This Month's Latest Tech News in San Bernardino, CA - Sunday August 31st 2025 Edition

Weekly Commentary: California's AI moment lands heavily in San Bernardino - opportunity and caution - as Gov. Newsom's sweeping deals with Google, Microsoft, Adobe and IBM aim to bring free AI tools and training to millions of students and faculty, but they also surface real concerns about privacy, classroom control and workforce displacement.

The state pitches these MOUs as a fast track to an “AI-ready” workforce and to modernize instruction (Governor Newsom AI partnership announcement), while local reporting flags questions about data sharing, Turnitin false positives and whether access to proprietary tools - described as worth “hundreds of millions of dollars” - will translate into equitable, teachable AI literacy (LA Times analysis: free AI training in California colleges).

San Bernardino leaders should push for clear guardrails, teacher training and transparent procurement as classrooms and county workforce programs race to keep up.

Bootcamp	AI Essentials for Work
Length	15 Weeks
Courses Included	AI at Work: Foundations; Writing AI Prompts; Job Based Practical AI Skills
Cost (early bird)	$3,582 (then $3,942)
Registration / Syllabus	Register for AI Essentials for Work bootcamp · AI Essentials for Work syllabus

“AI is the future - and we must stay ahead of the game by ensuring our students and workforce are prepared to lead the way.” - Gov. Gavin Newsom

1. Statewide AI education partnerships bring Google, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM resources to California - Governor Newsom's August announcement stitches four industry giants into a statewide play to put free AI tools, courses and faculty training into high schools, community colleges and the CSU system, aiming to expand access to “over two million” students and accelerate pathways from class to career; the deal was unveiled at Google's San Francisco offices (with the Bay Bridge in the background) and frames AI literacy as both economic development and classroom modernization (California Governor's Office press release on the statewide AI education partnership, KQED news coverage of California's AI education collaboration).

Adobe will roll classroom-ready creative AI, Google is opening Prompting Essentials and educator courses (backed by a large education commitment), IBM brings SkillsBuild and regional lab plans, and Microsoft is scaling Copilot-focused bootcamps - a fast, high-profile push that still leaves questions about guardrails, vendor credentials and who benefits first.

Company	Key offerings
Adobe	Classroom-ready generative tools: Adobe Express, Acrobat, Firefly
Google	Prompting Essentials, Generative AI for Educators, large education funding
IBM	SkillsBuild, faculty training, regional AI labs and short-term certificates
Microsoft	AI/Copilot bootcamp series, faculty upskilling, cybersecurity training

“AI is the future - and we must stay ahead of the game by ensuring our students and workforce are prepared to lead the way.” - Gov. Gavin Newsom

The free AI training rollout for colleges and community colleges promises real upside - rapid access to industry tools, faculty upskilling and clearer pathways from classroom to careers - but it arrives with sharp caveats for San Bernardino educators: Google, Microsoft, Adobe and IBM are offering suites that could reach “over two million” students and plug learners into Gemini, NotebookLM and other premium tools at no cost to campuses, yet questions about data sharing, Turnitin false positives, uneven faculty support and the risk of shrinking basic skills keep surfacing.

State leaders tout the deals as workforce development and equitable access (California governor partnership press release on AI education and workforce development), while reporting highlights how Google's student offerings and $1B education pledge aim to democratize AI training (Google's announcement of free AI tools and resources for students).

For districts already experimenting with automated grading suggestions - sometimes without board-level awareness - the imperative is clear: scale the benefits, but invest in teacher training, privacy guardrails and assessment practices that preserve critical thinking and writing.

Metric	Detail
Students potentially reached	Over 2 million
Community colleges in system	116
Notable vendor investments	Google: $1 billion in AI education
CSU–OpenAI partnership cost (reported)	$16.9 million

“We've seen just like with the calculators, spellcheck things like that, overreliance degrades fundamental skills.” - Ian Anderson

3. San Bernardino wildfire tech pilots and the autonomous firefighting push - San Bernardino has quietly become a proving ground for autonomy-first firefighting: in late‑April demonstrations near Victorville/Silverwood an optionally piloted Sikorsky Black Hawk, marked “EXPERIMENTAL” on its military green‑black door, paired Sikorsky's MATRIX flight‑autonomy with Rain's mission software to detect brush‑pile ignitions, hover to fill a 324‑gallon Bambi Bucket on a 40‑ft line, and execute tablet‑directed water drops while streaming thermal video to ground crews; observers included San Bernardino County fire leaders, CAL FIRE and the U.S. Forest Service.

Coverage from the Los Angeles Times captures the on‑the‑ground scenes and strategic ambitions, and Sikorsky's test release details the tech stack and safety pilots' hands‑off flights.

These pilots - 24 flight hours over two weeks, water from a nearby 189,000‑gallon tank, and drops in gusts up to ~30 knots - sketch a force‑multiplying future that could shrink ignitions to pocket‑size, but they also underscore hard tradeoffs around wind, cost and airspace coordination as autonomy scales into real operations (Los Angeles Times article on California wildfire moonshot technology, Sikorsky and Rain test summary of autonomous aerial firefighting technologies).

Metric	Detail
Aircraft	Optionally piloted Sikorsky Black Hawk (MATRIX autonomy)
Autonomy software	Rain wildfire mission autonomy layered on MATRIX
Bambi Bucket capacity	324 gallons
Support water source	189,000‑gallon tank (Wildfire Water Solutions)
Test flight time	24 hours over two weeks
Wind conditions tested	Gusts up to ~30 knots (35 mph)

“The technology that Rain and Sikorsky is demonstrating is a powerful part of the ecosystem of advancing fire service technology that is answering the year‑round fire seasons we're facing throughout California.” - Chief Dan Munsey, San Bernardino County Fire Protection District

4. Cal Fire chatbot accuracy issues raise alarms for emergency AI tools - California's new “Ask CAL FIRE” chatbot, launched to push prevention tips and near‑real‑time wildfire info, has shown critical gaps that experts say should have been caught before public rollout: it returns inconsistent answers to similar questions, can't reliably report evacuation orders, and in one case cited containment for the Ranch Fire that was six days out of date, according to reporting by CalMatters reporting on the Cal Fire chatbot accuracy issues.

Built by Citibot and slated to be hosted through at least 2027, the tool supports about 70 languages but was tested by a very small development team, raising concerns that an AI‑first push - rather than fixing data feeds and clear evacuation databases - created “innovation theater” instead of dependable emergency communications (Planetizen analysis of Ask CAL FIRE chatbot failures).

The practical takeaway for San Bernardino and other counties: high‑stakes public tools need prelaunch public testing, independent benchmarks and tight integrations with real‑time emergency systems so residents aren't left parsing hedged answers in the middle of an evacuation.

Ask CAL FIRE - quick facts	Detail
Developer	Citibot
Languages	About 70
Hosting plan	Planned through at least 2027
Key issues	Inconsistent answers, outdated containment data, unreliable evacuation‑order responses
Notable example	Ranch Fire containment shown six days out of date

“If a fire is coming and you need to know how to react to it, you do need both accuracy and consistency in the answer.” - Mila Gascó‑Hernández

5. California Judicial Council adopts AI rules for courts - transparency and safety first - California's Judicial Council, following its Artificial Intelligence Task Force, has put Rule 10.430 and Standard 10.80 on the books to shoehorn generative AI into a framework of human oversight, disclosure and ethics rather than leave courts to ad‑hoc pilots; the rule applies to Superior Courts, Courts of Appeal and the Supreme Court and even requires any court that permits generative AI to adopt a written use policy by December 15, 2025 (see the Morgan Lewis summary of California Rule 10.430).

The guidance names six guardrails - confidentiality, non‑discrimination, accuracy, bias mitigation, disclosure and adherence to ethics rules - and lets local courts either adopt the model policy or craft their own approach, balancing uniformity with flexibility.

With an effective date and a calendar now in play, California - the nation's largest court system to adopt such a framework - has signaled that judicial AI use must be transparent, verifiable and subject to meaningful human review (read the legal ethics overview of Standard 10.80).

Item	Detail
Rule	Morgan Lewis summary of California Rule 10.430 with accompanying Legal ethics overview of Standard 10.80
Applies to	California Superior Courts, Courts of Appeal, Supreme Court
Deadline for local policies	December 15, 2025
Key principles	Confidentiality, Discrimination, Accuracy, Bias, Disclosure, Ethics
Local flexibility	Courts may adopt model policy or craft compliant local version

6. CSUSB launches ChatGPT Edu to campus - excitement and mixed reactions - CSUSB rolled out the Chancellor's systemwide ChatGPT Edu tile in MyCoyote (faculty and staff on March 24, 2025; students on April 14, 2025), promising campus‑confined access to GPT‑4o, web search and data‑analysis tools with enterprise privacy controls so “conversations and data are not used to train OpenAI models” (CSUSB ChatGPT Edu overview and privacy details).

The deployment comes with practical guardrails - an 18‑month contract through July 2026, enterprise SSO and a per‑user GPT‑4o cap (10 prompts every five hours, then a fallback to GPT‑4o mini) - and a big campus push for faculty workshops, custom GPT training and syllabus policy updates to steer academic integrity.

Students and professors report a blend of enthusiasm and caution: some see equity gains in free, campus‑wide AI tutors and admin automation, while others worry about accuracy, overreliance and how assignments will change (CSUSB community reporting on mixed reactions to ChatGPT Edu).

The so‑what: having the tool behind single sign‑on makes access trivial, but that same convenience raises urgent choices for instructors - design assignments that require human judgment, teach prompt craft, and use the new workshops so ChatGPT becomes a learning accelerant rather than a crutch.

Fact	Detail
Faculty/staff access	March 24, 2025
Student access	April 14, 2025
Contract window	Feb 2025 – July 2026 (option to extend)
GPT‑4o usage cap	10 prompts per user every 5 hours (then GPT‑4o mini)

“We are transitioning, and we can't escape it.” - Dr. Gregory Gondwe

7. RadNet expands AI-enhanced breast cancer detection across Southern California - RadNet's digital‑health arm DeepHealth completed the acquisition of iCAD on July 17, 2025, knitting iCAD's FDA‑cleared detection tools into DeepHealth's SmartMammo/Saige‑Dx stack to boost screening accuracy and scale AI reads across the region (RadNet DeepHealth completes acquisition of iCAD - official announcement).

Practically, the move pairs DeepHealth's cloud OS and workflow suite with iCAD's installed base (over 1,500 provider sites) and aims to touch more than 10 million mammograms annually - a push that already has payer and provider pilots in Southern California where affiliates will reimburse RadNet's Enhanced Breast Cancer Detection program that charges an extra $40 for an AI read, a vivid, wallet‑level detail patients notice when signing up for “another pair of eyes” on a mammogram (Radiology Business coverage of the EBCD reimbursement deal).

For San Bernardino and nearby counties, the acquisition promises faster prioritization of suspicious cases and broader access to AI screening, but it also raises integration and equity questions as systems and payers move toward routine AI‑assisted reads.

Fact	Detail
Acquisition completed	July 17, 2025
iCAD installed base	Over 1,500 healthcare provider locations
Target annual mammograms	Scale impact to over 10 million
EBCD patient charge	$40 per AI read
RadNet imaging centers	Approximately 401 owned/operated centers

“We are excited to welcome the iCAD team to DeepHealth. The integration of iCAD further empowers DeepHealth to meet the real‑world clinical needs of today, from improving the accuracy and early detection of breast cancer to orchestrating large‑scale screening programs...” - Kees Wesdorp, President and CEO, RadNet Digital Health

8. San Bernardino City Unified prepares AI classroom integration for 2025–26 - as the new school year begins the district is moving from pilot to practice, pairing in-class AI tools with county guidance so teachers, students and families can use the technology with guardrails and purpose.

Local coverage notes classrooms will see AI technology this year, with students and teachers greeting the shift with a mix of nerves and curiosity (ABC7/KABC report on AI in San Bernardino classrooms), while the San Bernardino County Superintendent's office has posted a deep AI Resource Hub that bundles administrator roadmaps, educator courses and one‑pagers on Copilot, ChatGPT and Gemini to help districts design instruction, privacy policies and phased rollouts (San Bernardino County Superintendent's AI Resources for Educational Partners).

The practical takeaway for San Bernardino City Unified: make professional development the lead item, use contractor and county toolkits to align classroom use with FERPA and equity priorities, and lean on regional convenings so teachers don't invent best practices in isolation - after all, some students showed up for day one visibly excited (one fourth grader “had his outfit all laid out”), a small but telling reminder that implementation affects real kids and families.

Item	Detail
SBCSS AI hub	Admin roadmaps, educator courses, policy guides, Copilot/ChatGPT/Gemini one‑pagers (SBCSS AI Resources for Educational Partners)
Local reporting	ABC7/KABC and Yahoo note district rollout at start of 2025–26 (ABC7 coverage of San Bernardino AI classroom rollout)
Regional support	PROPEL AI symposium at CSUSB convened educators and industry for K‑12/college alignment

“This is an exciting year for us. We're coming back to new innovations with AI, and our families and students are really going to get a heads‑up and understanding on how to use this on a day‑to‑day basis and what it can do for our students, staff and family.” - Dr. Christine Ramirez, principal (ABC7/KABC)

9. County removes 700+ freeway call boxes - tech obsolescence and reallocation of resources: San Bernardino County is moving to decommission more than 770 roadside call boxes, a relic of the 1980s and '90s that today handles less than 1% of roadside communications and shows its age in stark tests (one recent check of 12 boxes found only 2 could connect).

Roughly 200 of the boxes sit on rural stretches with limited cell coverage, but low traffic and dwindling use have pushed the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority to favor investing in modern safety measures and experimental fixes like satellite connectivity instead of patching a 35‑year‑old system.

Local reporting from the San Bernardino Sun's analysis of county call box removals and the Victor Valley Daily Press outlines the math - over a million uses across decades, but rapidly falling calls per box - and frames the removal as rethinking where limited public dollars buy the most safety today (San Bernardino Sun report on county call box removals, Victor Valley Daily Press story on freeway call box removal).

Metric	Detail
Call boxes slated for removal	More than 770
Boxes in rural areas	About 200
Historic uses	Over 1.6 million calls since 1990
Share of roadside communications	Less than 1%
Recent test result	12 boxes tested; only 2 connected

“Mobile phones and other technology have fundamentally changed how people access help on the road. Maintaining this outdated system no longer makes sense, particularly when we can invest those resources into more effective and modern safety measures.” - Rick Denison, SBCTA president

10. Local cyber quirks and outages highlight new attack surfaces - as voice‑cloning tools and AI assistants become cheaper and easier to use, San Bernardino's tech ecosystem faces a new class of threats that can turn routine outages or voicemail drops into high‑stakes fraud: Consumer Reports found most leading voice‑cloning services have flimsy safeguards, allowing clones from just seconds of audio, and a flashpoint robocall episode that spoofed President Biden shows how quickly synthetic voices can scale into disinformation and scams (NBC News report on AI voice-cloning vulnerabilities).

Security researchers warn AI digital assistants are also open to command manipulation, meaning outages or misconfigured systems could be triggered by synthetic audio (Trend Micro analysis of AI digital assistant security risks).

Pressure is mounting for enforcement and clearer rules - over 75,000 consumers signed a Consumer Reports petition asking the FTC to crack down on abusive voice‑cloning services after imposter scams cost Americans nearly $3 billion in 2024 - so local IT leaders should prioritize robust authentication, outage drills that assume deepfakes, and rapid public notice channels to prevent a single fake call from turning into a community crisis (Consumer Reports petition urging FTC action on AI voice-cloning fraud).

“AI voice cloning tools are making it easier than ever for scammers to impersonate someone's voice.” - Grace Gedye, Consumer Reports

Conclusion: What San Bernardino should watch next - governance, workforce, and public safety - San Bernardino now sits where sweeping state deals meet local choices: Gov.

Newsom's pacts with Google, Microsoft, Adobe and IBM promise free tools and training for millions (Governor Newsom AI partnerships announcement) and a fast route to reskilling, but the rollout raises urgent governance questions about procurement, board‑level oversight and enforceable use policies highlighted in reporting like CalMatters analysis on AI in schools and universities.

Workforce programs can help, especially when paired with practical courses that teach prompt craft and safe deployment - local adults and district staff should consider short, job‑focused options such as Nucamp's AI Essentials for Work to build applied skills (Nucamp AI Essentials for Work registration).

On public safety, pilots from autonomous firefighting aircraft to inconsistent emergency chatbots (which once cited containment for a blaze days out of date) show that reliability, independent testing and tight real‑time data feeds must be the gatekeepers before public deployments.

The near term: codify transparent AI use policies, fund teacher and first‑responder upskilling, and demand prelaunch accuracy benchmarks so AI strengthens public safety rather than introducing new failure modes.

Bootcamp	AI Essentials for Work
Length	15 Weeks
Courses Included	AI at Work: Foundations; Writing AI Prompts; Job Based Practical AI Skills
Cost (early bird)	$3,582 (then $3,942)
Registration / Syllabus	Nucamp AI Essentials for Work registration · Nucamp AI Essentials for Work syllabus

“AI is the future - and we must stay ahead of the game by ensuring our students and workforce are prepared to lead the way.” - Gov. Gavin Newsom