today on getting answers. should private cars be allowed back on market street in san francisco? as the idea is being proposed, some safety advocates are concerned. flying for spring

break. watch out for those new higher baggage fees. tips on how to save when flying and the latest travel deals. but first, what europeans can teach californians about. i and ethics. you're watching. getting answers. i'm kristen sze. thanks for joining us. as the us struggles to figure out regulations for ai, california is taking the initiative. it's formed a new advisory group, and the group is seeking out ideas from the european union. joining us live now to talk about his recent trip to europe is a member of the california initiative for technology and democracy, uc berkeley. haas business school lecturer, david evan harris. david, thanks for joining us. >> thanks so much for having me. it's great to be here. >> yeah. our viewers are very interested in this topic. what is the california initiative for technology and democracy to use with? what is your goal? >> what we're trying to do is work with legislators in sacramento to pass a package of

bills that are going to protect our elections and protect our democracy from harms that stem from ai, and also from social media. >> what are some of the leading threats from ai? >> well, deepfakes is on pretty much everybody's mind right now. a lot of people heard the joe biden audio deepfake that was used during the new hampshire primary that encouraged people not to vote to save their vote for november. that was, of course, completely fake. and there have been many more, even the republican national committee put out an ad with uh- deep fake images of a world in which biden is reelected. the ron desantis campaign put out a deep fake ad that contained a fake version of donald trump. and that's a that's a big concern to me. and i think that when we see that, we lose the ability to understand and parse what is true and real and what is false, and we lose the ability to trust the information coming into our lives, we really

lose a critical piece of democracy. and so that's where cited is stepping in. we've introduced this package of bills and they address deep fakes. and they require that companies that produce ai generated content label that content with invisible watermarks that can be easily decoded. and we can have a label that tells us whenever we receive a message that has ai generated content in it. this this is synthetic media, and it's very, very important, i believe. and the whole sighted team believes as well as our our group of authors in the california legislature that we do a really good job of helping people to understand what is real and what's not right. >> what are some of the other ideas other than that watermark? >> yeah. so we have a couple other bills in the package. one of them is about requiring social media companies to verify users that are highly influential, to just ask the users that have a large number of followers or reach large

audiences to simply provide proof that they are a real person and a real place. they're not a bot or an agent of another country's government, or an intelligence agency. and it also does the same thing with people who are producing and posting very large amounts of ai generated content. and we have another set of bills that puts restrictions in particular during the period the lead up to an election on ai generated deep fakes that make an election official or a candidate or government uh- representative appear to be saying something or doing something that they didn't do. it puts an outright ban on those in a in a narrow constrain and time period uh- before the election. so i know you just went to europe, you met with eu and nato leaders. >> are these the things that they're already doing there in europe? >> yeah, it's really interesting. so the ui act which is about to pass in us does contain some really great

provisions requiring watermarking or disclosure of ai generated content. now, the way the eu works is a little bit different than the way we might do this in california. and that's that's because they do something called implementing acts or delegated acts. and they also use a standards body to put the meat on the bones of a bill after it passes. so while the eu act does mention watermarking in a number of different places, it doesn't give us all the details that we need to actually implement that. and time for the elections happening all over the world this year. and so the approach that we're taking with ab 30 211, introduced by assembly member buffy wicks and supported by cited, is to actually put a lot of the standards in place so that they could actually come into force much more quickly in the eu. it's going to be about a year before we have all the details and until there's a requirement to actually start doing this watermarking and doing this labeling of ai generated content

. so in some ways the eu is ahead of us. but i think california has a chance to also jump ahead by being the first state in the united states and really the first jurisdiction in the world to pass a strong law requiring these watermarks and provenance information be embedded in synthetic content, another thing to keep in mind, in europe is they actually have a really what i consider to be a really great, probably the world's best law about social media, which is called the digital services act. and the thing a lot of people don't realize is that that that law, even though it doesn't mention the terms artificial intelligence, it talks about a very closely related terms that has some overlap, called algorithmic systems. and in the digital services act they put a lot of requirements on social media companies and search engines to figure out if their algorithmic systems could be having a negative impact on elections and democracy, so that digital services act, even though it's not about ai and its

focus actually is already enforced. it's already been around since last year in force. and that, i think, may have a bigger impact and is a way that europe is, is even more ahead of us than with the eu ai, since that actually isn't even a law yet. >> let me just ask you, you know, in terms of passing a law like this in california, it's kind of interesting because california is, of course home to many of the companies developing this technology. right? openai is just the most prominent example. but yes, stay hydrated for sure. that's important. but also meta where you researched, i think responsible ai before and of course, tech giants based here and startups based here. how are they on this? do they support this? >> well, the great thing about this is that the tech companies have already committed to do most of what we're asking in the cited package. they did this actually a couple times. firstly in july of last year when the white house introduced the voluntary commitments on ai, most of the big tech companies signed on to that, and that includes a commitment for them

to start watermarking ai generated content. and then if that wasn't enough, about a month, a month and a half ago in munich, at the munich security conference, another group of largely overlapping companies, 20 companies also made a big public pledge to get on with it and put these watermarks into ai generated content and tell people what they're seeing. the only problem is the white house voluntary ai commitments are voluntary only, so there's no clear timeline for when they need to be implemented. and with the munich accord, there's also no timeline and no accountability mechanism to get the companies to do these things. so, you know, the good news is they've already said they're going to do it. and even beyond that, we have all the leaders of pretty much all the major ai companies and social media companies saying we need regulation of ai right now. so that's what i'm trying to do is help give it to them. >> can i just ask you, in addition to stopping

misinformation, what are some of the other areas of ai usage that you see exploding in the near future? in a way that really impacts our daily lives? and what frameworks do you hope to see surrounding those issues as well? >> great question. one that's on my mind a lot that that really concerns me is the question of ai generated non consensual intimate imagery. you might also have heard that called deepfake. and there's a great report from a group called graphika that details the approximately three dozen different apps that are called undressing apps that now exist on the internet, where you can upload a picture of the face of any person you want, and then get those apps to generate naked pictures of them in compromising situations. and i should put a little asterisks there. it's not any person you want. it turns out that many of these apps only work on women, which is horrendous. and i think a lot of people became familiar with this

phenomenon with taylor swift and the nude deepfakes of her that were posted on twitter uh- a month or two ago. and i believe that this is something that's going to have enormous and disproportionate effects. in particular on female politicians, female activists, female journalists who are in the public spotlight and are maybe doing and saying things that certain people don't like and right now, there's no law in, in any meaningful way that that prohibits this. and this is a big problem, that's that's something i'm worried about a lot. and i think in tandem with that is ai systems that can produce child sexual abuse material. what you might also call child. see, there are a number of venture capital funded companies out there right now that have released tools that will that were trained. they they used as their training data, which is the information used to help them learn how to make images. we found out, thanks to some great research at stanford, that some of these systems were trained actually on

thousands of images of child sexual abuse material. and because they can do that, they are able to produce that kind of content. and some of these tools are still online. there's a website called hugging face that hosts open source ai systems, and they have a version of, of an ai image generator called stable diffusion, version 1.5 that that is still up today. i checked a few days ago it had been downloaded 4 million times in the last month, and you can use it on the hugging face servers and use it to produce pretty disgusting things. >> well, david evan harris certainly a lot for us to think about. it sounds like it's a race against time right before the wild, wild west destroys us. really appreciate you coming on to talk with us. >> my pleasure. thanks so much for having me. >> thank you. >> carfree. conundrum in san francisco. up next, the new push to allow traffic back on market street, car traffic, and what

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market street from the castro to the embarcadero. the private car ban went into effect january 2020, just before the pandemic hit. now, some want to give a green light to private cars returning, they say businesses along the main corridor are hurting due in part to the vehicle ban. even those who support the ban say some changes need to be made. so joining us live now is robin pam, founder of kid safe sf, a group of parents and concerned citizens advocating for safer streets for san francisco. thank you so much for joining us. really appreciate your time. robin. >> yeah, great to be here. thanks for having me.

>> so just back up a little bit. the private car ban was was that part of that $600 million capital project called better market street. >> so the city has been working on removing private vehicles from market street for at least a decade now, starting closer to downtown and eventually working all the way up to 10th street in soma, this was originally related to the better market street plan, but as we all know, market street is the city's primary transit artery. there's 13 bus lines that run up and down market, in addition to the f train that bring thousands of people downtown every day. and since private vehicles were removed, those busses are running up to four minutes faster. so this was primarily about making our transit system run faster, and also about safety for people walking and biking on market street. so >> so do you think that this has achieved the goal, the safety and also the better, smoother transit? >> yeah. if you look at the city's data, busses are now running up to four minutes faster in each direction, which is just a huge amount of time

saved for commuters, you don't get gains like that in public transit efficiency very easily. so this is a huge win for muni and our transit system, especially as people are coming back to work. and we don't want all those people driving downtown and causing more congestion. as far as safety goes, there's been a 40% reduction in collisions since private cars were removed from market street. and keep in mind, this is just private vehicles. there's still busses, delivery vehicles, taxis, all in emergency service vehicles, all traversing market street every day. >> right. i understand that, but to play devil's advocate though, right? some people say, look, transit is running more on time, but there are fewer people taking transit. and part of that is just fewer people working there. people kind of forget about market street because they're not driving there, so they're not shopping there. and all these stores have closed and some are using that, you know, some of the recent store closures, nordstrom and macy's coming up to say, hey, maybe we ought to consider rolling out the red carpet again with the sign. you know being that cars are welcome back. what do you

think about that? >> well, the path to a thriving downtown is to make downtown a neighborhood where people live, where they want to visit, where we're building new housing, where we're revitalizing our public spaces. putting cars back on market street isn't going to solve any of those problems. we can do all of those things without putting people's lives in danger. it's really, you know, calling for cars on market street is really just a distraction from the real problems that we're actually facing downtown, that we really need to focus on solving. with more housing, more people, more residents, revitalizing the neighborhood. so you're seeing a whole different vision of downtown, like, less, tall buildings, skyscrapers, office use. >> you mean in and more housing. like, people actually living in those tall buildings. is that what you're thinking? yeah. >> yeah, i think that if, if you look to the path of, say, new york city after nine over 11 or other ways that cities have recovered from, from issues with their downtowns, it's always been by bringing people back, by

making it a neighborhood. for so long, our downtown has been a 9 to 5 office district. we've focused only on building offices and bringing people in during the day. and in order to revitalize it, you know, we know that people aren't coming back to work every single day of the week anymore. people are working from home. that's here to stay for good. the city has to adapt. and to do that, we have to diversify the kinds of offices, the types of businesses that are downtown, and we have to build housing and bring people back to the city, so that it really becomes a 24 over seven neighborhood. and when we do that, even if we can be a little more manhattan like, and that people are living those tall buildings and going to a restaurant a block away and walking there and all that. >> right, in new york, they do have cars and transit coexisting , i think. i don't remember off the top of my head, too many streets where, you know, main streets in new york banned to car traffic, private cars, why can't that be done here? can't cars and transit coexist here? and bikes and all that? >> oh, so before cars were

removed from market street, there were over 100 collisions a year on market between people on bikes, people walking, a number of the city's most dangerous intersections to this day are still on market street. the way to solve these safety problems is not by bringing cars back. it's by improving the experience of being on the street. there might be new ways that we can look at bringing green space, bringing more street activation to the streetscape, but bringing cars back, it's a solution in search of a problem here, it's going to bring us back to an era where city leaders prioritize freeways and dangerous speeding over safety and vibrant public spaces, and we need to do more to bring bring the safety, bring the vibrant public space back to market street, cars aren't going to solve any of those problems. >> just looking at the photo that we were showing right next to you there, that seems to be kind of a new type of vision for a market street. that's possible. a lot of cyclists really wide cycling lanes and kind of a european style

promenade. is that possible? here we have about 20s. >> i think it is possible. i think that the city came up with these visions as part of the better market street project, because of the pandemic. that project was scaled back dramatically, but i think there's a path for the future, you know, to bring back some of the elements of this vision that we see as we reimagine downtown. and really, this is about reimagining the future that we want to be as a city, not taking us back to the past. and i think the future is something that looks a lot more like these images that you're showing. it's people walking, biking, taking the bus, congestion, noise, exhaust, danger on our streets is just not, i think, where most san franciscans want us to go as a city. all right. >> they're definitely different perspectives on this. and we appreciate you coming to on share your perspective. robin pam, founder of kid safe sf. thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. >> many major airlines are raising fees just in time for spring and summer travel. right ahead, we get the cost analysis

from a travel pro and learn about the best

acts. joining us live now is katie nastro from travel site going.com to break down a recent increase in baggage fees and offer us some money saving tips. we hope. hi, katie. >> hi. thanks for having me. >> yes. so you told us that major airlines are increasing baggage fees. okay. who are the offending airlines? and by how much? >> well, unfortunately, we've seen the big three that is united american and delta all increase bag fees by a little amount. but honestly, we haven't seen an increase in bag fees since 2018. so this is pretty significant. and we actually anticipated this. this would be something that we would see in 2024. in our predictions for the

year in travel. and so we aren't surprised this is happening, but we are surprised at how soon it has happened within the year. okay. >> so just tell me, like how much for the first bag now, how big of an increase is that and how much for the second bag. >> right. so most airlines have increased their fees to $40 for the first check bag and then $45 for the second check bag. if you do it sooner, as in you don't do it at the airport, you might be able to save about $5. that's looking at american airlines specifically, but in general, most airlines have only increased fees from about 5 to $10. >> okay. when you say in advance, do you mean like at the point of check in on your app within 24 hours of the flight? or do you mean when you're booking the tickets, like, you know, a week, a month before, right at the point of check in? >> so, you know, if you think you need a bag on your next flight and you're flying with any airline, it just pays to sort of do it sooner rather than

later. the absolute worst time that you could foresee in checking a bag is at the airport, and even getting through security and at the gate, you know, especially if you're flying with a low cost carrier, that's really when you're going to get stabbed with a high, high price on bag fees. if you're waiting till the very last minute to check that bag on full service carriers like united, delta and american, you don't have to worry about that. but you do want to do it sort of soonest in the process. >> i think they're just encouraging people to do more carry ons, but that's, you know, already such a big problem with everyone fighting over their carry on overhead space. you know? >> right. even with increased bin sizes, we're still seeing a lot of people sort of not just looking to take a carry on, but taking extra pieces. you know, i flew recently back from phoenix and the gate agents were very, very stringent on how many pieces you can take. and it it most often is only two pieces. so that means a personal item to

fit under the seat as well as that carry on. you know, you can hold your coat, but those crossbody bags that you see a lot of people, people using, they will ask you to put that in your personal item and condense whatever you have. >> all right, katie, real quickly we have about a minute and a half, but i want you to run through some deals for us because it is spring break. some people are still figuring out their last minute plans. then of course, looking ahead to summer. >> right? so we are sort of in the final weeks of spring break for the san francisco area. so, you know, one deal that you can take advantage of is heading to phoenix and you can actually head to sedona, arizona, you know, just a few hours drive if you're really looking to do some hiking or take advantage of beautiful spa for only 139 round trip. or maybe you want to hit the slopes one last time, you can head to salt lake city for 192 round trip. or if you're looking for just spring travel in general, you can head to dc to catch the cherry blossoms. check out the monuments 269 round trip, or you can head to the hawaiian islands. we're seeing a lot of great deals right now for april and may, 231

from oakland to kona, as well as other other islands in that chain. or maybe you want to really get outside of the states. you can head to tokyo for 668 round trip, which is almost 40% off of what we're typically seeing. so that's a really great deal. >> what, like last minute? you mean in the next two weeks? no no. >> within the next two months. >> yes. okay >> daetz of april and may. >> yeah. is there a point before the flight where the prices typically jump like two weeks before or three weeks before or one week before? >> right. that's a great question. so we typically advise people if you're looking to fly sort of last minute, circle 21 days from the day you're looking or thinking about flying. a lot of tickets have something called an advanced purchase requirement, and it typically is 21 days before that flight date, or it could be 14 days, or it could be seven, but not all tickets have those. so you just if you can't remember anything, just remember 21 days and make sure you're booking as that's your absolute book by date. >> all right katie nastro with going.com. thanks for all these

great tips. really appreciate it . >> thanks for having me. >> remember abc7 news is streaming 24 seven. get the abc7 bay area app and join us whenever you want. wherever you

with experts from around the bay. world news tonight with david muir tonight the breaking news as we come on the air, the extraordinary scene unfolding right now. federal agents on the scene, the raids in los angeles and miami. the raids at the home of music mogul sean combs. homeland security agents late today moving in on both homes belonging to diddy.