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big names on both sides of the issue as they race to create the next big thing. then your voice, your vote in san francisco. the city tightens the rules on candidates with chinese names who are running for political office. our media partner, the san francisco standard, will help us understand the history behind this change. but first, in front of a crowd of viewers abc7 news hosted take action san francisco an event in which top city officials answered direct questions about san francisco's challenges and what that means for the future of the city. you're watching getting answers. thanks for joining us. i'm kristen sze take action in san francisco was a candid conversation with mayor london breed police chief william scott and district attorney brooke jenkins. the goal was to discuss the big issues facing san francisco from drugs to crime as well as homelessness and an empty downtown. so let's start with crime videos. we've all seen of car break-ins and retail

theft. abc7 news anchor reggie aqui pulled the audience on who's been impacted by one of these types of crimes as most people raise their hands. here was his question for the police chief. when the city asks san francisco residents to give the city a grade when it came to how safe a city we are, they gave it a c plus. >> i'm wondering, how are you going to raise that grade next year? >> well, i think we already are on our way. we have reduced car break ins from that point to now 50. i think our strategies, our bait cars, our surveillance operations, the visibility in the right places at the right time, all those things are working and most importantly, i think we're arresting the right people. you had a tremendous success this past year with the new bait cars, you know, going out there and planting and keeping an eye on them and then grabbing people. >> but we've been doing that years ago and we stopped. why did we stop up? >> well, you know, things change

and the tactics used by the people that do these types of crimes change. >> all right. things change. mayor breed also credited the decline of car break ins and retail theft on more arrests. the other big topic addressed homelessness. 5% of the city's budget is going into solving this problem. here's a question posed by an audience member about cleaning up the streets the way they were done during apec and dreamforce. >> why can't we have, you know, the homeless problem cleaned up all the time like we have in those two events? after the ninth circuit court decision in happened and there was clarity from that case because we were not able to move people the way that we're able to move people now. >> so we offer someone shelter there or any type of housing. they are no longer involuntarily homeless and what we are doing is being as aggressive as we can to get people off the streets and give them, you know, an

alternate. tatum it's either you are going to accept the help that we're offering or we're going to have to move you from this sidewalk. >> so that's just some of what we heard in that one hour town hall. and joining us live right now is abc seven news insider phil matier, who was one of the moderators. phil, you know what? when i listen to these highlights, it's like we have been shackled before. now the shackles are off and now what we can do, what we've always wanted to do, is that kind of a sense is that what you were hearing? is that the tone? >> you know, i'm not sure it's we're going to do what we always wanted to do. but the mayor is definitely saying we are going to do what she thinks we have to do now. and that wasn't always the case when the mayor was on the board of supervisors, there was a lot of discussion about police, police overreaction. we were talking about defunding the police. we had an ongoing debate about the homeless, what to do about them not wanting to criminalize them, not wanting to move them off the streets. were

you moving too many? remember there was an ongoing debate about that at a time. we also had a district attorney, chesa boudin, who was elected, on the idea that he wasn't necessary going to prosecute small crimes, that too many people were going to jail and if they were going to be prosecuted, what he was going to do was he was going to try to put them into diversion programs. well that resulted in a lot of petty thefts, small car burglaries and such being sort of released back onto the streets. and that led a snowballing effect that sort of signaled and triggered his recall. and then triggered a change in the overall political environment in san francisco. so to where now people are saying less about how we should do things and more about just get it done right. and so what you saw in that town hall meeting was sort of the convergence of a mayor who says we are going to start holding people accountable while a police chief who's been given permission to hold people

accountable not only on homelessness, but on crime and on drugs and the district attorney who's in sync as well. and that's something we haven't seen in san francisco. i would say, in 20 years. >> yeah, that is true. and i think what we heard was really kind of a crystallization of what's been happening in the past year. like getting to this point, getting to this point. and like you said, things have changed, which the mayor pointed out when you asked her or we asked her about drugs. let's listen to that. >> we are not going to wait around for someone to decide what they want to do or what they don't want to do, because what we are experiencing in san francisco is so significant. i mean, i have lost friends and relatives to drug overdoses in this city of san francisco and part of what i would do is give any thing to do something that would have led to saving their life. and i get that people have rights and they're concerned about the city interfering. but what is happening on our streets

of san francisco with fentanyl in particular is like nothing i've ever seen before. and i was in the middle of what was happening during the crack epidemic. we did not see people dying from drug overdoses at such a significant rate. and in fact, we need to do a lot more than what we're doing, which is why i'm so grateful that we are not only working together as partners, but we're finally getting some help from the federal government who is holding drug dealers accountable , too, because people's lives are at stake. we are seeing more people die from drug overdoses in san francisco than we did during the covid pandemic. and we, you know, that was an interesting clip by the mayor. >> but it also underscores where the rubber meets the road. she says, you can't allow people to be on the streets and doing drugs because it's killing them. and we have the stats to prove that. it's a phenomenal number of people that have died as a result of fentanyl overdose. but

at the same time, there is still a tug of war going on even within her administration about what to do about people who are in the throes of drug addiction. some say we need to take them off the street and possibly lock them up until they sober up and figure out how to go into treatment. that has we've heard talk about that we're citing people for public intoxication, but that's a big step away from actually locking them up for any extended period of time instead of just sobering up and sending them back to the street. on the other hand, you have people within her own health department that say, no, that's not the way we want to go. you have people should voluntarily go into treatment. and that's where there is a split and it's that's going to be her challenge is which way it's going to go in the next couple of which way voluntary gets defined. >> right. or what compassion really is. and whether you have free will to choose or not. if you are addicted. and so all those are being debated and it's not more than to be debated.

>> these are significant things that are challenges not just here, but all up and down the west coast. for example, if we do opt to go with her idea that after 3 or 4 times that you're found intoxicated, you are sentenced to some kind of program, is that program there? can you, the judges and will the judges allow it? >> and that was brought up. >> right. and the same thing is also with drug dealing and selling up until recently, san francisco. so chesa boudin is the former district attorney, was not inclined to throw harsh sentences at the drug dealers. okay, brooke jenkins says we need to lock them up and we need to lock them up between the time they're arrested and when they go to trial so they don't come back out. but judges don't necessarily see it that way. so what we saw was a blueprint, whether or not that blueprint actually gets built or not remains to be seen. >> yeah. however, let's talk about crime and that clip we ran of you talking with chief scott in which he said, you know, hey, it's already getting better. that car break ins are down. i think he said 50% or something.

>> that's his stats. right? >> right. okay. but i'm wondering if this is something where the numbers are going down, but people aren't feeling the residual effects yet, where the feeling of how safe it is lax behind and or lags, if you will. well, that's always going to be the case, because if you how do you deal with that, then? >> how do you pull some of that is a psychological remedy. it takes time or whatever. but look, if somebody's been broken into, they're not going to forget it. okay and they're not going to necessarily feel lot of people who raised their hands. exactly. and the idea that the city got a grade of c plus from its residents for safety, i was kind of amazed. i thought when i thought i said that's pretty not bad for considering what's going on. they got to have to continue to do it and make people feel safe. and part of that isn't just break car breaks ins. it's also the mental health issue. if you have people walking down the streets talking to themselves, screaming and flailing away, you don't feel safe. and there's a difference between somebody breaking the law and you not feeling safe. how they deal with that, that remains to be seen as well. it was a fascinating discussion and there's going to

be more of that to come. >> so, phil, thanks for stopping by and sharing that with us. if you missed the town hall folks, there are still ways you can watch it. it's available on the abc7 news bay area streaming app or wherever you stream. the full conversation will also air again on abc7 this weekend. saturday at 9 p.m. and sunday at 6 p.m. all right. coming up, the future of artificial intelligence and will it do more harm than good? it's $1 million question. that's up for debate in the new york times today. one of their bay area based tech reporters will

hurt mankind. an article in the new york times today takes a closer look at this issue

through the eyes of those who built it. the headline ego, fear and money how the eye fuze was lit. joining us live now is one of the journalists who reported the story, mike isaac, silicon valley based tech reporter for the new york times and author of many books including super pumped, of course, which was made into a netflix series, yada, yada. your list is long of accomplishments. but mike, good to see you. >> thank you. thanks for having me back. >> absolutely. so this is fascinating. there was a party in your article that you mentioned in 2015 where the tech titans gathered and questioned whether artificial intelligence was save us or destroy us. tell us about this conversation and who was in it and what they talked about. >> sure. well, it was, you know, a few years ago now. and really at the time, it was kind of when i you know, i technology has been in development for a very long time, but it was still sort of fanciful conversations back then around with tech billionaires like elon musk and larry page, who were both

present essentially wondering what the future of ai would be. and essentially it played out in two ways, larry page, who, you know, co-founder of google, basically said this is super important technology that could help us. and aid give rise to other forms of literally digital life forms that could be helpful in the future, whether that's, you know, robots sort of brains or whatever. and elon musk, on the other hand, is more worried about what the future of ai could bring kind of fears. a literally a doomsday scenario that might happen in the terminator or some version of a movie where ai brings about the end of the world and they were friends up until, you know, this this type of conversation where they both took very different sides and basically stopped becoming friends and now have gone on to pursue very competing projects in the world, basically . >> i mean, it seems like they're very different views are now

kind of the discussion that's now in the mainstream, right. about ai's role in society and we're still duking it out. we're not larry page or elon musk, but no, you're exactly right. >> that's the sort of camps right now. and the discussion you were talking about, especially with openai, one of the most valuable companies, private companies in silicon valley right now, highly closely watched and, you know, valued at something around $80 billion. having this very public board fight, ousting the ceo, bringing him back in, and the two camps at the heart of it are the people who who are so-called doomers, who do think that this is very damaging technology and could harm mankind in the future . yeah, and then there's the accelerationists like sam altman, the ceo of openai, that basically believe we should speed up developing ai technology as quickly as possible. and i think you're

seeing all of these big companies from google to meta, which is which owns facebook to amazon, en to microsoft. all of them are developing this tech as fast as they can in particularly because openai beat all of them to this chatbot that has really blown people's minds. >> okay, so with sam altman's return and victory, if you will, does that mean the accelerationists have won not just at openai but across the industry? >> see, it's a great point. i think the i think that is the sort of assumption, at least in openai, that the folks who believe we need to put a foot on the gas are back in power and that's the sort of mentality going forward at openai. just keep pushing this tech forward and frankly, i do think, you know, to your point, has that sort of thinking spread? meta has decided to put the foot on their gas, on their open source sort of movement, on giving everyone access to these algorithms. google is releasing

chat bots called bard and other things much faster than the future. we're looking at what apple's ready to do next. microsoft is partnering with openai, so in you know, in the world of move slow versus move fast, i feel like the people that want to move fast are definitely winning right now. >> okay, so what does this mean? because i know you've covered a lot about this tendency in silicon valley to move fast, like certainly uber right before all the ethics of it have been considered. where do we go from here? and do you have real concerns? >> yeah, look, i think the there's two sides to this. i think for one in let's say like ten years ago or even 6 or 7 years ago, congress or on a federal level was fairly slow to act around tech policy until, you know, 2016, 2020 elections. kind of put the role of tech technology into the public consciousness and into the national consciousness. and now

there's at least discussion in congress hearings that are happening. i will say with with the advent of ai becoming sort of in vogue and very much talked about over the past year or 18 months, senators in congress are much faster to act now. there are, you know, at least policy discussions, if not concrete bills. president biden, biden issued an executive order a few weeks ago. so like there's definitely intense interest, especially because there are big government contracts around how ai works between some of these companies, whether it's google, microsoft. so regulation is probably the next step. what that's going to look like. and whether it comes soon is still a big question mark. but we have another piece coming tomorrow on this very topic, so you should check it out. >> yeah, well, you know, look, i think about what could be the end and the result if there's no checks. right. which like you

said, we are doing some checking . but in terms of larry page calling elon musk a specious, you know, i wonder if you think that there's a reason to be a speciesist. >> i mean, this is where i have a lot of qualms about how elon musk runs some of his companies. >> but this is where i think he has a point. you know, there's a very intense mantra in silicon valley of just pushing tech forward at all, often at all costs. and i think that it's worthy of caution, especially with some of the great advances in how ai works. in just the past few years, i've been talking to just researchers who say, look, this stuff takes time, breakthroughs take time, but we have moved way faster in the research and some of the products that are being put out there. in the past 5 to 10 years. and to the degree that it's scared people in the industry. so i don't think caution is a bad thing. and for once at least, elon musk seems

to have a good point. >> i, i heard that for once part. >> thank you so much, mike isaac, always great talking with you. >> thanks for having me. appreciate it. all right. >> coming up next, new rules for a new election cycle. san francisco gets serious about the names on the ballots, specifically chinese names. find out why in an exclusive report from our media partner at the san francisco standa

what's in a name. it turns out a whole lot. if you're running in a city that's more than one third asian and about one fifth of chinese descent, our media partner, the san francisco standard, has a new article out looking at how cultural appropriation concerns have forced the city to tighten up its rules on political candidates chinese names. joining us live now to talk about his exclusive story is the standard's reporter, han lee. hi, hon. hi kristin. so let's start with how this tradition

came about. there's this practice in san francisco where most major candidates for office, whatever their race or ethnicity, tends to adopt a chinese name for campaigning in the ballot. why is that? >> so i think it happens for decades already. so in san francisco, if you ever vote in san francisco, you will see the ballot is bilingual. so it's both in chinese and in english. so every candidate, they will have a chinese name. so sometimes if you if you want to appeal to the chinese voters, right, you can work on your chinese name. so a lot of non-chinese candidates, they will have a very authentic, very cool chinese name to kind of appeal to the chinese voter. so when the voter see that on the ballot, they might think, oh, that's a cool name, or that that person might be a chinese, so they will vote for them. >> okay. so if they're not chinese, how have they in the past come up with their names? right. can you give us some examples? >> yeah. so normally if you're not chinese, your name will be a

transliteration based. long five character words. name right? but traditionally, a typical authtic inese name will be a shorter one. three character or two character like your name, three character. and my name is o characters, right? so the nger name might not be that popular to appeal to chinese voter. so a lot of those non-chinese candidates, they will go to their chinese friends, they will go to chinatown powerbrokers, political consultants. right. so they will get a chinese name. so, for example, like san francisco mayor london breed her chinese name is boulé, which is kind of like a chinese transliteration of her english name. right. but also there are way more authentic chinese like dean preston and his chinese supervisor, dean preston, and his chinese name is zhengyi, which is like totally unrelated to his english names. pronunciation >> dean okay, so yeah, traditionally you want the three characters, right? and you know, auspicious words or something that can connotes good value,

things like that, right? strength. and but now, now apparently the city is having to crack down to comply with the state law. so tell us what that means. >> yeah. so in 2019, i think south bay assemblyman evan lo, who's also a chinese american man, he authored a law to regulate the chinese name on the ballot statewide. so every local city and also state race, they will follow the rule. so what he put in the law is to regulate the chinese name. so either you have to be born with the chinese name or you have to prove that you've been using it for two years. so if you're not qualified for these two situation, you will be assigned, you will be given for transliteration based name. so that's what happened now in san francisco. so if you're not born with your chinese name, if you're not if you cannot prove that you've been using it for two years, then sorry, you cannot put yourself submitted

self name like if you get a name for yourself, then you cannot put it on the ballot. yeah, like daniel laurie, for example, the sign we're looking at now, he had a nice sounding, i thought three, three character, chinese name, but now he may not be able to use this, right? yeah. so daniel lurie has a chinese name. laurie which is kind of, you know, phonetically sound close to his english name, but also it's really authentic. typical chinese name, right? with some really nice meaning. and but, you know, he named himself this name probably a couple months ago and he's running for next year. so he might not be able to prove that he has been using for this name for two years. so maybe on the ballot he will not be able to use that. >> i see. and this could actually unintentionally affect even some chinese americans. right. the ones who are abc's born here. maybe their parents didn't give them the regular name. >> yes. so this law intentionally was to kind of regulate chinese name right. and also preserve this identity for

chinese or chinese americans, but unintentionally, a lot of abc, as we said, american born chinese, they were born in the us, they were born in the us. >> we are out of time. that always happens when i'm chatting with but we're just getting started. everything going well? oh yeah. let's take a look at this knee. because it's the work behind the scenes, that truly matters. [ physical therapy staff discusses results ] for your mind. for your body. and for the community. -team! for all that is me, for all that is you. kaiser permanente.

tonight, breaking news. what president biden just said about running for president. it's making news already. also tonight, the new fbi terror warning here in the u.s. what the fbi director is now saying. and the harrowing images tonight amid thisxp