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Title: Southern California Air Board Rejects Pollution Rules After AI-
Generated Flood of Comments

Link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/02/27/234825...

Southern California's air quality board rejected proposed rules to phase out
gas-powered appliances after receiving more than 20,000 opposition comments
generated through CiviClick, "the first and best AI-powered grassroots
advocacy platform." Phys.org reports: A Southern California-based public
affairs consultant, Matt Klink, has taken credit for using CiviClick to wage
the opposition campaign, including in a sponsored article on the website
Campaigns and Elections. The campaign "left the staff of the Southern
California Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD) reeling," the article
says. It is not clear how AI was deployed in the campaign, and officials at
CiviClick did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But their website
boasts several tools, including "state of the art technology and artificial
intelligence message assistance" that can be used to create custom advocacy
letters, as opposed to repetitive form letters or petitions often used in
similar campaigns. When staffers at the air district reached out to a small
sample of people to verify their comments, at least three said they had not
written to the agency and were not aware of any such messages, records show.
But the email onslaught almost certainly influenced the board's June
decision, according to agency insiders, who noted that the number of public
comments typically submitted on agenda items can be counted on one hand. The
proposed rules were nearly two years in the making and would have placed a
fee on natural gas-powered water heaters and furnaces, favoring electric
ones, in an effort to reduce air pollution in the district, which includes
Orange County and large swaths of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino
counties. Gas appliances emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx -- key pollutants for
forming smog. The implications are troubling, experts said, and go beyond the
use of natural gas furnaces and heaters in the second-largest metropolitan
area in the country.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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