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Are you a parent who wants to keep your kids safe this summer? The best thing you can do is teach them to swim.

I say this as a nonalarmist mom dedicated to actual safety, instead of security theater and moral panic. For example, I frequently encourage parents not to fret too much about stranger danger—especially since the vast majority of crimes against children are committed by people they already know. Instead, parents should focus on mitigating drowning risks.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that drowning is the most common cause of death for kids ages one to four. Even when those kids get a little older, it remains a significant risk, right after car accidents.

Most child drownings happen in swimming pools. Terrifyingly, they often happen when a child is not expected to be near water—for instance, when they somehow gain access to a pool without anyone realizing it.

David Aguilar, child injury prevention czar for the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, recently appeared on CBS News to remind parents that until their kids know how to swim, they should always practice “active supervision” of children near water.

I would add that all parents should teach their kids to swim, whether they have a pool or not.

“Learning to swim is about staying alive when you end up in the water,” says Brad Bargmeyer, a certified safety professional in California. “I remember when my nephew at age six confidently strode out onto a dock with no railings to get a closer look at a seal swimming in Puget Sound. I had a moment of concern that he was so far ahead of me around all that water. Then I remembered that he had learned to swim as a toddler. Even if he fell in, he would be okay until I was close enough to fish him out.”

Bargmeyer says the experts endorse “safety through skill,” the principle that equipping kids to survive is a better plan than expecting them to never wander out of sight.

But Joseph Brier, a psychology graduate student at Long Island University, points out another reason for teaching kids to swim (as if not drowning was insufficient). He’s been giving swimming lessons for five years and now runs a small company of swimming teachers.

“Parents have told me that once their children learn to swim they have more confidence and self-esteem,” he says. “It seems to leak into other areas of their life.”

Children can learn to swim starting at age two and a half or three, says Brier. In fact, he loves when kids start early, because they’re not afraid of the water.

Are there some kids who can’t learn? There must be. But Brier says he has taught a child with cerebral palsy, and quite a few with autism, as well as “many large, many skinny, many athletic, and many non-athletic” kids.

Jewish law (my tradition) states there are three things every parent must do: teach their kids the holy books, teach them a trade, and teach them how to swim.

The sages debated this, of course. What’s with the swimming? It seems to be both practical advice—Jews are exhorted to do almost anything to save a life—but also metaphorical advice I wholeheartedly endorse: Endeavor to make your kids self-sufficient enough that you don’t have to rescue them every time they land in the deep end.

The post Teaching Kids To Swim Is a Great Way To Protect Them From Actual Danger appeared first on Reason.com.

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From Judge Brantley Starr (N.D. Tex.), posted today, a standing order on Mandatory Certification Regarding Generative Artificial Intelligence (paragraph breaks added, as is commonly done in quotes on this blog):

All attorneys appearing before the Court must file on the docket a certificate attesting either that no portion of the filing was drafted by generative artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT, Harvey.AI, or Google Bard) or that any language drafted by generative artificial intelligence was checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being.

These platforms are incredibly powerful and have many uses in the law: form divorces, discovery requests, suggested errors in documents, anticipated questions at oral argument. But legal briefing is not one of them. Here’s why. These platforms in their current states are prone to hallucinations and bias. On hallucinations, they make stuff up—even quotes and citations.

Another issue is reliability or bias. While attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative artificial intelligence is the product of programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath. As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth). Unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice, such programs act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle. Any party believing a platform has the requisite accuracy and reliability for legal briefing may move for leave and explain why.

Accordingly, the Court will strike any filing from an attorney who fails to file a certificate on the docket attesting that the attorney has read the Court’s judge-specific requirements and understands that he or she will be held responsible under Rule 11 for the contents of any filing that he or she signs and submits to the Court, regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence drafted any portion of that filing. A template Certificate Regarding Judge-Specific Requirements is provided here.

Note that federal judges routinely have their own standing orders for lawyers practicing in their courtrooms. These are in addition to the local district rules, and to the normal Federal Rules of Civil and Criminal Procedure.

The post Federal Judge Requires All Lawyers to File Certificates Related to Use of Generative AI appeared first on Reason.com.

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While some A.I. alarmists are arguing that the further development of generative artificial intelligence like OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model should be “paused,” licensing proposals suggested by some boosters like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft President Brad Smith ($10 billion invested in OpenAI) may inadvertently accomplish much the same goal.

Altman, in his prepared testimony before a senate hearing on A.I. two weeks ago, suggested “the U.S. government should consider a combination of licensing or registration requirements for development and release of AI models above a crucial threshold of capabilities, alongside incentives for full compliance with these requirements.”

While visiting lawmakers last week in Washington, D.C., Smith concurred with the idea of government A.I. licensing. “We will support government efforts to ensure the effective enforcement of a licensing regime for highly capable AI models by also imposing licensing requirements on the operators of AI datacenters that are used for the testing or deployment of these models,” states his company’s recent report Governing AI: A Blueprint for the Future.

So what kind of licensing regime do Altman and Smith have in mind? At the Senate hearing, Altman said that the “NRC is a great analogy” for the type of A.I. regulation he favors, referring to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Others at the hearing suggested the way the Food and Drug Administration licenses new drugs might be used to approve the premarket release of new A.I. services. The way that NRC licenses nuclear power plants may be an apt comparison, given that Smith wants the federal government to license gigantic datacenters like the one Microsoft built in Iowa to support the training of OpenAI’s generative A.I. models.

What Altman, Smith, and other A.I. licensing proponents fail to recognize is that both the NRC and FDA have evolved into highly precautionary bureaucracies. Consequently, they employ procedures that greatly increase costs and slow consumer and business access to the benefits of the technologies they oversee. A new federal Artificial Intelligence Regulatory Agency would do the same to A.I.

Why highly precautionary? Consider the incentive structure faced by FDA bureaucrats: If they approve a drug that later ends up harming people they get condemned by the press, activists, and Congress, and maybe even fired. On the other hand, if they delay a drug that would have cured patients had it been approved sooner, no one blames them for the unknown lives lost.

Similarly, if an accident occurs at a nuclear power plant authorized by NRC bureaucrats, they are denounced. However, power plants that never get approved can never cause accidents for which bureaucrats could be rebuked. The regulators credo is better safe than sorry, ignoring that it is often the case that he who hesitates is lost. The consequences of such overcautious regulation is technological stagnation, worse health, and less prosperity.

Like nearly all technologies, A.I. is a dual use technology offering tremendous benefits when properly applied and substantial dangers when misused. Doubtlessly, generative A.I. such as ChatGPT and GPT-4 has the potential to cause harm. Fraudsters could use it to generate more persuasive phishing emails, massive trolling of individuals and companies, and lots of fake news. In addition, bad actors using generative A.I. could mass produce mis- dis- and mal-information campaigns. And of course, governments must be prohibited from using A.I. to implement pervasive real-time surveillance and/or deploy oppressive social scoring control schemes.

On the other hand, the upsides of generative A.I. are vast. The technology is set to revolutionize education, medical care, pharmaceuticals, music, genetics, material science, art, entertainment, dating, coding, translation, farming, retailing, fashion, and cybersecurity. Applied intelligence will enhance any productive and creative activity.

But let’s assume federal regulation of new generative artificial intelligence tools like GPT-4 is unfortunately inevitable. What sort of regulatory scheme would be more likely to minimize delays in the further development and deployment of beneficial A.I. technologies?

R Street Institute senior fellow Adam Thierer in his new report recommends a “soft law” approach to overseeing A.I. developments instead of imposing a one-size-fits-all, top-down regulatory scheme modeled on the NRC and FDA. Soft law governance embraces a continuum of mechanisms including multi-stakeholder conclaves where governance guidelines can be hammered out; government agency guidance documents, voluntary codes of professional conduct, insurance markets, and third-party accreditation and standards-setting bodies.

Both Microsoft and Thierer point to the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) recently released Artificial Intelligence Risk Management Framework as an example of how voluntary good A.I. governance can be developed. In fact, Microsoft’s new A.I. Blueprint report acknowledges that NIST’s “new AI Risk Management Framework provides a strong foundation that companies and governments alike can immediately put into action to ensure the safer use of artificial intelligence.”

In addition, the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) issued in April a formal request for comments from the public on artificial intelligence system accountability measures and policies. “This request focuses on self-regulatory, regulatory, and other measures and policies that are designed to provide reliable evidence to external stakeholders—that is, to provide assurance—that AI systems are legal, effective, ethical, safe, and otherwise trustworthy,” notes the agency. The NTIA plans to issue a report on A.I. accountability policy based on the comments it receives.

“Instead of trying to create an expensive and cumbersome new regulatory bureaucracy for AI, the easier approach is to have the NTIA and NIST form a standing committee that brings parties together as needed,” argues Thierer. “These efforts will be informed by the extensive work already done by professional associations, academics, activists and other stakeholders.”

A model for such a standing committee to guide and oversee the flexible implementation of safe A.I. would be the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB). The NSABB is federal advisory committee composed of 25 voting subject-matter experts drawn from a wide variety fields related to the biosciences. The NSABB provides advice, guidance, and recommendations regarding biosecurity oversight of dual use biological research. A National Science Advisory Board for A.I. Security could similarly consist of a commission of experts drawn from relevant computer science and cybersecurity fields to analyze, offer guidance, and make recommendations with respect to enhancing A.I. safety and trustworthiness. This more flexible model of oversight avoids the pitfalls of top-down hypercautious regulation while enabling swifter access to the substantial benefits of safe A.I.

The post How To Restrain the A.I. Regulators appeared first on Reason.com.

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Making a deal with President Joe Biden might have been the easy part.

Now, with the clock ticking towards a possible default on the national debt, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R–Calif.) is facing a new challenge that looks pretty familiar: opposition from the right-wing faction within the House Republican caucus, the same group that stalled McCarthy’s election to lead the chamber in January.

“I want to be very clear. Not one Republican should vote for this bill,” said Rep. Chip Roy (R–Texas) during a press conference Tuesday afternoon called by the House Freedom Caucus, the formerly libertarian group that’s maintained its reflexive sense of fiscal responsibility even as it has turned more conservative in recent years.

But as they did during the January showdown over McCarthy’s speakership, most Republicans will likely vote for the package and avoid a possible default. Unlike in January, McCarthy is likely to get some support from Democrats—a federal default provides little political upside for the party currently occupying the White House—limiting the leverage the House Freedom Caucus can apply.

But the group’s objections are not superfluous. Since March, conservatives in the House have made clear they want to see significant spending cuts attached to any debt ceiling increase. The House passed a bill last month to do that: The Limit, Save, Grow Act would have reset the federal budget baseline to where it was last year, effectively cutting the new spending included in the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill that passed in December. It would also have placed stricter limits on future spending growth for the next decade, rather than a two-year cap on nondefense discretionary spending, which is a part of the budget that isn’t really growing anyway.

The House Freedom Caucus is also grumpy about McCarthy’s failure to secure a larger cut to IRS funding. The deal will only claw back about a quarter of the $80 billion in new funding given to America’s tax cops last year.

“This deal fails—fails completely,” House Freedom Caucus Chairman Scott Perry (R–Pa.) said during the Tuesday press conference. Perry blasted McCarthy for squandering what he said was “the strongest position a Republican has had certainly in our elected lifetimes here, and…probably since we’ve been paying attention” to force budget cuts that could curb the nation’s growing pile of debt.

But that’s a telling remark. It seemingly ignores the first two years of the Trump administration, when Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House—and responded by hiking spending and inflating the deficit.

Members of the House Freedom Caucus may be sincere in their opposition to this deal and their commitment to cutting spending. Unfortunately, the track record of the Trump years suggests Democrats are at least partially correct in their belief that Republicans only use fiscal responsibility as a cynical justification for blocking Democratic policy priorities.

But with just days left until the federal government defaults, the operative question is whether the House Freedom Caucus can translate its opposition to the deal into a legislative roadblock. We’ll get that answer late Tuesday, when the House Rules Committee takes up the debt ceiling bill. As Politico reports, that meeting is likely the conservatives’ best chance at stopping the bill. That’s because the House Freedom Caucus negotiated to get more seats on the powerful Rules Committee during the standoff over McCarthy’s speakership election. Roy is a member of the committee, along with two other members of the Freedom Caucus: Reps. Thomas Massie (R–Ky.) and Ralph Norman (R–S.C.). Norman has sharply criticized the deal, while Massie has pointed out on Twitter (correctly) the debt limit bill doesn’t actually spend any money but only allows for borrowing to fund spending Congress already approved.

“We’ll be taking out a second mortgage this week to pay off the credit cards but it’s not until September,” when the annual budget is set to be debated and voted, “that we’re actually buying the bass boat, the tanning bed, and a big screen TV,” Massie wrote.

Massie’s vote will be critical, but his point is arguably more important. The debt ceiling bill, regardless of what it contains or lacks, is not going to single-handedly solve or doom America’s fiscal status. Only more responsible budgeting from Congress and the president can do that.

The post Conservatives Rage Against Debt Ceiling Bill: 'Not One Republican Should Vote for This' appeared first on Reason.com.

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The high cost and limited availability of housing in many American cities have some writers and wonks dreaming of a seemingly novel solution: social housing.

The idea is to have the government build or subsidize housing developments in which units would be provided at generally below-market rates for people of all incomes.

Last week, The New York Times published a long profile of Vienna, Austria’s extensive, century-old social housing program that’s turned the city into a “renter’s utopia.”

In Vienna, author Francesca Mari writes, 80 percent of city residents qualify for public housing, and social housing tenants spend only about a fifth of their post-tax income on housing. Mari also interviews a number of higher-income social housing residents who spend less than 10 percent of their earnings on housing.

That’s contrasted with America as a whole where the average renter pays 30 percent of their income on rent (and much more in some higher-cost cities).

We could have those lower housing costs too, Mari says, if only Americans would abandon their obsession with mass home ownership and the subsidized mortgages that make it possible.

Meanwhile, over at Slate, tenant organizer Daniel Denvir and researcher Yonah Freemark argue that no amount of new, private, for-profit housing development will make housing truly affordable. For that to happen, the government should “just build the homes.”

“State and local governments can take on this task by building millions of homes themselves, particularly for poor and working class people, that private developers won’t construct,” they write. “These public and social housing projects can ensure permanent affordability, support mixed-income neighborhoods, and bring new assets onto public balance sheets.”

Liberal blogger Matt Yglesias offers some pointed pushback to all this in his Slow Boring newsletter today. Vienna isn’t cheap because it builds social housing, he argues, but because it builds a lot of housing, period.

The city boasts per capita construction rates that make it look more like a Sunbelt boomtown than “closed access” underbuilding cities like New York City or Los Angeles. In recent years, two-thirds of Vienna’s new housing is also private, market-rate housing.

Yglesias also notes that the city’s social housing units are also pretty small by American standards, reducing costs further. Given these facts, Yglesias reasonably asks what problem social housing is solving that reduced regulations on private, market-rate housing wouldn’t.

Indeed, it’s hard to say.

As the Times article notes, residents of private housing in Vienna spend only a little bit more of their income on housing than social housing tenants. I’ve reported in the past too that in Austria as a whole, social housing residents on average have slightly higher incomes than private housing residents.

In other words, private providers are willing to build and rent out housing units at affordable rates to the same class of people that are served by social housing. In this light, Vienna’s social housing is at best duplicating what the private market is doing. It isn’t serving an unfilled niche.

For more evidence that it’s the rate of new supply that counts, not government subsidization of new supply, we need only look at New York City.

In 2022, New York City completed nearly 26,000 new housing units, according to a new report by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board. Data provided by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development shows that 12,000 new subsidized, affordable housing units were completed at the same time.

So nearly half of the city’s housing production last year was government-subsidized, affordable housing. In relative terms, the government appears to be playing a larger role in new housing construction in allegedly ultra-capitalist New York City than in “Red Vienna.”

New York nevertheless remains one of the least affordable cities in the country. That’s because its overall rate of building is far lower than Vienna’s. It’s also likely far less than what developers—liberated from restrictive zoning rules and affordable housing mandates—would be likely be willing to build.

Zoning reforms that get government supply restrictions out of the way would seem to provide most of the benefits social housing proponents want.

They would also avoid the risks that American social housing projects would end up being botched, authoritarian boondoggles on par with existing public housing developments.

From New York City to Washington, D.C., to rural Arizona, public housing facilities are infamous for being poorly run and maintained. Here in D.C., nearly a quarter of public housing units are vacant, thanks to a mix of uninhabitable conditions in some apartments and the local public housing agency’s inability to manage its waitlist.

A recent Washington Post investigation detailed the insane surveillance public housing tenants have to put up with. Many public housing developments have more cameras per person than heavily surveilled airports and jails.

Proponents of social housing like to argue that their vision of mixed-use, mixed-income developments will avoid these problems. Maybe. Maybe not.

Yglesias notes that the small size of Vienna’s social housing units wouldn’t be particularly attractive to middle-class Americans. These developments could end up with the same concentrated poverty that’s marked the public housing of old.

The surveillance likely isn’t going away either.

Hawaii state Sen. Stanley Chang’s (D–Honolulu) social housing proposals call for restricting the housing to Hawaiian resident owner-occupiers. To enforce that condition, he proposed back in 2021 to have residents’ fingerprint or retina scans checked against a government database every time they enter their homes.

It is true that without social housing fewer high-income earners would get massively subsidized rents and amenities.

Mari, the author of the Times story, interviews left-wing Austrian politician Peter Pilz who inherited a dirt-cheap social housing unit from his grandmother. Able to effectively live for free back home, Pilz spends the savings on Italian biking holidays.

In a free market where he had to pay the full costs of his housing and the opportunity costs of the capital used to build and maintain it, Pilz would have less money for such extravagances. That’s a loss for sure.

But fewer subsidized vacation days for dilettante politicians seems like an OK thing to sacrifice in favor of a free market system that respects people’s property rights and privacy while providing them with abundant, affordable housing.

The post Don't Buy the Social Housing Hype appeared first on Reason.com.

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