ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — This Week in Politics…the rumblings of an expected presidential bid from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are starting to materialize. Multiple outlets have reported the governor is expected to file 2024 presidential campaign paperwork next week.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the news Wednesday evening.
DeSantis' candidacy is timed to coincide with a filing with the Federal Election Commission to make his run official, as well as a gathering in Miami of some of his top donors, according to CBS News.
Sources told the outlet an official announcement is likely to happen thereafter in the governor's Tampa Bay-area hometown of Dunedin, Florida.
The governor's political operation on Monday vacated the Florida Republican Party's headquarters and moved into a new office in Tallahassee, CBS News reported, which trigged a federal campaign law that requires DeSantis to register as a candidate within the next two weeks.
A video will likely be published while announcing his candidacy, followed by several events in states whose primary voters will select their party's nominee, according to The New York Times.
Entering the race will put the governor as the chief rival to Former President Donald Trump in the race for the GOP nomination.
Trump overwhelmingly appears to be voters' top candidate for the Republican ticket, trouncing DeSantis by 36 points — Trump at 56 percent with DeSantis at 20 percent, according to the latest RealClearPolitics polling average.
Recent polling showing Trump with a significant lead over DeSantis indicates the governor needs to work toward swaying those who back the former president but by walking a tight line that does not alienate them. DeSantis visited Iowa last weekend and made several indirect jabs at Trump, including:
"Governing is not about entertaining. Governing is not about building a brand or talking on social media and virtue signaling," DeSantis said. "It’s ultimately about winning and producing results."
Recent polls indicate that the matchup between President Joe Biden and Trump or DeSantis would be evenly split.
Artificial Intelligence...AKA "AI," the conversation surrounding its growing impact is taking off among everyday folks and on Capitol Hill.
This week the U.S. Senate held a hearing, grilling tech executives on its safety as they work to try and develop some kind of regulatory policy.
The development of AI could help make strides in research and medical fields but with talks of "deep-fake" videos, voice cloning scams and automation replacing jobs, what should you know to be better prepared for the further development of this emerging technology?
10 Tampa Bay spoke with Dr. Patrick Dicks, a professor and expert in the field of automation and artificial intelligence. Dicks says there are three things everyone should be thinking about:
1. Retrain your skills
Dicks says the technology is here and people should look at how they can use AI to their benefit in their daily work. They also should think introspectively if they believe their job could be replaced with automation.
"If your job is repetitive if your job consists of a simple task, or if your job is in a manufacturing facility, or a grocery store, automation and artificial intelligence can complete many of these jobs, if I were the public, and if I was anyone listening to this recording or viewing it, I would be very concerned about my job and retraining on a different skill set," says Dicks.
2. Become a subject matter expert at your job
"If it requires you to take some outside training, you must become the subject matter expert, because if there's 10 people in a facility, and they can get rid of a few of you, you want to be one of the four people they keep because even though they may automate or use AI, there still has to be human input to figure out how the system works," Dicks explained.
3. Think about investing in AI
"When there's always trouble on the horizon, as we say, there is always the brighter side — invest in these technologies," Dicks added.
Dicks says there are benefits of the technology, "helping with cancer research, diagnosis of certain diseases," and more.