Spectator NZ

Source: United States Senator for Rhode Island Jack Reed

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, U.S. Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse and U.S. Representatives David Cicilline and Seth Magaziner announced $5,242,766 in new federal funding for four local fire departments across Rhode Island.

The federal awards through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) and Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) programs will support the hiring of new firefighters as well as the purchasing of new vehicles and equipment, and will improve public safety for numerous local communities.

Fire departments in the following communities will use these federal funds to hire personnel and purchase new trucks, safety, and communications equipment, including:

Cumberland: Over $450,000 to purchase a new fire engine which will allow for their existing 18-year old apparatus to be placed in reserve service. 

East Greenwich: Over $280,000 to improve the operations and safety of the department through acquisition of upgraded portable, mobile, and base radios and vehicle repeaters which allow for reliable communications during emergencies and while rendering mutual aid.

Smithfield: Over $3.6 million to hire twelve new firefighters, helping to achieve full-staffing levels for the department while reducing response times and increasing response efficiency across the town and for neighboring communities.

West Warwick: Over $900,000 to purchase a new 100-foot ladder truck with modern equipment and safety features that will replace the department’s current apparatus which is more than 24-years old.

“Making sure that Rhode Island’s local fire departments have proper staffing and modern equipment is essential to enhancing public safety across our state,” said Senator Reed. “These federal funds will help equip Cumberland, East Greenwich, Smithfield, and West Warwick with the resources and staff needed to respond to emergencies more efficiently and effectively, all while helping to ensure the safety of our firefighters.”  

“This federal funding provides long overdue equipment and technology upgrades and adds capacity to our local fire departments,” said Senator Whitehouse.  “I am committed to continuing to secure funding that supports our firefighters and strengthens public safety efforts across our state.”“This federal funding will provide critical resources to Rhode Island’s firefighters – improving safety and efficiency,” said Congressman Cicilline. “These are the types of investments we must continue to make to ensure public safety across our state.”

“Whenever Rhode Islanders are in crisis, firefighters stand ready to answer the call,” said Congressman Seth Magaziner. “These critical federal dollars will ensure that firefighters across our state have the necessary staff, vehicles, and equipment to keep our communities safe.”

“The new fire engine will greatly improve operations and safety for our firefighters and the citizens of Cumberland. It will enhance the reliability of our equipment as well as reducing the cost of repairs on an aging fleet,” said Cumberland Fire Chief Nick Anderson. “The Cumberland Fire Department would like to thank FEMA and the Rhode Island Congressional Delegation for their support of this program.”

“The East Greenwich Fire Department is very appreciative to be receiving this federal funding. The AFG award will provide us the funding to purchase new portable, mobile and base radios. This grant will dramatically improve radio communications during emergency incidents. We are very grateful to the members of our Congressional Delegation for all of their support,” said President of the East Greenwich Fire Fighters Local 3328, Captain William Perry.

“The Smithfield Fire Department is very grateful to Senator Reed and the Rhode Island Congressional delegation for their assistance with securing this federal grant award to hire new firefighters,” said Smithfield Fire Chief Robert Seltzer. “We are thankful to have a delegation that understands the importance of supporting our firefighters and the value of their service to the people of our town.”

“Our Congressional delegation has provided an extraordinary level of guidance that has put West Warwick in a better place, now and for the future. Senator Reed’s staff has been on top of this process from the beginning,” said West Warwick Fire Chief Jeffrey Varone. “The Senator’s help and delegation’s assistance has been invaluable to our department and our community.”

This $5.2 million in federal funding for local fire departments in Rhode Island comes on the heels of last month’s announcement of more than $4.5 million in AFG and SAFER grants awarded to fire departments in Cumberland, Cranston, and Narragansett. Over the last twenty years, Rhode Island fire departments and other first responders across the state have received over $140 million in AFG and SAFER awards.

Congress provided a total of $720 million for the AFG and SAFER programs in the fiscal year 2023 appropriations bill.

The federal grants are awarded on a competitive basis to applicants that FEMA deems most closely address the program’s priorities and demonstrate financial need.

Since FY 2001, the AFG program has awarded approximately $7.7 billion in grants to provide critically needed resources that equip and train emergency personnel to recognized standards, enhance operation efficiencies, foster interoperability, and support community resilience.

Source: United States Senator for Washington Maria Cantwell

03.03.23

Cantwell, Colleagues Call on President Biden to Reject Massive New Arctic Drilling Project on Alaska Public Lands

ConocoPhillips’ Willow Proposal could cause nearly $20 billion in climate-related damage

WASHINGTON, D.C – Today, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), a senior member of the Senate Committee of Energy and Natural Resources, joined Congressional colleagues in sending a letter to President Joe Biden calling on his administration to reject ConocoPhillips’ Willow Master Development Plan (MDP), a massive 30-year oil and gas development proposal on public land in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The Administration is expected to make a decision by March 6, 2023. 

“Environmental reviews need to be based on science, not political tradeoffs, otherwise they won’t withstand judicial scrutiny,” said Sen. Cantwell. “Industrialization of fragile Arctic ecosystems, like climate change, is irreversible and irresponsible to future generations. Oil companies already have record profits and access to drilling rights on millions of acres of public lands which they should be using to meet our current fossil fuel needs.”

Sen. Cantwell and her colleagues, including House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), stressed in their letter that, rather than approving the Willow MDP, the administration should choose the no-action alternative and initiate a rulemaking proceeding that fully and permanently protects the Nuiqsut region’s designated special areas and meets the ecological and subsistence needs of the people of Nuiqsut:

“If allowed to proceed, the Willow MDP would pose a significant threat to U.S. progress on climate issues,” wrote the lawmakers in their letter to President Biden. “Climate damage is unlikely to stop with the first phase of the Willow project; your administration needs to draw the line now.”

“You can stop this ill-conceived and misguided project,” they continued. “We therefore ask your administration to reject the Willow MDP, choose the no-action alternative, and fundamentally reconsider this unsustainable approach to managing the Western Arctic.”

The full letter can be viewed HERE.

Last year, congressional Democrats and President Biden passed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, delivering the federal government’s largest-ever investment in climate and clean energy to the American people. In their letter, the legislators raised concerns that approving any plan to advance the Willow project would be inconsistent with the historic achievements on climate and environmental justice made to date.

The Willow MDP could alone cause nearly $20 billion in climate-related damages while also threatening the well-being of nearby Nuiqsut, Alaska. Nuiqsut’s federally recognized and elected tribal government, in partnership with the city’s Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak and city council, made their concerns on the Willow project clear to President Biden.

Senator Cantwell has been the leading congressional champion of protecting fragile Arctic ecosystems, including preservation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She repeatedly fought back against the Trump administration’s efforts to roll-back protections for the pristine wilderness and cosponsored multiple bills to designate its coastal plain as a wilderness area. In December of 2005, Cantwell led a historic filibuster that reversed a backdoor maneuver in the Senate that would have allowed drilling in the Refuge. 

Source: United States Senator for South Carolina Tim Scott

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Source: United States Senator for Louisiana Bill Cassidy

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Source: United States Senator for Nevada Cortez Masto

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Source: United States Senator for Nevada Cortez Masto

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Source: United States Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore)

March 03, 2023

As Prepared for Delivery

Thanks to Georgetown Law’s Institute for Technology Law & Policy and Yale’s Information Society Project for organizing today’s event.  You all have the NBA All-Stars of algorithmic accountability and AI on the agenda today. 

Before we get to the experts, I thought I’d kick off today’s event by discussing my view of why these questions about fairness and effectiveness of AI systems are so important, and how Congress is approaching the issue.  

Chatbots like ChatGPT are the current hot topic for reporters, since these tools are public facing, they’re easy for journalists to evaluate, and they’re fun to play with. It is absolutely appropriate to scrutinize those tools. But as folks here know, there is a whole galaxy of automated decision systems that the public can’t see, that are impacting people’s lives right now. 

As we speak, millions of Americans are applying for jobs, filling prescriptions, shopping for insurance, and looking for housing online. Their access to these critical services is often impacted by unregulated, un-audited algorithmic systems. In my view, the first job for Congress and experts is to find out where these systems are, create some baseline transparency for consumers, and make sure these black box systems really work. I’m especially focused on making sure automated systems don’t automate and amplify discrimination. 

One of the first areas I got involved in was the NFL concussion settlement. The NFL was using a formula to decide which retired players got benefits. OK, fine. Here’s the problem — it assumed Black players have lower cognitive function than white players. That’s a show-stopper. It meant Black players were less likely to get benefits as a result. 

So after the New York Times reported on this race-based formula, I wrote the NFL a letter asking, what’s the deal? Is the NFL effectively denying Black players settlement payments that they would otherwise be entitled to? Because if it is, that’s textbook racism. 

I asked the NFL a series of straightforward questions about how this formula worked, whether it was used to determine payouts, and how many former players were affected. But, when the NFL responded, it refused to supply me with the stats and references I had requested – it mostly ignored those questions. I’m talking about basic stuff: How many players didn’t get benefits because of this formula? Where are the peer-reviewed studies that say this is an acceptable way to measure whether a player suffered brain impairment from football? 

Ultimately the NFL and retired players agreed on a new way to give out benefits that didn’t rely on the formula. 

This isn’t the kind of complicated system that you all are working with, but it illustrates the exact same issues of algorithmic fairness and effectiveness.

Once I started looking into AI accountability, it was shocking how many examples I found, going back years. In 2014, Amazon engineers set out to automate the process of recommending and hiring workers.  Instead of having to hire HR workers to sort through applications, Amazon executives wanted a system that could sort hundreds of resumes and recommend the top five applicants.  

Amazon engineers used a dataset of ten years’ worth of resumes from people Amazon had hired in the past, and then trained a statistical model on the terms that appeared in those resumes.  

Very soon after launching, the system began to detect subtle cues that recurred on successful applications.  One big inference the system picked up on is that Amazon hadn’t hired many women over the previous ten years.   

So instead of making the hiring process more fair, the algorithm began to actively downrank applications that mentioned the word “women” or featured women’s colleges.  

Engineers could not find a way to completely remove the influence of gender proxies influencing the tool’s outcomes. In 2018, Amazon finally shut down its program and recruiters stopped using the tool. 

One final example: 

In 2021, journalists found that screening tools meant to identify patients who are high-risk for prescription painkiller abuse were flagging cancer patients with legitimate prescriptions. 

What is more, journalists highlighted that these algorithms were trained on extremely wide-ranging sensitive health data.  

For a system that is meant to flag depression, trauma, and criminal records, all of which are more prevalent among women and racial minorities, this is a particularly troubling story.    

All of these examples highlight the extent of flawed automated systems operating in the real world.  

The harms flowing from the examples above could have been mitigated if companies had tested their products for faulty data, bias, safety risks, performance gaps and other problems.

Unfortunately many companies have done far too little to make sure their algorithms work and are fair.  And to make it worse, neither the public nor the government knows when or how that’s happening.

I’ve taken the first step to begin remedying this state of affairs by introducing, with my colleague Rep. Yvette Clarke, the Algorithmic Accountability Act each Congress starting in 2019. 

As you might be aware, this Act would force companies to perform ongoing impact assessment, where they need to take a hard look at the algorithms they use, identify negative impacts in these systems and fix problems, including biased outcomes, that they find. 

It also requires summary reporting to the Federal Trade Commission. And it creates a new public repository at the FTC so consumers can see where algorithms are being used.

We need action on this bill.  It’s beyond time to pull back the curtain on the secret algorithms that decide whether you get to see a doctor, rent a house or get into a school. 

Transparency and accountability are essential to give consumers choice and provide policymakers with the information needed to set the rules of the road for critical decision systems.  

In the world of AI, things are moving incredibly fast. Legislation needs to remain current to remain relevant.  

That’s why in 2022, Representative Clarke, Senator Booker and I updated the bill substantially. We’re again looking at ways to improve the legislation before reintroducing it.   

I’m also keeping an eye on other distributing AI trends. 

For example, the proliferation of AI-powered emotion detection tools gives me pause.  

Let’s be clear: Any system that purports to be able to determine things like a person’s character, capability, or protected class status based on their facial features, eye movements, or tone of voice is probably deploying dangerous pseudoscience. 

Any yet, billions of dollars are flooding into tech that purports to do exactly this. For example, companies like Zoom have developed tools that purport to tell sales professionals how their targets are reacting to their sales pitches. Companies like Empath claim to be able to give employers a better sense of their employees’ emotional state by listening in to their calls. 

Such tech threatens to bring us back to the Victorian Era when evaluating people based on their facial features or the shape of their heads was all the rage.  

Scientists have had to remind people again and again why this junk science faded from popularity in the first place.  

I’m watching closely how the European Union is seeking to deal with this issue in their omnibus AI Act, and thinking about what might be able to do about it here in the U.S. 

I’ll note one final area of concern. 

There is a lot of promise and potential in AI. It makes sense that companies are investing billions into AI and machine learning, and looking for ways to integrate AI into popular products and services. 

However, it is absolutely essential that at the same time companies invest in teams focused on making sure AI innovation is fair and ethical.  

Rep. Clarke and I wrote to Google in 2020 about the firing of members of Google’s AI Ethics team. In the case of Dr. Timnit Gebru, this was at least partially over a paper Dr. Gebru was seeking to publish about bias in AI systems. 

Historically marginalized and vulnerable populations are more likely to be harmed by bias and privacy violations. It is critical that companies emphasize diversity in all teams, including those developing, implementing, and overseeing AI systems. But they also need to listen to the voices of people who raise concerns about those systems, not ignore them, or retaliate against them. 

Companies can’t wait until after a product or tool is already in the market, or until problems arise to listen to their perspectives. 

Friends don’t filibuster friends, so I’ll end there.

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Source: United States Senator for West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito

WHEELING, W.Va. – U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) today traveled to Hancock and Ohio counties for visits focused on health services, Congressionally Directed Spending (CDS) projects, and economic development in West Virginia.

First, Senator Capito visited the new Hancock County Health Center, which is partially funded through CDS funding. During the visit, Senator Capito toured the facility and met with local officials and first responders.

“I am excited to see the Hancock County Health Center up and running. It was great to see the facility firsthand, and learn more about how they are providing residents more health care options and building on services we learned that we need following the COVID-19 pandemic,” Senator Capito said.

Next, Senator Capito traveled to Wheeling, W.Va. where she toured the Cliff House with Grow Ohio Valley and received an update on current projects in the downtown area of the city, followed by a working lunch with local community leaders at the Wheeling Heritage Art Center.

“It’s always great to visit Wheeling and learn more about how the community is expanding. It’s also always a pleasure to meet with local leaders to get a pulse on how we can keep improving such a great city,” Senator Capito said.

Lastly, Senator Capito traveled to Triadelphia, W.Va. where she visited the Touchstone Research Laboratory to tour the facility and see the innovation and new products coming out of the company.

“Touchstone is truly innovating for the 21st century. It was great to see all the new technology they are utilizing to make manufacturing more efficient for workers in our state and across our country,” Senator Capito said.

“We really appreciate Senator Capito and her staff visiting Touchstone today. The federal investments that Senator Capito has helped secure here at Touchstone will lead to a substantial expansion in facilities and workforce in the local area,” Brian E. Joseph, Founder and CEO of Touchstone Research Laboratory, Ltd., said.

Photos from the events are included below:

U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) with local leaders at the grand opening of the new Hancock County Health Center in Hancock County, W.Va. on Friday, March 3, 2023.

U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) during her visit to the Cliff House in Wheeling, W.Va. on Friday, March 3, 2023.

U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) with Brian E. Joseph, Founder, President, and CEO of Touchstone Research Laboratory, Ltd., during the tour of the lab in Triadelphia, W.Va. on Friday, March 3, 2023.

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Source: United States Senator for West Virginia Shelley Moore Capito

Source: United States Senator for New Hampshire Jeanne Shaheen

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