Drugs, immigrants, and artificial intelligence

Good morning! We’ve got an analysis of the political hay to be made over drugs and immigrants. And it appears that art about the coming apocalypse is a big draw.

When Supervisor Matt Dorsey last week proposed excluding fentanyl dealers from the Sanctuary City ordinance, his colleagues pushed back hard: Supervisor Asha Safai called it “one of the most misguided pieces of legislation I have seen in six-and-a-half years.” Joe Eskenazi explains how San Francisco’s sanctuary laws actually work, and why Dorsey’s proposal would seem to be more political theater than practical fix for the city’s drug crisis.

Sanctuary laws don’t keep the feds from getting a warrant to deport anyone. Still, charges that the city is coddling fentanyl dealers remain potent––and if Dorsey can’t get his proposal past the Supes, Joe notes, just 10,000 registered voters could put a similar measure on the ballot for 2024.

If contemplating the prospect of yet another divisive municipal election is too much, you could consider, as some local artists are, the dystopian possibilities of artificial intelligence.

“Sorry for killing most of humanity,” reads a caption at the Misalignment Museum, the home of some funny, chilling, and very popular exhibits about AI at 201 Guerrero Street. Director/curator Audrey Kim, who works with the art production group Eurypheus, got interested in AI safety while working on self-driving cars for Cruise. The installations she gathered offer different views of a post-apocalyptic world in which AI seizes control of most of the globe, slaughters almost everyone alive, and creates the museum as a memorial to civilization. Kim hopes the exhibit will encourage people in the tech industry to think about the implications of their work.“Something is going on,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Alright. We’re gonna all figure this out together.’”

Let’s do that.

More soon,

Sara