Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday announced a partnership with Anthropic that will let California state and local agencies access the company's AI assistant Claude at a 50% discount along with free training and other assistance.
Government workers can use Claude to draft and summarize documents, analyze information and perform other tasks, and Anthropic, based in San Francisco, offers a government client version that provides more security than its consumer product.
"AI should not replace the human work of government; it should help our workers move faster, solve problems more effectively, and deliver better results for Californians," Newsom said in a statement.
"Wow. Look local government, the Gov is giving you a 50% off coupon to give up your residents' private data, outsource your jobs to big tech. Isn't that cool? Because California basically invented AI slop!" wrote Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, AFL-CIO, on X.
The rise of automation at work has heightened concerns that people will lose their jobs, and there are worries that there are not yet adequate guardrails to mitigate data privacy and security risks; last year San Francisco made Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, powered by OpenAI's model, available to nearly 30,000 city employees.
Anthropic has faced political hurdles as it seeks more customers: it sparred with the Trump administration, which ordered the company to cut off foreign access to its most powerful AI systems this month, a finding Anthropic disagreed with; last week the U.S. government gave Anthropic permission to restore access to its AI model Mythos to certain clients.
Anthropic is valued at nearly $1 trillion and has signaled plans to become a publicly traded company, and the governor's office said California has already started using Claude more to develop tools to get the public to engage in AI policy discussions and assist state workers.
"As state employees, our goal is to provide our fellow Californians with the best possible service," Government Operations Agency Secretary Nick Maduros said in a statement. "To do that, we need to make sure our teams have access to the best modern tools, including Claude and other emerging technologies." State agencies, including the Department of Motor Vehicles, are using AI to reduce wait times and improve customer service, the governor's office said in its news release.