Alaska News Daily Brief, Tuesday, November 3

This is Alaska News, with your brief for Tuesday, November third.

0:04Alaska’s Senate race has another kind of influence: what AI chatbots tell voters

Alaska's U.S. Senate race has drawn nearly one hundred fifty million dollars in spending, the most in state history. That works out to roughly two hundred fifty dollars for every registered voter. Campaigns and outside groups report that spending to the Federal Election Commission, so you can track it. But when an Alaskan asks an AI chatbot which Senate candidate fits them best, the answer goes to one person and leaves no record at all. Alaska News has tracked those answers every day since May with a tool it calls Voting Monitor. It poses as an undecided Alaska voter and names a top issue. Then it asks ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Grok whose record fits best. That's more than 200 questions a day in this race alone. From early September through October, the chatbots named Republican Senator Dan Sullivan 54% of the time and Democrat Mary Peltola 43% of the time. But the voter's top issue mostly decided the answer. Veterans and the military pointed all four chatbots to Sullivan. Health care, subsistence and fisheries pointed to Peltola. In October, all four named the same candidate on 73% of identical questions. Cost of living is where they split. Grok named Sullivan on all 96 of its cost-of-living answers. ChatGPT named Peltola on 73 of 86. People are asking. In a Pew Research Center survey last month, 8% of American adults said they were using chatbots to learn about the elections. 4 in 10 of those people wanted help deciding how to vote. Microsoft estimates nearly a quarter of working-age Alaskans used generative AI early this year.

1:47AIDEA board weighs Wrangell shipyard loans and a stake in Augustine geothermal

In Wrangell, the state's development authority votes tomorrow on lending the borough up to twenty-two point eight million dollars for a large-vessel shipyard. The shipyard would repair and build state ferries, fishing and freight boats, and Coast Guard ships. It would sit on an old sawmill site six miles south of town. About seven point eight million dollars would cover Wrangell's local share of a thirty-nine million dollars site project. A thirty-one point two million dollars federal grant pays for most of that project. Up to fifteen million dollars more would finish the shipyard's design and get its permits. Repayment on the first loan would wait, to give the Coast Guard time to commit to basing icebreakers in Wrangell. For now, the Coast Guard plans to put three new icebreakers in Kodiak and Seward. The bigger loan is tied to a data center. Wrangell's utility would sell 2 megawatts of hydropower to an authority subsidiary, and that revenue would help secure the loan. The proposal points to the 2023 landslide that killed six Wrangell residents. It also points to a declining timber industry and trouble in fishing and seafood processing. The same board will weigh buying up to ten million dollars of GeoAlaska. That's an Anchorage company exploring for geothermal power on Augustine volcano in lower Cook Inlet. Utility leaders warn Southcentral could run short of natural gas as soon as this winter. The proposal says Augustine could produce 224 megawatts of steady power for decades. That's about three times what GeoAlaska and its research partners estimated in a 2024 paper.

3:33McGrath's air service contract expires Nov. 30, and the feds haven't named a carrier

Out in McGrath, the town's subsidized air service to Anchorage runs out November 30th. The federal government still hasn't picked who flies the route next. The U.S. Department of Transportation has four bids, ranging from about five hundred twenty-nine thousand dollars to two point four million dollars a year. The city wrote the department last week asking for an answer. Residents are trying to plan holiday travel, and the current carrier can't plan its schedule. Right now, Alaska Air Transit gets about five hundred eighty-six thousand dollars a year for five weekly round trips on nine-seat planes. Alaska Air Transit is bidding 10 weekly round trips to Merrill Field, at about two million dollars the first year and two point four million dollars the second. The company cites inflation and tariffs on aircraft parts. McGrath's city council unanimously backs that bid. The mayor says the carrier started hauling freight, including mail for the local store, after the town's freight carrier stopped coming. The cheapest bid is from Ryan Air, with five weekly trips to the international airport and a two hundred ten dollars one-way fare. Sterling Airways offered three trips a week on 30-seat planes. The city says dropping to 3 days a week or 45 seats would be devastating. McGrath had 5,611 passengers last year, up from 4,408 the year before. The department doesn't have to take the lowest bid. Federal law has it weigh reliability, community preference and total cost, among other factors. Seven other Alaska communities had their subsidized air service bid this summer. Every one of those bids asked for more money than the current contract pays.

5:13A "Vote JKT for Gov" blimp floats over Midtown Anchorage on the day before the election

Quickly, around the state. Over Midtown Anchorage yesterday, Kreiss-Tomkins' campaign for governor floated a blimp reading Vote JKT for Gov. In an election buried in ads, that one was hard to scroll past.

5:30Kawerak seeks comments on draft Bering Strait regional energy plan

Kawerak wants comments on a draft energy plan for the Bering Strait region. Heating oil there averaged six dollars and fifty-seven cents a gallon in a state survey. Homes spend about six thousand four hundred dollars a year.

5:44Kawerak says new buildings in five Bering Strait villages are nearly complete

Kawerak also says new multipurpose buildings in Teller, Elim, Shaktoolik, Gambell and Shishmaref are nearly done. COVID relief money paid for them, twelve million dollars of it.

5:57Alaska Railroad recruits Anchorage high schoolers to train as tour guides

The Alaska Railroad wants Anchorage juniors and seniors for its King Tech tour guide class. Applications are due December 3rd. Finishing the class can lead to a paid summer job on the railroad.

6:08USDA seeks small-business bids for Alaska pollock and catfish for food aid

The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to buy about 1.7 million pounds of Alaska pollock, plus some catfish, for federal food aid. It's looking for small businesses to bid, and bids are due November 12th.

6:21Palmer could lease Apron D for hangars without waiting on master plan, manager says

In Palmer, the airport manager says the city doesn't have to wait for its master plan to lease out Apron D. That's open aircraft parking now. It could become a lease lot,

6:33Palmer planners pick four downtown goals from a parking study instead of adopting it

possibly for hangars. Palmer's planners passed on adopting a consultant's parking study. They picked four goals from it instead. Those run from safer walking to a downtown speed limit of 15 to 20 miles an hour.

6:46State proposes new wastewater mixing zones for Pacific Seafood's Kodiak plants

In Kodiak, state regulators are proposing new zones where wastewater from Pacific Seafood's two plants gets diluted in Near Island Channel. Public comment runs through December 2nd.

6:57Graphite One pushes Graphite Creek mine near Nome to 2030, a year later than planned

Graphite One now says its Graphite Creek mine near Nome won't open until twenty thirty. The company's battery plant in Ohio slips to late 2028. Both are about a year later than planned, and the company hasn't said why.

7:11Brice seeks Corps permit for an 8-acre gravel pit along the Inmachuk River near Deering

Brice, a Fairbanks company, wants an Army Corps permit to dig an 8-acre gravel pit along the Inmachuk River near Deering. The gravel would go to Deering's airport work and other projects.

7:24State moves to add land to pipeline lease for rock piles to guard against the Sag River

The Corps is taking public comment. On the North Slope, the state wants to add 26 acres along the Sagavanirktok River to the pipeline's lease. That would let Alyeska build rock piles up to a half-mile long beside the line to guard against the river.

7:37Wrap-up

There's more this morning than the brief had room for, including Anchorage police searching for a missing boy in Eagle River, and a Homer draft that would limit short-term rentals in residential zones to operators' own homes. That's all for this edition of the Alaska News daily brief. The full stories, and more, are at Alaska News dot com. And that's the way it is, Tuesday, November third, twenty twenty-six.