San Francisco, CA
Kurtenbach: The 49ers must break their nasty habit — in Las Vegas of all places
The 49ers have a nasty habit in big games, and if they bring it to Las Vegas, their Super Bowl dreams will almost certainly become a nightmare.
No one can quite explain why the 49ers have posted slow starts in their four biggest games of the season — at Philadelphia, vs. Baltimore, and both NFC playoff games — and the good news for the 49ers is that it has only brought about one loss.
But the Kansas City Chiefs are a different kind of opponent.
Spot them an early two-score lead, and they will hold it until the confetti falls.
This season’s edition of the Chiefs is not a super team. Up to the start of the playoffs, it became trendy to write them off as Super Bowl contenders — for good reason: The Chiefs’ offense went from No. 1 last year (per DVOA) to No. 8 behind bad wide receiver play and even worse play from offensive tackles. Tight end Travis Kelce didn’t look like his All-Pro self all season, and Mahomes didn’t either. This team had taken a step back, and in the competitive AFC, that was perceived as tantamount to a death sentence.
And here’s the thing: There hasn’t been much improvement. Kelce might be playing better, but Kansas City still has so many of those issues heading into the Super Bowl.
The reason they are in the big game is because they are ruthless.
They might not have the firepower to beat any team they want anymore.
But in addition to one of the best defenses in the NFL, the Chiefs have the experience and knowledge to appropriately manage a game.
It’s all very reminiscent of the Tom Brady Patriots.
It’s become evident this season that the vast majority of NFL pundits are not, in fact, watching the full games. YouTube highlights, perhaps, but not the full game broadcasts or the All-22 film.
As such, the discourse (excuse me while I vomit) around Niners’ quarterback Brock Purdy is that he’s a dink-and-dunk game manager — someone who does very little but gets the ball to his playmakers on screen passes and lets them do the rest.
Meanwhile, Mahomes’ well-deserved reputation as a deep-ball-slinging, devil-may-care talisman persists.
In reality, the roles are completely reversed this season.
Kansas City is running the offense people think the 49ers run.
The 49ers are running the offense that people think Kansas City still runs.
Purdy was one of the NFL’s best and most frequent deep-ball passers this season. He was a gunslinger of the highest order.
Mahomes, meanwhile, has become a screen-pass merchant — his average air yards per throw was sixth lowest in the NFL this season.
That’s the way it had to be for Kansas City, though. Things had to be pared back — the offensive made more simple.
The Chiefs might not have the offensive firepower to beat you anymore, but they won’t beat themselves — they let their opponent take care of the rest.
That’s what Kansas City did in the AFC Playoffs. Miami playing in negative-degree temperatures made that playoff opener a breeze for Kansas City — the Dolphins made it clear from the opening snap that they’d do anything to get back to sub-tropical weather.
Then Buffalo beat itself the following week. The Bills scored with 3:23 to play in the third quarter of that game. They didn’t score again as their offense became solely predicated on Josh Allen running and throwing. He did neither at a high level down the stretch. One-man shows don’t work in the playoffs.
And then, in the AFC Championship Game, the Ravens went out and executed one of the strangest game plans in recent NFL history.
Kansas City scored 17 points in that title game. Had that been known before the contest, everyone would have fairly presumed the Chiefs lost.
But the Chiefs won because Baltimore quarterback Lamar Jackson — the most extraordinary running quarterback ever — decided to stand in the pocket for eight, nine, ten Mississippi on dropback after dropback.
The Chiefs’ opponents en route to the Super Bowl were not ready for primetime.
Are the 49ers?
This is the fifth massive game the Niners will play this year.
They’re 0-4 with good starts in them.
Against Philadelphia in Week 10 — remember how hyped that game was? — the Niners had negative offensive yards at the start of the second quarter.
Then, against Baltimore on Christmas, everything went wrong for the Niners on offense from the jump.
Green Bay never opened up a big lead in the teams’ NFC Divisional Round contest, but they held the Niners’ offense at bay in the battle of the Bays. The Niners needed a game-winning drive late in the fourth quarter to advance.
And then Detroit put a hurt on the Niners in the NFC Championship Game. If not for a Detroit meltdown that started late in the second quarter, and if not for a comeback for the ages — 27 unanswered second-half points — San Francisco would be watching the Super Bowl on TV like the rest of us.
Philadelphia, Green Bay, and Detroit all showed their own flaws after the Niners showed theirs.
But Kansas City won’t follow suit. This team — led by a Hall of Fame quarterback and head coach — has spent the last few weeks proving they can keep their poker face in Las Vegas.
The Chiefs have played enough playoff football to know that style points don’t mean a thing. You don’t get to skip a round if you blow out a team.
No, it’s survive and advance. The Chiefs might be more cunning than dominant this postseason, but the results are the same.
So, while the 49ers might feel pretty good about themselves (and for good reason) heading into the Super Bowl, after back-to-back comebacks, the better policy would be to play their best football early.
The last time these two teams met in the Super Bowl, Kansas City won with a late push. The 49ers led by 10 and had Kansas City facing a third-and-15 in their own territory with just over seven minutes to play in the game.
Then the Wasp stung.
But the Chiefs don’t hold those kinds of cards this time around.
That Chiefs team was a cobra. This team is a boa constrictor — simple, steady, and suffocating.
As such, a late-game push like the two that lifted the Niners to the Super Bowl is likely not in the cards for a third straight game.
The most important quarter of the Super Bowl might end up being the first.
And the Niners can’t afford to miss it.
San Francisco, CA
Cruise reaches settlement with woman severely injured by robotaxi in San Francisco, report says
SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — Cruise reached a settlement with a woman who was severely injured by one of the company’s robotaxis, according to a new report.
The exact terms of the agreement have not been revealed.
The woman was hit by a regular vehicle back October.
The impact threw her into the path of a driverless car at 5th and Market Streets in San Francisco.
GM’s Cruise recalling all 950 robotaxis after SF pedestrian dragging incident
She was then pinned under the car as it attempted to pull over.
Cruise said the incident was caused by a software malfunction.
The incident led the DMV to suspend Cruise’s driverless taxi license in San Francisco.
Copyright © 2024 KGO-TV. All Rights Reserved.
San Francisco, CA
Britain expands AI safety institute to San Francisco amid scrutiny over regulatory shortcomings
An aerial view of the city of San Francisco skyline and the Golden Gate Bridge in California, October 28, 2021.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
LONDON — The British government is expanding its facility for testing “frontier” artificial intelligence models to the United States, in a bid to further its image as a top global player tackling the risks of the tech and to increase cooperation with the U.S. as governments around the world jostle for AI leadership.
The government on Monday announced it would open a U.S. counterpart to its AI safety summit, a state-backed body focused on testing advanced AI systems to ensure they’re safe, in San Francisco this summer.
The U.S. iteration of the AI Safety Institute will aim to recruit a team of technical staff headed up by a research director. In London, the institute currently has a team of 30. It is chaired by Ian Hogarth, a prominent British tech entrepreneur who founded the music concert discovery site Songkick.
In a statement, U.K. Technology Minister Michelle Donelan said the AI Safety Summit’s U.S. rollout “represents British leadership in AI in action.”
“It is a pivotal moment in the U.K.’s ability to study both the risks and potential of AI from a global lens, strengthening our partnership with the U.S. and paving the way for other countries to tap into our expertise as we continue to lead the world on AI safety.”
The expansion “will allow the U.K. to tap into the wealth of tech talent available in the Bay Area, engage with the world’s largest AI labs headquartered in both London and San Francisco, and cement relationships with the United States to advance AI safety for the public interest,” the government said.
San Francisco is the home of OpenAI, the Microsoft-backed company behind viral AI chatbot ChatGPT.
The AI Safety Institute was established in November 2023 during the AI Safety Summit, a global event held in England’s Bletchley Park, the home of World War II code breakers, that sought to boost cross-border cooperation on AI safety.
The expansion of the AI Safety Institute to the U.S. comes on the eve of the AI Seoul Summit in South Korea, which was first proposed at the U.K. summit in Bletchley Park last year. The Seoul summit will take place across Tuesday and Wednesday.
The government said that, since the AI Safety Institute was established in November, it’s made progress in evaluating frontier AI models from some of the industry’s leading players.
It said Monday that several AI models completed cybersecurity challenges but struggle to complete more advanced challenges, while several models demonstrated PhD-level knowledge of chemistry and biology.
Meanwhile, all models tested by the institute remained highly vulnerable to “jailbreaks,” where users trick them into producing responses they’re not permitted to under their content guidelines, while some would produce harmful outputs even without attempts to circumvent safeguards.
Tested models were also unable to complete more complex, time-consuming tasks without humans there to oversee them, according to the government.
It didn’t name the AI models that were tested. The government previously got OpenAI, DeepMind, and Anthropic to agree to opening their coveted AI models up to the government to help inform research into the risks associated with their systems.
The development comes as Britain has faced criticism for not introducing formal regulations for AI, while other jurisdictions, like the European Union, race ahead with AI-tailored laws.
The EU’s landmark AI Act, which is the first major legislation for AI of its kind, is expected to become a blueprint for global AI regulations once it is approved by all EU member states and enters into force.
San Francisco, CA
Game Day: Bay Area golfer making most of 2nd chance
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