- BIG STORY: S.C. charts early course on artificial intelligence
- MORE NEWS: McMaster says new energy bill will keep air conditioners blowing
- LOWCOUNTRY, Ariail: On your own
- BRACK: Let’s not make S.C.’s child poverty worse
- MYSTERY PHOTO: Back in two weeks
- FEEDBACK: Remember we the people
S.C. charts early course on artificial intelligence
By Jack O’Toole and Damian Bertrand | Terrifying threats. Unprecedented opportunities. Change at the speed of a microprocessor. Across the country — and here in rural South Carolina — that’s how experts and leaders are talking about the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence, or AI.
Driving that conversation, experts say, are technological breakthroughs that have placed generative AI chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini, in the hands of people and businesses across the world over the past three years.
But amid sensational headlines and breathless predictions of super-intelligent machines, governments, businesses and even everyday citizens are scrambling to prepare for — something. Even experts struggle to say exactly what.
As Statehouse Report learned in a series of interviews this week, South Carolina is no exception.
An emerging state strategy: Opportunity with guardrails
At a March 24 AI event sponsored by the nonprofit S.C. Council on Competitiveness, Beaufort County Republican Rep. Jeff Bradley, chair of the House Regulations, Administrative Procedures, Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity Committee, talked up the state’s efforts to get government, business and educational institutions pulling in the same direction on AI.
“This collaborative effort marks a pivotal moment in our state’s technological advancement,” Bradley told attendees. “By leveraging our research institutions and fostering cross-sector collaboration, we can drive applied AI innovation, train and retain a competitive AI workforce, and position South Carolina as AI-ready.”
That effort produced its first tangible result in March 2024, when the S.C. Department of Administration (Admin) released its AI Strategy, which aims to promote and responsibly regulate the use of AI in the delivery of state government services.
At the time, Admin spokesperson Brooke Bailey told Statehouse Report that safety, not speed, would be the agency’s goal as it moved forward. This week, she said Admin is currently tracking 29 proposed use-cases for AI from various agencies, ranging from internal chatbots and image-recognition tools to off-the-shelf software.
“Admin reviews each use case for security, risk, potential benefit and efficiencies, and continuously collaborates and engages with agencies as they implement approved use cases,” Bailey said.
What’s more, she says, the agency has established a Center of Excellence to provide oversight and governance to state agencies using AI, with subgroups focused on risk, compliance, and procurement.
“Additionally, the agency is seeking to initiate statewide pilot programs … for ChatGPT and Microsoft Co-pilot,” she said.
Legislative initiatives: Protecting progress — and people
Lawmakers say they’ve focused early AI legislation on keeping South Carolina business- and consumer-friendly, while cracking down on predators who misuse the technology — an approach Gov. Henry McMaster has lauded.
In particular, he cited the importance of recent legislation to protect minors from AI-enabled abuse in a May social media post.
“I’ve signed two bills into law that combat the creation, possession, and distribution of AI-generated child sexual abuse material,” McMaster said. “These laws will give prosecutors the tools they need to go after predators who use technology to harm and exploit our children.”
Protecting people from AI risk will also be the top priority of the S.C. House AI Regulations subcommittee when it begins meeting next year, according to Chairman Brandon Guffey, R-York. In 2022, Guffey lost his 17-year-old son to suicide after he was victimized by an online predator’s scam.
“The last thing we want to do is stifle innovation,” Guffey said in a June 18 interview. “But we have to be quick to react [to new developments] to ensure we’re protecting people.”
That’s why he’s carefully watching proposed federal legislation that would prevent states from regulating AI for the next 10 years, he said.
“I don’t believe the federal government has any right to tell us we can’t protect our citizens,” he said. “But if the goal is to keep states from stifling a specific industry, then yeah, I would agree states should not have that right.”
Looking ahead to 2026, Guffey said he wants to begin with a bill aimed at preventing companies from exploiting people’s personal information or likeness using AI.
“One of my primary goals is to make sure that people aren’t profiting off your voice or your image just because it’s [generated by] AI,” he said.
Beyond that, he said, he’d like to see a shift in the way AI is understood and regulated.
“Ultimately, I believe if we simply started looking at technology and the tech industry as products instead of services, then a lot of this stuff could be handled through [existing] consumer protection laws,” he said.
Businesses and citizens try to understand — and prepare
While lawmakers and state experts craft policies, Palmetto State businesses and residents are already navigating AI’s real-world impacts.
Charleston attorney and digital forensics examiner Steve Abrams told Statehouse Report this week that AI is already reshaping day-to-day legal work.
“It basically does what a clerk would do,” Abrams said. “If you had a practice with a big enough system to support a law clerk, you’d send them for a couple of days to [prepare a] legal memorandum, and here the AI tool does it in about five minutes.”
But with the ongoing issue of AI “hallucinations” — put simply, made-up facts that popular chatbots sometimes invent out of whole cloth — Abrams noted that it’s not a “set it and forget it” solution. Lawyers need to carefully review every AI-generated document they intend to present.
Less excited about the technology is Jonathan Boncek, a freelance Charleston photographer who’s watching the rise of AI with concern.
“Clients might not want to spend their money to pay me, when they can just do some AI generative fill-in,” Boncek said. “While it’s not massive yet, I do understand how AI is [moving] really quickly. So I’m just trying to prepare myself for what could be next.”
To that end, Boncek said he’s become a certified rapid transformational therapist — if not directly because of AI, at least with a wary eye cast in that direction.
“I’ve moved into a space that I believe AI won’t be able to touch, which is that human interaction and mental health space,” Boncek said. “I don’t think that AI is going to be able to help with mental health.”
But regardless of whether you’re inclined to view the technology with enthusiasm or alarm, experts like College of Charleston Associate Professor of Literacy Education Ian O’Byrne advise against getting ahead of the technology — or the facts.
“I feel like we fall into this trap of hyperbole and hysteria,” he said this week. “And I think a lot of the time, people don’t even understand what AI even is.”
Every day, and at every level, South Carolinians are working to close that AI understanding gap. And maybe, in the process, dispelling just a bit of the hyperbole and hysteria.
- Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
McMaster says energy bill will keep ACs blowing
Staff reports | On a hot June day this week, Gov. Henry McMaster ceremonially signed a new energy law aimed at ramping up Palmetto State power production. In addition to regulatory changes, the law clears the way for Dominion Energy and state-owned Santee Cooper to build a 2,000-megawatt natural gas plant in rural Colleton County.
McMaster signed the bill into law more than a month ago, but Wednesday’s ceremony brought utility executives and other workers together with lawmakers to show solidarity and support between the groups.
“This is of course to celebrate a great step for South Carolina,” McMaster said at the ceremony, which lasted less than 15 minutes before most everyone went back into the air-conditioned mansion.
The law took effect immediately. Utilities now can appeal state Public Service Commission rulings directly to the S.C. Supreme Court, meaning projects or rate cases won’t be in limbo for years as they wind through the courts. They can also now ask for smaller rate increases every year instead of hitting customers with what was sometimes a double-digit increase to cover inflation and rising costs after four or five years.
Meanwhile, lawmakers recently cleared the way for private companies to take over the long-abandoned project to build two new nuclear reactors at the defunct V.C. Summer site near Jenkinsville. Ratepayers paid billions of dollars on the failed project, which was abandoned in 2017, well before it generated even a watt of power.
The bill did not get unanimous support. Some legislators from both sides of the aisle worried the state didn’t set limits on data centers and that would allow the computer farms to suck up massive amounts of the new energy and raise costs to homeowners and others while providing few local benefits. – Skyler Baldwin
In other recent news
Charleston remembers Emanuel A.M.E. Church massacre 10 years later. A racist gunman murdered nine parishioners 10 years ago this week at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in downtown Charleston.
- Leaders of Emanuel A.M.E. church say the way forward requires heavy lifting
- Giffords calls for ‘common-sense’ gun laws on 10th anniversary of Emanuel shootings
- Why Chris Singleton forgave his mother’s racist killer
2026: Wilson reportedly set to enter governor’s race. Alan Wilson, the four-term Republican attorney general of South Carolina, is reportedly set to enter the state’s open gubernatorial race in 2026, setting up a primary contest that’s likely to be a multi-candidate competition for President Donald Trump’s endorsement.
- With Wilson eyeing S.C. governor’s race, who might run for attorney general?
- SC-2: Democratic attorney, Air Force veteran announces congressional bid
McMaster, S.C. nonprofits stand against offshore drilling. Gov. Henry McMaster reiterated his opposition to drilling for oil off the South Carolina coast, after the Trump administration announced its intention to expand offshore drilling.
S.C. to receive nearly $73M from national opioid settlement. South Carolina will receive $72.8 million for drug-addiction treatment, prevention and recovery as part of a multi-state settlement with one of the nation’s largest pharmaceutical companies.
- Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
On your own
Award-winning cartoonist Robert Ariail has a special knack for poking a little fun in just the right way. This week, he takes on how the Trump administration is threatening to end hurricane-related assistance programs.
- Love this week’s cartoon or hate it? Did he go too far, or not far enough? Send your thoughts to feedback@statehousereport.com.
Let’s not make S.C.’s child poverty worse
By Andy Brack | A recent report on child poverty in South Carolina showed the rate dropped slightly – from 20% of the state’s children in poverty in 2019 to 19% two years ago. On its face, that sounds promising.
But storm clouds are on the horizon with tight-fisted federal fiscal policies from a Trump administration that seems to want to make the rich richer at the expense of the poor and middle class.
Threatened are the very kinds of government programs that reduced child poverty from about one in three kids two decades ago to one in five now – food stamps, special tax credits for the working poor, housing subsidies and the dread of the Republican Party – Obamacare.
If federal safety net programs are cut in South Carolina – and all over the country – tougher, hungrier days are ahead for too many families. The new KidsCount report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found 215,000 children under 18 are in poverty in the Palmetto State. The study found South Carolina ranked 38th in child well-being, a slight improvement over previous years.
“With too many children lacking health insurance and too many living in areas of concentrated poverty, children and their families are vulnerable in our state,” said Sue Williams, CEO of Children’s Trust of South Carolina, in a statement earlier this month.
During the Obama administration, there was a big statistical drop in what was considered the number of children in poverty because analysts reframed how they measured it. As highlighted in a 2015 Statehouse Report column, the feds implemented the new measure to more accurately reflect reality of the safety net – but all of this came with a caveat:
“The lower number, it seems, reflects the impact of state and federal intervention programs on the poverty rate. In other words, it shows that programs like food stamps, housing assistance, the federal Earned Income Tax Credit for working families and other social interventions are working. Without them, the true child poverty rate would be about one in three kids [in South Carolina] — approximately the same level as has been reported for years.
“‘Tax credits alone have decreased the child poverty rate by nearly one-third. Social Security, SNAP (food stamps) and housing subsidies also have contributed to significantly fewer children living in poverty,’” the report said.
What brought all of this on is that the standard, outdated Federal Poverty Level (FPL) used for years as a basis for distributing aid came under fire when conservatives complained that the nation’s 50-year battle with poverty had done little to cut the poverty rate. So in 2011, the Obama administration set out to measure the impact of assistance programs on people receiving help. This new measure, called the Supplemental Poverty Measure, found that aid programs really do make life better for people — not by giving them cell phones or microwaves, but by providing help with housing or food or credits for working.
But then as now, what all of this means is that today’s policymakers need to understand that what’s slowly working – the intervention programs – don’t need to be cut. In fact, child poverty likely would be reduced more if the state would expand Medicaid, build more affordable housing and boost nutrition programs.
The clear warning here is that if the Trump administration cuts safety net programs that impact more than 200,000 children in South Carolina, more will go hungry and live in poverty.
Fighting poverty in America isn’t easy. And to implement policies that will encourage it to expand would be fiscally and morally wrong.
Policy actions have impacts. Let’s not go down any path that cuts the safety net more. Investments in anti-poverty programs are smart over the long run, not a waste of taxpayer money like some of the talking heads claim.
If you can’t get past the notion of keeping and expanding anti-poverty programs based on your checkbook, take a look at the good book and see what it might suggest.
Andy Brack is editor and publisher of the Charleston City Paper and Statehouse Report. Have a comment? Send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Back in two weeks
We’re taking a couple of weeks off. If you have a good mystery stumper to share with fellow readers, send to: feedback@statehousereport.com.
Remember “we the people”
To the editor:
After reading the S.C. attorney general’s “public warning” concerning June 14 No Kings protests, I was again incensed by the language. The second paragraph of his statement begins, “radical anti-American groups are organizing…”. Who does he think he is referring to peaceful protesters as anti-American.
To Andy Brack: Thank you for having the guts to call out the AG on his aggressive attempt to silence Americans, who simply want to defend the Constitution of the United States of America and all that it provides for its people, people being the key word as in the preamble [of the Constitution] – “We the people.”
This is the first time in my life I have ever publicly and formally spoken out about the state of OUR union. I have been telling my family, since January, how fortunate we have been to live in a country and not have tanks rolling through the streets of our neighborhoods. I’ve told them how great it is that we go to sleep at night with absolutely no fear of chaos or invasion.
That is no longer the peace of mind I, and they, have known our entire lives. Thank you Mr. Brack for your words, and the words of those who also understood what “We the PEOPLE” truly means. My thoughts today are not just with protesters, who can and should peacefully speak out. I also think of the co-equal branches of OUR government. I implore them, all of them, regardless of party affiliation, to stop and think about what they are really tasked to do… “Support and Defend the Constitution, against ALL enemies, foreign and domestic!
– Donna M. Scholl, Master Sergeant, USAF Retired, Lexington, S.C.
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