where about 100 representatives from transit organizations, companies and municipal governments from around the world gathered...
San Jose wants to be the center of the AI boom
San Francisco is the self-proclaimed artificial intelligence capital of the world—but San Jose is looking to clinch that title in the coming years. In an effort to attract the next generation of AI startups to the South Bay, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan wants San Jose to explore creating incentives for AI companies to move or...
San Jose officials to crack down on social media rules
After a myriad of messy transitions including former San Jose officials impersonating their successors, holding social media accounts hostage and preventing access to mailing lists, the city is looking to create rules to ensure it doesn’t happen in the next election. District 7 Councilmember Bien Doan wants council-related websites and social media accounts to be...
San Jose government videos are ditching ads
People tuning in to a San Jose City Council meeting on YouTube might be interrupted by advertisements—something city officials said goes against the video platform’s own guidelines. Ads for website builders, grocery delivery, hotel booking sites and other products and services are dotted into the city’s public video recordings uploaded to the platform, including council, commission...
Santa Clara County fire prevention aided by AI
The use of artificial intelligence has spread like wildfire into the world of fire prevention in Santa Clara County. County officials are implementing AI sensors to analyze air temperature and particles in the air to locate fires and prevent larger ones from igniting. This comes as experts throughout the county have been looking at ways...
San Jose closing the digital divide one home at a time
San Jose leaders are delivering resources directly to residents’ front doors to help close the digital divide. Mayor Matt Mahan and Congressman Jimmy Panetta canvassed around Edenvale in South San Jose today, where a third of residents could qualify for a federal program that subsidizes Wi-Fi bills by $30 a month. There are 30,000 households in...
Silicon Valley congressman tours computer chip facility
Silicon Valley has long been at the forefront of next generation technology from microprocessors and integrated circuits, to cutting-edge software and internet companies that have changed the global landscape. One Silicon Valley congressmember doesn’t want his region to lose that edge. Rep. Ro Khanna stopped in Sunnyvale on Tuesday to tour Applied Materials, a semiconductor...