CLIFTON, Maine (WABI) – Maine Maple Sunday is less than two weeks away, and the Williams Family Farm in Clifton is gearing up for one of the sweetest seasons yet.

A long stretch of frost and snow meant a late start this year, but the first boil of sap has finally run through the evaporator, and maple season is officially underway.

At Williams Family Farm, everything is done by hand:

• Fresh maple syrup, bottled on-site
• Maple sugar, carefully extracted in small batches
• Baked candied pecans, cashews, and more

The Williams family has spent years working with whatever weather sends their way.

Long winters, surprise warmups, and everything in between—they’ve learned how to adapt so community members can enjoy their products.

As co-owner John Williams explains, the key is in the temperature.

“You need to have it warm during the day and still freezing at night, so typically that’s the middle of February,” said Williams. “We have a lot of trees, so we have to start tapping them before the conditions are ideal, so we start tapping way before it’s time for it to run just so we can get them all tapped. If you have ten trees in your backyard, you want to wait until roughly now, the middle of February to now, and when it’s actually running and put them in then because you can put all your taps in, in one day.”

They’re excited to welcome the community during Maine Maple Weekend on March 21 and 22.

They will be boiling up sap, hosting demonstrations, and providing free samples.

Locals can also join them for their third annual pancake breakfast where all proceeds are donated to Holbrook Recreation.

Follow the link to find out their hours for March and more.

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The ad begins with a woman standing in a department store who sort of looks like Gov. Janet Mills, but not quite.

“Introducing the Janet Mills collection, featuring a confusing choice that forces girls to compete against biological males,” the female narrator says over banal instrumental music as the video cuts to “Mills” holding a stopwatch by an outdoor track.

The Mills collection comes “with a no-parent-permission-required estrogen kit,” the narrator continues, as the imposter holds a kit of syringes while patting a boy’s hair, which seems suspiciously stiff. The commercial ends with a real picture of the governor.

As far as ads generated by artificial intelligence go, the one from the National Republican Senatorial Committee is not very convincing. But the commercial serves as a reminder about how the emerging technology is being integrated into political campaigns and other areas of life in Maine.

If state Democratic leaders get their way, AI-generated ads like this won’t be allowed in Maine without a disclaimer.

As AI technology rapidly improves, state policymakers are weighing a variety of measures that could affect how Mainers interact with it. They are taking a two-pronged approach to protect people, especially children, from potential harms — while also preparing for the possible benefits.

The technology comes in the form of virtual personal assistants, internet search results and targeted advertising by businesses. It’s being used by governments for things ranging from traffic signals to budgets and policymaking to facial recognition to surveillance.

Mills said in a written statement that AI could help improve lives, drive economic growth and solve complex problems, but that it must be used in a “prudent, responsible, and ethical manner.”

“As AI becomes more prevalent in our society, its considerable promise must be balanced against harms — known and unforeseen — that can emerge from its widespread use,” she said. “It’s clear we’re only at the beginning of AI’s evolution.”

The governor has proposed $6.7 million in her supplemental budget to begin implementing some of the recommendations of a 21-member task force she created last year to study the issue.

Her proposal, which is being reviewed by lawmakers, would create a statewide AI literacy campaign; fund local and state partnerships to help municipalities use the technology and offer grants to support job training programs to keep Maine’s workforce competitive and productive in AI-enabled workplaces, among other things.

Lawmakers, meanwhile, are considering bills to address potential harms. In a rare bipartisan move, Republicans and Democrats voted unanimously last month in support of a bill (LD 524) making AI-generated child sex abuse material illegal. But that bill must receive about $55,000 before it can be sent to the governor.

They are also considering bills:

• To require political ads in state and local elections to include a disclosure when AI-generated or altered material is used (LD 517).
• To stop human-like chatbots or social AI companions from interacting with children (LD 2162).
• And to regulate how the technology is used in mental health settings (LD 2082).

Last year, lawmakers passed a measure including AI-generated images in the state’s ban on so-called “revenge porn,” and one requiring companies to inform consumers when they’re interacting with an AI assistant. Mills signed both into law.

Other proposals regulating AI use in medical and dental insurance claims and in setting rents died in committees. So did one prohibiting the use of AI in “dynamic pricing,” in which businesses use the technology to offer different real-time prices to different consumers.

Over 1,000 measures focusing on artificial intelligence were debated in state capitols last year, the National Conference of State Legislatures said.

Some states, such as Colorado and California, are taking steps to enact a broad regulatory framework for AI. California has provisions preventing discrimination in the workplace and requiring watermarks on AI content and transparency around data used to produce reports.

But Maine lawmakers are seeking to address potential harms on a case-by-case basis — at least for now.

“I think of it as almost a whack-a-mole type of approach where we are developing legislation that very narrowly addresses specific harms of AI,” said Rep. Amy Kuhn, D-Falmouth, who is taking the lead for House Democrats.

“That sort of overarching regulatory framework just feels a little premature for Maine to me right now. I want to see that work its way through the states and let some other states take a swing before we get in there.”

Republicans, however, are worried about overregulation.

Rep. Jennifer Poirier, R-Skowhegan, said her caucus is focused on protecting children from potential harms associated with AI, but she worries that regulation will never keep up with AI’s evolution.

“You can’t always legislate your way out of everything,” Poirier said. “If you have a minor that has access to AI, and it can be used to harm them in any way, it’s our responsibility as adults to keep them safe. … But we are adults, and we need to use our own common sense.”

A recent poll from Pan Atlantic Research showed widespread concern about AI, with 66% of the 810 Mainers surveyed saying they’re mostly concerned about the potential problems of AI, while 25% were mostly optimistic.

More advanced programs can generate text, analyze reports and create increasingly lifelike images and videos. A recent AI video purporting to show Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt throwing down over the death of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein raised alarm bells in Hollywood over its realism.

Other programs have been used by businesses in ways critics say can be exploitative. Consumer Reports recently published a story about how the online grocery shopping service Instacart used AI to charge certain customers higher prices — up to 23% more — if they were flagged as having higher incomes. Instacart reportedly stopped offering stores this option for “surveillance pricing” after the story was published in December.

A lobbying effort is underway to promote AI regulation in Maine. The “Protect What’s Human” campaign launched a website earlier this year, and a spokesperson said they have invested about $210,000 in ads supporting AI regulations. The commercials are targeting Republicans voters in the Bangor and Portland regions. The group is planning to spend another $110,000 on TV, streaming services, social media and podcasts.

Other proposals passed by the Legislature reflect lawmakers’ attempts to get ahead of the AI issue in indirect ways.

The House and Senate have each recently passed a strict data privacy law that would greatly restrict the amount of data — a person’s location, browsing and shopping histories and biometric information, for example— that companies can collect, store and sell. One of the main arguments was that such data can be used to train AI models. However, the chambers will have to iron out the differences between their two versions of the measure, LD 1822, if it is to become law.

And local residents are beginning to grapple with proposed data centers, which have been controversial in other parts of the county because they consume large amounts of water. This is especially true for centers powering AI.

Lawmakers are considering a bill, LD 307, to create a moratorium on such centers and establish a state council to study and review the impact of building them in Maine.

Construction is underway on a data center in Aroostook County, while another is being proposed in Sanford. Others have been proposed in Wiscasset and Lewiston, but did not move forward.

“This whole world is shifting to computer everything,” Poirier said, “and it’s important that we keep up with the times on that.”

Lawmakers are considering two bills that attempt to increase access to dental care in Maine by studying ways to establish specialist residency programs in the state and creating a new license tier with lower educational requirements, a measure that multiple dentists opposed.

LD 2206 would establish an associate dentist license, which would allow a dentist without the equivalent of a U.S. doctoral degree in dentistry — such as a dentist with a bachelor’s degree who trained outside of the U.S. — to practice dentistry under supervision of a licensed dentist. 

Under this new license, associate dentists would have a pathway to full licensure if they were in good standing for six consecutive years. There is currently a pathway for foreign-trained dentists to work in Maine, but it requires additional education.

The bill comes as access to Maine dentists has declined. The ranks of dentists decreased from 590 in 2019 to 530 in 2023. Most children in Maine don’t get an annual checkup and cleaning from a dentist, according to a study last year from the University of Southern Maine Muskie School of Public Service and Catherine E. Cutler Institute.

Penobscot Community Health Care, Maine’s largest federally qualified health center, brought the issue to lawmakers after two “very highly qualified” dentists the center hoped to hire were denied licensure by the Maine Board of Dental Practice because they didn’t meet current educational equivalency requirements.

The health center estimated those dentists could have provided 8,000 appointments with patients, according to testimony from Lori Dwyer, president and CEO of Penobscot Community Health Care.

Penobscot Community Health Care, which said it operates the largest dental center in Maine and has a network of 51 workspaces for dental care, emphasized that federally qualified health centers are subject to strict federal oversight, reporting requirements and high standards.

“[Penobscot Community Health Care] would never support a pathway that compromises safety, and they would never hire a clinician that would provide unsafe treatment to patients,” Dwyer wrote in testimony that was read on her behalf to the Legislature’s Health Coverage, Insurance and Financial Services committee.

Northern Light Health also submitted testimony in support, saying the bill would help address workforce shortages and reduce emergency room visits for dental conditions.

“Like most hospitals in Maine, Northern Light Health members are challenged with inappropriate utilization of our emergency rooms by individuals seeking care for dental/tooth pain,” Lisa Harvey-McPherson, vice president of government relations, wrote in her testimony. “Patients generally present with cracked teeth, abscesses, dental caries or tooth eruptions, leading to thousands of emergency room claims for dental related diagnosis codes each year.”

Multiple dentists and dentistry representatives testified against the bill, arguing that there are existing pathways for foreign-trained dentists and that lower standards could set up a two-tiered system in which poorer and more rural residents receive care from dentists with less training.

Dr. Kailee Jorgenson, a licensed dentist who is the clinical director at Portland-based Mainely Teeth and president of the Maine Oral Health Centers Alliance, said the patients most likely to receive care under the proposed pathway are MaineCare recipients, rural residents and children. These patients often have the most complex needs, she said.

“Maine should not create one standard of dentistry for those with resources and another for those without,” Jorgenson told the committee.

Jorgenson and others who testified against the measure said they instead support a second bill, LD 2209, which would study how to expand access to dental care.

LD 2209 would direct the Maine Department of Health and Human Services to consider how to establish dental specialist residency programs in Maine, including for pediatric dentists, oral surgeons and orthodontists. The bill would also require the department to study ways to create a hub-and-spoke model to expand access to services across the state.

“We have a shortage of specialists in Maine, and it doesn’t matter how you’re trying to pay,” said Therese Cahill, executive director of the Maine Dental Association, which represents dentists. “To see an oral surgeon, to see a periodontist, to see an orthodontist, or a pediatric dentist, you’re waiting.”

No one spoke against the bill or submitted testimony in opposition.

The committee will consider both bills during upcoming work sessions when it will decide whether to forward them to the full Legislature. The work sessions had not been scheduled as of Wednesday.

This story was originally published by The Maine Monitor, a nonprofit and nonpartisan news organization. To get regular coverage from The Monitor, sign up for a free Monitor newsletter here.