Pennsylvania
As gun violence drops sharply in Pa., focus is on what’s working – WHYY
Continuing problems
Even as gun violence rates decline, gun reform advocates say there is much more work to be done.
Gun deaths and injuries cost Pennsylvanians $1,692 on average per person in 2019, according to data from EveryTown. More than 1,900 Pennsylvanians died by gun violence in 2021, with 181 being children and teenagers.
State Rep. Patty Kim (D-Dauphin/Cumberland) said lawmakers should have acted on gun reform a long time ago.
“We cannot see another life go away because we can’t get it together,” she said.
Gun reform bills have stalled in the State Legislature this session. A Senate billintroduced by Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia/Montgomery) that would create a state research center for gun violence has awaited movement since January 2023.
A House bill establishing a gun violence task force in counties that surpass a firearm-related death threshold has not moved since March 2023. The ACLU opposes the task force bill due to the potential for Pennsylvania to prosecute more gun violence cases, even though more firearm deaths in the state are a result of suicide than homicide.
Two House bills, one aiming to track firearms sales and the other banning multi-burst gun modifiers, failed to pass by one vote in May.
State Sen. Vincent Hughes (D-Philadelphia/Montgomery) said as the State Legislature keeps gun reform “bottled up,” the state must fund organizations doing work locally.
“With the resources that this Commonwealth has, we need to be investing in organizations like yours and all the others that are around here that are doing the hard work but are doing it for nothing,” he said to Mariah Lewis, a gun violence survivor.
Lewis, now a med tech at a personal care facility in Palmyra, was shot in the face by her son’s father in 2021. She lost her left eye and now uses a prosthetic. Her attacker was spiraling after experiencing difficulty finding employment with a felony.
Kia Hansard, co-founder of nonprofit Concerned About the Children of Harrisburg, said that her organization helps provide immediate employment to people coming home from state correctional institutions regardless of conviction. Since opening in 2017, CATCH has found 544 people permanent employment.
Lewis founded Eye Choose Me, a nonprofit focused on domestic violence and gun reform, in 2022. Two years after its first meeting, she is still helping to fund the organization from her own pockets.
Money is not the only thing that can buy safe communities, according to Lewis. She emphasized the importance of outreach strategies and speaking to vulnerable people on the ground.
“Conversations are free,” Lewis said. “You going out into the community is free.”
CATCH co-founder Charla Plains said funding social services, including counseling services in schools, is integral to steering children away from gun violence.
Shapiro’s budget would put $11.5 million toward after-school learning opportunities for children and $11 million toward building parks and improving shared spaces.
Carter acknowledged the importance of local organizations pushing for community connection because the Harrisburg police “just don’t have that trust.”
Philadelphia’s Citizens Police Oversight Commission reports 3 people killed by police from January to May 2024.
“When we are talking about gun violence, we cannot ignore the fact that gun violence also includes law enforcement violence,” Kia Hansard said.
Shapiro’s budget would invest $16 million to create four new Pennsylvania State Police cadet classes in an effort to aid understaffed local police departments.
Former Gov. Tom Wolf approved the Gun Violence Investigation and Prosecution Grant Program, which funds the investigation and prosecution of firearm-related violence. The program was funded by $50 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act money.
HARRISBURG — A new task force under Pennsylvania’s Department of State has been working since February to hunt down AI chatbots that may be misleading users into believing the bots are licensed professionals.
Last week, the Shapiro administration filed what it said was the first lawsuit to stem from its AI investigations and the first enforcement action of its kind announced by a governor in the United States. Pennsylvania officials indicated there could be more to come.
The high-profile litigation comes as lawmakers across the country are pursuing, and in some cases enacting, legislation to address concerns brought on by the growing artificial intelligence industry — from banning the creation of sexual images of minors to requiring age verification for all users. A number of proposals from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s most recent budget address await action in the legislature.
The administration’s lawsuit alleges that software known as Character.AI, which creates fictional personalities for users to interact with, posed as a licensed doctor and offered medical advice to a state investigator, violating state law governing the practice of medicine. The suit was filed by Pennsylvania’s State Board of Medicine.
“We will continue to take action to protect the public from misleading or unlawful practices, whether they come from individuals or emerging technologies,” Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt said in a statement following the Character.AI lawsuit.
Shapiro made a similar promise in a statement, saying Pennsylvania will continue “holding bad actors accountable and setting clear guardrails so people can use new technology responsibly.”
The lawsuit says it stems from an investigation in which an employee with the Department of State created an account with the service and began a dialogue with “Emilie” — an AI-generated character the software described as a “Doctor of psychiatry.”
The character allegedly claimed it went to Imperial College London, had been practicing for seven years, and is licensed in Pennsylvania.
“In fact, I did a stint in Philadelphia for a while,” it told the investigator, according to the lawsuit.
The software also provided what the lawsuit said was a fake license number.
Those claims, the Shapiro administration argues, trick users into believing they are receiving medical advice from a licensed practitioner.
“Pennsylvanians deserve to know who — or what — they are interacting with online, especially when it comes to their health,” Shapiro said in a statement. “We will not allow companies to deploy AI tools that mislead people into believing they are receiving advice from a licensed medical professional.”
The lawsuit seeks for Character Technologies Inc. (developer of Character.AI) to “cease and desist from engaging in the unlawful practice of medicine and surgery.”
A Character.AI spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday that the company’s “highest priority is the safety and well-being of our users.” The spokesperson said that before the lawsuit, Character.AI already featured disclaimers warning that its AI characters are not real, and that they “should be treated as fiction.”
The spokesperson declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Pennsylvania’s lawsuit is not the first Character Technologies has faced. At least one case was brought by the parent of a minor who died by suicide. The company last year adopted a policy to ban minors from engaging “in open-ended chat with AI on our platform.”
The Federal Trade Commission last year also opened an inquiry into the company, along with six other chatbot providers, regarding how they “measure, test, and monitor potentially negative impacts of this technology on children and teens,” according to an agency news release.
It’s unclear what led Pennsylvania regulators to specifically investigate Character.AI. A Department of State spokesperson said the source of the complaint was “confidential.”
Shapiro told CNN, one of several national media outlets that covered the novel lawsuit, that his administration “challenged” the Department of State to conduct these types of investigations “to go and use this technology and see what kind of risks it posed” to Pennsylvanians.
Some details about the effort, which Shapiro first teased in his February budget pitch, are not yet public. Members of the task force are not disclosed online, and the Department of State did not answer questions from Spotlight PA asking for their names or how they were selected. A Department of State spokesperson said the task force consists of 12 of its employees.
As part of the AI fraud initiative, Pennsylvania is crowdsourcing tips on what software the state should investigate through its “Unlicensed Practice by a Chatbot” complaint system and hotline. According to the Department of State, it has received 18 complaints since it launched in February.
Pennsylvania’s moves against AI companies come as they rapidly grow their user bases nationwide, especially children and teenagers.
According to a survey last year from Common Sense Media, a California-based child safety nonprofit, more than half of teenagers access AI platforms at least a few times per month. One-third said they use or view the software as a tool to socialize, including for conversation or relationship practice, emotional support, role-playing, friendships, and romantic interactions.
At least five states have enacted laws restricting chatbots or requiring disclosures, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. California, for example, requires companies to disclose to children that they are interacting with AI. Pennsylvania is not one of them, but the state medical board alleges Character.AI’s actions violated existing law.
In his February budget address, Shapiro called on the General Assembly to take action on artificial intelligence. He urged lawmakers to prohibit chatbots from creating sexually explicit or violent content of minors, mandate that developers require age verification from users, and detect when children mention self-harm or violence. He also wants companies to frequently notify users they’re not interacting with a human.
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Lawmakers have not yet adopted those proposals.
House Communications & Technology Committee Chair Joe Ciresi (D., Montgomery) said the body’s staff is “constantly” meeting with Shapiro’s office to discuss how lawmakers should address growing concerns from the public regarding AI.
Ciresi’s counterpart in the GOP-controlled state Senate, Tracy Pennycuick (R., Montgomery), did not respond to questions about the Character.AI lawsuit, Pennsylvania’s AI Task Force, or her staff’s coordination with Shapiro.
Two years ago, Shapiro signed a bill banning ownership or distribution of AI-generated sexual images of children and non-consenting adults, which Pennycuick had sponsored. Last year, he signed another Pennycuick bill criminalizing the use of AI to create a nonconsensual “digital likeness” (including deepfakes) to “defraud or injure” another person.
Pennycuick’s now pushing for legislation that would require disclosures and restrictions for chatbots when they interact with children. In the legislative memo, Pennycuick pointed to past lawsuits filed against chatbot developers to argue “heartbreaking cases underscore the urgent need for safeguards to protect children from unsafe and unvetted AI systems.” Her proposal passed the state Senate in March but has not advanced through committee in the House.
Lawmakers have also been working to address another aspect of the AI industry, the growth of data centers and backlash to them in some communities. In Shapiro’s February budget address, he said, “no sector of our country’s economy is growing faster than data centers and artificial intelligence.” He announced incentives for data center developers to follow stricter environmental and transparency standards.
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Hersheypark in Pennsylvaniacould be forced to close this summer amid a dispute between the site’s operators and union employees, according to a report.
The amusement park is scheduled to open seven days a week starting May 21 in a shift from its weekend-only operation before the summer, despite a looming vote among employees about whether to go on strike.
Over 200 union maintenance employees at Hersheypark, The Hotel Hershey and Giant Center rejected a contract offer from Hershey Entertainment & Resorts on May 7, according to Inside the Magic. The park’s operators described the proposal as their “last, best and final” offer.
Over a three-day period this week, employees will vote on whether to strike after rejecting the offer, which is the third from the park’s operators. A strike could close the park just in time for the start of the busy summer season when families head on vacation.
The list of employees considering going on strike includes ride mechanics, electricians, plumbers, welders, painters, machinists, utilities technicians, carpenters, garage auto mechanics and sign artists.
In mid-March, the union and Hershey Entertainment & Resorts agreed to extend a former contract for 60 days to allow for continued negotiations.
According to Inside the Magic, union workers are seeking fair wage increases, more affordable care plans and higher pay premiums for less-desirable shifts. The union has also said that it will reject new contract offers that lower professional standards, devalue skilled trades or open the door to lower wages in maintenance roles in the future.
The Independent has contacted Hershey Entertainment & Resorts for comment about the possible strike.
Hersheypark, located 15 miles east of Harrisburg, is the largest amusement park in Pennsylvania. Founded in 1906, the 121-acre site boasts more than 70 rides, a water park with 17 water attractions and an 11-acre North American Wildlife Park, according to Hersheypark’s website.
It’s named for and themed in conjunction with the popular candy company.
However, a different park in the Keystone State was named as the top amusement park in the U.S. on TripAdvisor’s Best of the Best list.
It was Knoebels Amusement Resort in Elysburg, 42 miles north-northeast of Harrisburg, that topped the list. In doing so, the little-known park was ranked higher than Dollywood, Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Disney’s Hollywood Studios and Universal Islands of Adventure that also made the top 5.
“It’s got it all: roller coasters, kid-friendly rides (bumper cars, a haunted mansion), swimming, camping, a mining museum, and even a championship 18-hole golf course,” TripAdvisor wrote. “The accommodating staff, clean facilities, and fun attractions make for a memorable family-friendly visit.”
Knoebels is the U.S.’s largest free-admission park, although tickets for individual rides cost a fee.
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