vox--2020-02-24--Trump’s rule creating a wealth test for immigrants is now in effect

A rule that creates new barriers to low-income immigrants seeking to enter the US went into effect on Monday , bringing to fruition the kind of vast restrictions on legal immigration that President Donald Trump has long sought .
The so-called “ public charge ” rule , published in August by the Department of Homeland Security , establishes a test to determine whether an immigrant applying to enter the US , extend their visa , or convert their temporary immigration status into a green card is likely to end up relying on public benefits in the future .
Immigration officials @ @ @ @ @ @ @ away those who are “ likely to be a public charge ” based on an evaluation of 20 factors , ranging from the use of certain public benefits programs — including food stamps , Section 8 housing vouchers , and Medicaid — to English language proficiency .
The rule affects immigrants applying for green cards nationwide and at consulates abroad , as well as those applying for temporary visas overseas such as tourists , business travelers , students , and skilled workers .
It ’ s not clear exactly how many people could @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Julia Gelatt , a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute , a nonpartisan think tank , told Vox that 69 percent of the roughly 5.5 million people who were granted green cards over the past five years would have had at least one negative factor under the rule — which officials could have used as justification to reject their applications for immigration benefits .
For about four months , federal judges prevented the rule from being implemented while lawsuits challenging it made their way through the courts .
Opponents of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ York and immigrant advocacy groups , had argued that the rule flouts the narrow definition of what it means to be a “ public charge ” under federal immigration law .
But rather than waiting for those courts to issue final rulings , President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court in January to intervene — a once-rare occurrence that has become standard practice under this administration — and to allow the rule to go into effect .
The US Supreme Court ’ s conservative majority gave it the green light later that month @ @ @ @ @ @ @ justified the rule as a means of ensuring that immigrants are “ financially self-sufficient ” and has argued it will “ protect benefits for American citizens.
” “ I am tired of seeing our taxpayer paying for people to come into the country and immediately go onto welfare and various other things , ” Trump said when announcing the rule .
“ So I think we ’ re doing it right.
” The rule , which has been anticipated for more than a year , has had a chilling effect already : Noncitizens @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out of fear that they will face immigration consequences .
It ’ s difficult to quantify just how many immigrants have unenrolled already , but one survey suggested that about one in seven had done so as of 2018 .
Many immigrants aren ’ t eligible for public benefits unless they have green cards or certain humanitarian protections — and not all public benefits are available to noncitizens .
In the majority of cases , the best advice for immigrants is to keep using the programs to which they ’ re entitled because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ doing so under the rule , Doug Rand , a former White House official who worked on immigration policy in the Obama administration , said .
But for many immigrants who have already decided to drop their benefits , that advice is coming too late .
Even before the rule went into effect , the publicity surrounding it accomplished what the Trump administration wanted : Immigrants were being driven away from public benefits .
By the time the rule went into effect on Monday , it had , in that sense , already @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and your poor who can stand on their own two feet ” The rule fits in with one of the broader ideas guiding Trump ’ s immigration policy : that immigrants take advantage of public assistance without offering the US anything in return .
It enacts the philosophy that acting US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli once described , amending Emma Lazarus ’ s famous poem on the Statue of Liberty : “ Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet.
” It also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for immigrants sponsored by family members , the phenomenon Trump has excoriated as “ chain migration.
” The rule is only one of several policies the Trump administration has pursued to dramatically shift which immigrants are legally able to come to the United States .
Under Trump , the legal immigration system increasingly rewards skills and wealth over family ties to the US , while shutting out a growing number of people from low-income backgrounds .
Heeding calls from 31 states to end refugee admissions from Syria , Trump has slashed the total @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to just 18,000 this year , the fewest in history and down from a cap of 110,000 just two years ago .
He ’ s placed restrictions on the citizens of many Muslim-majority and African countries .
His travel ban prevents citizens of Iran , Libya , Somalia , Syria , Yemen , Venezuela , and North Korea from obtaining any kind of visa allowing them to enter the US .
He recently added new restrictions on immigrants from six additional countries : Myanmar , Eritrea , Kyrgyzstan , Nigeria , Sudan , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an “ African ban ” since about four in five of those affected are from African nations — places Trump has reportedly previously derided as “ shithole countries.
” And Trump is also cracking down on foreigners giving birth to children in the US , who automatically become American citizens , particularly if they can ’ t prove they can pay for their medical treatment .
With the public charge regulation , Trump is painting immigrants as abusing public benefits .
But they are actually “ less likely to consume welfare benefits and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consume a lower dollar value of benefits than native-born Americans , ” according to the Cato Institute , a libertarian think tank .
In 2016 , the average per capita value of public benefits consumed by immigrants was $ 3,718 , as compared to $ 6,081 among native-born Americans .
Noncitizens were slightly more likely to get cash assistance , SNAP benefits and Medicaid , but far less likely to use Medicare and Social Security .
“ The rhetoric around the use of public benefits programs is largely smoke and mirrors , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center , told Vox .
“ It ’ s feeding a rhetoric that immigrants are draining our public services when in fact these immigrants don ’ t even have access to those services and also galvanizing fear in immigrant communities.
” The US has been able to reject prospective immigrants who are likely to become a “ public charge ” — dependent on the government for support — since 1882 , but since World War II , few immigrants were turned away using that criteria .
In 1999 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said only cash benefits , which very few immigrants use , would be considered in making the determination .
The Trump administration is defining “ public charge ” much more broadly , giving immigration officials at US Citizenship and Immigration Services and US Customs and Border Protection a laundry list of factors to consider .
And the new rule allows individual immigration officials to implement this complicated , 217-page regulation as they see fit .
The rule gives individual , low-level officials much more vetting power than they have had previously , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ green card process .
It could have a significant impact on who is allowed to enter and remain in the US as a lawful permanent resident .
Lower court rulings had argued that the public charge rule conflicts with how federal immigration law has been interpreted for two decades and appears to ignore the tens of thousands of public comments that opposed it .
“ Defendants do not articulate why they are changing the public charge definition , why this new definition is needed now , or why the definition set forth in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the history of U.S. immigration law—is reasonable , ” US District Judge George Daniels wrote in his opinion in October .
But the final version of the regulation is much less stringent than earlier versions that were leaked to the public ( including one to Vox ) .
Those drafts would have allowed immigration officials to consider immigrants ’ use of a long list of federal public benefits programs , including CHIP and Head Start , the federal early childhood education program .
It also would have looked at any programs used by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that immigrants could be penalized if they sought benefits for their children instead of themselves .
Early reports raised the alarm about how the rule targeted immigrants on public benefits .
The Trump administration got hundreds of thousands of comments about it .
And immigrants started dropping out of those programs , worried that their chances of getting a green card or citizenship would be affected .
An Urban Institute study found that , based on a survey of about 2,000 adults in immigrant families , 13.7 percent of them said that they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to use non-cash benefits programs in 2018 as a result of reports about the rule .
Eventually , the rule could lead up to 4.7 million people to withdraw from Medicaid and the Children ’ s Health Insurance Program ( CHIP ) alone , according to a report by the Kaiser Family Foundation .
The Los Angeles Times reported that some immigrants with children enrolled in special education programs withdrew them from school and that refugees and asylum seekers dropped out of food assistance programs .
Quinn said that her organization has found @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asylum and citizenship , even though the final version of the rule does not affect either process .
“ The rule has falsely created an impression that undocumented immigrants and temporary residents are gobbling up public benefits , which they ’ re not because they ’ re generally not eligible , ” Rand said .
“ And it has scared those who are eligible , who are primarily permanent residents with green cards , legal immigrants , into unenrolling from programs they are perfectly eligible to take advantage of under the law.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ done Some federal programs are eligible to all immigrants regardless of status , including the National School Lunch Program ; the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women , Infants , and Children ( WIC ) ; and Head Start .
Some immigrants can also become eligible for Social Security benefits and Medicare in old age .
But “ means-tested welfare programs ” — federal public benefits for those in poverty including Medicaid , CHIP , the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ( SNAP ) , Temporary Assistance for Needy Families , and Supplemental Security @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reserved for naturalized and US-born citizens , green card holders , refugees , and asylees .
Unauthorized immigrants and most people with temporary immigration status , such as employment-based visas , are ineligible , and green card holders have to wait for five years before becoming eligible ( although some states give them access earlier ) .
All of this means that relatively few immigrants would end up being penalized , under the final version of the rule , for using public assistance .
But the rule has already been effective in dissuading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public benefits they need .
Reporting about the potentially drastic effects of the rule , and advocacy groups ’ decision to condemn it , all helped spread the word .
Most immigrants will face no consequences for keeping their benefits , Rand said .
But advocates and attorneys are reluctant to make any such blanket statements for fear of being responsible for giving bad advice , especially now that the rule has gone into effect .
“ Unfortunately , I think a lot of the damage has already been done through the rhetoric @ @ @ @ @ @ @ proposals , ” Quinn said .
DHS ’ s cost-benefit analysis of the rule is premised on the fact that many people will unnecessarily unenroll from public benefits or refrain from enrolling from such programs in the future , Rand said .
The economic gains the department cited in its analysis are almost entirely attributable to the anticipated reduction in “ transfer payments , ” or government payments to public benefits recipients .
“ In other words , the ‘ chilling effect ’ isn ’ t a second-order consequence of the rule ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practically the only thing that makes the rule economically beneficial , ” Rand said .

A federal judge in New York blocked the Trump administration Wednesday night from continuing to enforce a rule that has created barriers to low-income immigrants seeking to enter the US.
The so-called “public charge” rule, published last August by the Department of Homeland Security, established a test to determine whether an immigrant applying to enter the US, extend their visa, or convert their temporary immigration status into a green card is likely to end up relying on public benefits in the future.
The rule gave immigration officials more leeway to turn away those who are “likely to be a public charge” based on an evaluation of 20 factors, ranging from the use of certain public benefits programs — including food stamps, Section 8 housing vouchers, and Medicaid — to English-language proficiency. It represents one of President Trump’s biggest blows to legal immigration so far.
In two separate decisions, US District Judge George Daniels prohibited both the State Department and DHS from applying the rule for as long as the US remains in a state of national emergency due to the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has not indicated that he intends to terminate the national emergency, which he announced in March, anytime soon, but he has been pushing American life to resume even as the coronavirus continues to spread and the death toll mounts.
Daniels said that the public charge rule has had a documented chilling effect on immigrants seeking Covid-19 testing, which could undermine the US’s efforts to slow the spread of the virus. The agency had announced in March that seeking “testing, treatment, [or] preventative care (including vaccines, if a vaccine becomes available)” would not count against immigrants under the public charge rule, even if those services were obtained using public benefits, but that had only created more “chaos and confusion,” he said.
“As a direct result of the rule, immigrants are forced to make an impossible choice between jeopardizing public health and personal safety or their immigration status,” he wrote.
As a result of Wednesday’s ruling, US Citizenship and Immigration Services instructed its officers to hold immigrants’ applications where the rule would have applied until it issues further guidance, according to an email obtained by BuzzFeed News’s Hamed Aleaziz. A USCIS spokesperson said Thursday that the agency was still reviewing the decision but confirmed that it will “fully comply with the court’s order and will be providing additional guidance.”
The rule has affected immigrants applying for green cards nationwide and at consulates abroad, as well as those applying for temporary visas overseas such as tourists, business travelers, students, and skilled workers.
The administration hasn’t released detailed data on how many people have been affected by the rule so far since it went into effect in February. But Julia Gelatt, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, told Vox that 69 percent of the roughly 5.5 million people who were granted green cards over the past five years would have had at least one negative factor under the rule — which officials could have used as justification to reject their applications for immigration benefits.
Trump has justified the rule as a means of ensuring that immigrants are “financially self-sufficient” and has argued it will “protect benefits for American citizens.”
“I am tired of seeing our taxpayer paying for people to come into the country and immediately go onto welfare and various other things,” Trump said when announcing the rule. “So I think we’re doing it right.”
The rule had a chilling effect even before the pandemic: Noncitizens were needlessly dropping their public benefits out of fear that they would face immigration consequences. It’s difficult to quantify just how many immigrants have unenrolled as a result of the rule, but one survey suggested that about one in seven had done so as of 2018.
Many immigrants aren’t eligible for public benefits unless they have green cards or certain humanitarian protections — and not all public benefits are available to noncitizens. Even if the rule is allowed to go into effect once more, the best advice for most immigrants is to keep using the programs to which they’re entitled because they won’t be penalized for doing so, Doug Rand, a former White House official who worked on immigration policy in the Obama administration, said.
But the confusion around the rule has helped accomplish what the Trump administration wanted: Immigrants have been driven away from public benefits. Even though the rule can no longer be enforced due to Wednesday’s ruling, it has, in that sense, already succeeded.
“Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet”
The rule fits in with one of the broader ideas guiding Trump’s immigration policy: that immigrants take advantage of public assistance without offering the US anything in return. It enacts the philosophy that then-acting US Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli once described, amending Emma Lazarus’s famous poem on the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet.”
It also makes getting into the US much harder for immigrants sponsored by family members, the phenomenon Trump has excoriated as “chain migration.”
The rule is only one of several policies the Trump administration has pursued to dramatically shift which immigrants are legally able to come to the United States. Under Trump, the legal immigration system increasingly rewards skills and wealth over family ties to the US, while shutting out a growing number of people from low-income backgrounds. (Though he has even imposed restrictions on skilled immigrants amid the pandemic.)
Heeding calls from 31 states to end refugee admissions from Syria, Trump has slashed the total number of refugees the US accepts annually to just 18,000 this year, the fewest in history and down from a cap of 110,000 just two years ago.
He’s placed restrictions on the citizens of many Muslim-majority and African countries. His travel ban prevents citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, Venezuela, and North Korea from obtaining any kind of visa allowing them to enter the US. He also added restrictions on immigrants from six additional countries: Myanmar, Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania. Critics have called it an “African ban” since about four in five of those affected are from African nations, places Trump has reportedly previously derided as “shithole countries.”
Trump has also sought to crack down on foreigners giving birth to children in the US, who automatically become American citizens, particularly if they can’t prove they can pay for their medical treatment.
With the public charge regulation, Trump is painting immigrants as abusing public benefits. But they are actually “less likely to consume welfare benefits and, when they do, they generally consume a lower dollar value of benefits than native-born Americans,” according to the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.
In 2016, the average per capita value of public benefits consumed by immigrants was $3,718, as compared to $6,081 among native-born Americans. Noncitizens were slightly more likely to get cash assistance, SNAP benefits, and Medicaid, but far less likely to use Medicare and Social Security.
“The rhetoric around the use of public benefits programs is largely smoke and mirrors,” Erin Quinn, a senior staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told Vox. “It’s feeding a rhetoric that immigrants are draining our public services when in fact these immigrants don’t even have access to those services and also galvanizing fear in immigrant communities.”
The “public charge” rule, explained
The US has been able to reject prospective immigrants who are likely to become a “public charge” — dependent on the government for support — since 1882, but since World War II, few immigrants were turned away using that criteria. In 1999, the Clinton administration issued guidance that said only cash benefits, which very few immigrants use, would be considered in making the determination.
The Trump administration is defining “public charge” much more broadly, giving immigration officials at US Citizenship and Immigration Services and US Customs and Border Protection a laundry list of factors to consider. And the new rule allows individual immigration officials to implement this complicated, 217-page regulation as they see fit.
The rule gives individual, low-level officials much more vetting power than they have had previously, and injects a lot of uncertainty into the green card process, impacting who is allowed to enter and remain in the US as a lawful permanent resident.
Lower court rulings had argued that the public charge rule conflicts with how federal immigration law has been interpreted for two decades and appears to ignore the tens of thousands of public comments that opposed it.
For about four months, federal judges prevented the rule from being implemented while lawsuits challenging it made their way through the courts. Opponents of the rule, including the state of New York and immigrant advocacy groups, had argued that the rule flouts the narrow definition of what it means to be a “public charge” under federal immigration law.
“Defendants do not articulate why they are changing the public charge definition, why this new definition is needed now, or why the definition set forth in the Rule — which has absolutely no support in the history of U.S. immigration law — is reasonable,” Judge Daniels wrote in his previous decision in October.
But rather than waiting for those courts to issue final rulings, Trump asked the Supreme Court in January to intervene — a once-rare occurrence that has become standard practice under this administration — and to allow the rule to go into effect. The US Supreme Court’s conservative majority gave it the green light later that month without explaining their reasoning.
The final version of the regulation is much less stringent than earlier versions that were leaked to the public (including one to Vox). Those drafts would have allowed immigration officials to consider immigrants’ use of a long list of federal public benefits programs, including the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Head Start, the federal early childhood education program. It also would have looked at any programs used by an immigrant’s household — meaning that immigrants could be penalized if they sought benefits for their children instead of themselves.
Early reports raised the alarm about how the rule targeted immigrants on public benefits. The Trump administration got hundreds of thousands of comments about it. And immigrants started dropping out of those programs, worried that their chances of getting a green card or citizenship would be affected.
An Urban Institute study found that, based on a survey of about 2,000 adults in immigrant families, 13.7 percent of them said that they or one of their relatives chose not to use non-cash benefits programs in 2018 as a result of reports about the rule. A report by the Kaiser Family Foundation projected that the rule could have led up to 4.7 million people to withdraw from Medicaid and CHIP alone.
The Los Angeles Times reported that some immigrants with children enrolled in special education programs withdrew them from school and that refugees and asylum seekers dropped out of food assistance programs.
Quinn said her organization has found that immigrants are also avoiding applying for asylum and citizenship, even though the final version of the rule does not affect either process.
“The rule has falsely created an impression that undocumented immigrants and temporary residents are gobbling up public benefits, which they’re not because they’re generally not eligible,” Rand said. “And it has scared those who are eligible, who are primarily permanent residents with green cards, legal immigrants, into unenrolling from programs they are perfectly eligible to take advantage of under the law.”
Damage from the rule has already been done
Some federal programs are open to all immigrants regardless of status, including the National School Lunch Program; the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC); and Head Start. Some immigrants can also become eligible for Social Security benefits and Medicare once they reach a certain age.
But “means-tested welfare programs” — federal public benefits for those in poverty including Medicaid, CHIP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) — are primarily reserved for naturalized and US-born citizens, green card holders, refugees, and asylees.
Unauthorized immigrants and most people with temporary immigration status, such as employment-based visas, are ineligible, and green card holders have to wait five years before becoming eligible (although some states give them access earlier). Notably, former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has proposed eliminating the five-year waiting period for green card holders.
All of this means that relatively few immigrants would end up being penalized, under the final version of the rule, for using public assistance. But the rule has already been effective in dissuading many immigrants from continuing to access the public benefits they need.
Early reporting about the potentially drastic effects of the rule, and advocacy groups’ decision to condemn it, helped spread the word. Most immigrants face no consequences for keeping their benefits, Rand said. But advocates and attorneys were reluctant to make any such blanket statements for fear of being responsible for giving bad advice.
“Unfortunately, I think a lot of the damage has already been done through the rhetoric and the media cycles around the various proposals,” Quinn said.
DHS’s cost-benefit analysis of the rule is premised on the fact that many people will unnecessarily unenroll from public benefits or refrain from enrolling from such programs in the future, Rand said. The economic gains the department cited in its analysis are almost entirely attributable to the anticipated reduction in “transfer payments,” or government payments to public benefits recipients.
“In other words, the ‘chilling effect’ isn’t a second-order consequence of the rule; according to DHS, it’s practically the only thing that makes the rule economically beneficial,” Rand said.


vox--2020-02-28--CRISPR’s co-developer on the revolutionary gene-editing technology’s past — and its future

Jennifer Doudna will be the first to tell you that she didn ’ t invent CRISPR , but she did help start the CRISPR revolution .
In 2012 , she was part of a small group of researchers at the University of California Berkeley who showed that CRISPR technology can be used to edit the genetic code of just about any organism quickly and precisely .
CRISPR gets its name from DNA fragments found in many bacteria .
When bacteria successfully fight off invaders like viruses , they chop up the outside genetic material and store it as CRISPR sequences @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invader genes .
Whenever a potential threat arrives , the bacteria can send defense enzymes ( called Cas proteins ) to search for CRISPR sequences in the invader ; if one is found , the enzymes chop up its genetic material , killing it .
Doudna and her team realized that by giving Cas proteins genetic material resembling that of an invading organism , the proteins will cut DNA in a targeted , scalpel-like fashion .
In the hands of scientists , the tool has radically simplified gene editing , the process of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organisms .
After just eight years since its discovery , gene editing with CRISPR is still a very experimental technique .
But the results so far have been promising : Researchers have used CRISPR to treat muscular dystrophy and Alzheimer ’ s disease in mice , fight drug-resistant bacteria , and create tastier tomatoes .
But editing human DNA is where the use of CRISPR becomes more controversial .
We ’ re starting to see early and positive results from preliminary trials of sickle cell therapies in humans .
But as much as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the power of this gene-editing tech has a darker side .
Just a few months ago , Chinese scientist He Jiankui received a three-year jail sentence after using CRISPR to edit the genes of human embryos , twin girls who were born in November 2018 .
In this episode of Reset , host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Jennifer Doudna about the promise and peril in CRISPR ’ s future , what ’ s next , and how we can edit our genes safely and responsibly .
The transcript of their conversation that appears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clarity .
Let ’ s talk about using CRISPR in humans .
Where do you stand on this ?
How should we think about using CRISPR on people ?
It ’ s very important to appreciate that there are fundamentally two different ways that CRISPR can be used clinically .
When we say clinically , we ’ re talking about using it in human patients .
One of those ways is to use CRISPR in embryos , and if we do that , then it creates changes to the DNA of embryos that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other way to use CRISPR clinically is to use it in individuals .
That means changing DNA in the cells of an individual , not in a way that becomes heritable by future generations , but just in a way that affects that individual patient .
That ’ s something that from the very beginning I have been a proponent of , because of the potential to correct disease-causing mutations .
What I ’ ve been really vocal about avoiding is the former situation where you would use CRISPR to create heritable changes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moratoria on that and more recently for global regulation around that .
So there are a few human clinical trials happening right now using CRISPR , and one in particular is a treatment for sickle cell anemia .
To be clear , this treatment doesn ’ t make a change in people ’ s DNA that could be passed down to future generations .
So when you hear that there are promising early results coming out of that trial , how do you feel ?
Deeply moved , because I think for any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ idea that our work could someday help someone with a health care situation that they and their families are facing , that ’ s really why we do our work .
So I feel very excited about the potential of the technology .
Of course , I ’ m cautious .
I want to make sure that it proceeds in a very appropriate , regulated fashion , and these trials that we ’ re seeing the early announcements for right now are going exactly down that path .
Assuming that those trials pan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how do we make sure that this technology is affordable and accessible to people that need it ?
That ’ s really the challenge that I ’ m now thinking more and more about and working on at the Innovative Genomics Institute .
You were one of the first people to hear about what the Chinese scientist He Jiankui did .
He created the world ’ s first babies genetically edited with CRISPR , those two twin girls .
Can you tell me the story of hearing about that for the first time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fall of 2018 .
I had been organizing the second International Summit on Human Genome Editing , which was scheduled to take place in November of 2018 in Hong Kong .
And right before that meeting started , I received an email that had the subject line “ Babies Born.
” It was from Dr .
He Jiankui and it was a very short message explaining that he and his colleagues had done clinical work to introduce embryos whose DNA had been altered with CRISPR to create a pregnancy that resulted in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in China .
And immediately , of course , this raised many questions about both the science and the ethics of what had been done .
So what happened next ?
You received this email and then what ?
I flew out that night to Hong Kong so I would have a little bit of extra time before the meeting got started , and I ended up meeting with Dr .
He before the meeting got started .
He was already scheduled to be a speaker at that conference , and so when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he was planning to present and also just trying to understand what had been done , first of all , and also why .
What was his motivation ?
Why undertake something like this at this time ?
Were you satisfied with the answer ?
Well , I guess what was really kind of surprising to me honestly at the time was that although it seemed very clear to me and our colleagues that the work that had been done was really inappropriate for a number of reasons and really unethical .
This @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to have occurred to him .
He seemed to see himself more as a pioneer , somebody who was the first to bring this to people that might want to use it that way .
What would it take for you to feel comfortable about a clinical trial that would change a person ’ s DNA in a way that would allow that change to be passed on to that person ’ s offspring ?
I think first and foremost , one would have to identify a real medical need for that and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , certainly , difficult to identify .
But I think going forward , if there are real situations where an honest assessment says changing DNA is truly the best option for this family , for their children , etc.
, I think one would have to really want to have a whole pipeline of regulatory guidelines and a pathway for proceeding that would ensure safety of that kind of application .
You would want to be able to follow their health outcomes over the course of their lifetime , especially in the early @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Do you often think about the potential ways that this technology down the line could end up being used ?
Do you often worry about things like eugenics ?
I think that ’ s frankly right now still at the level of science fiction .
It ’ s not something that ’ s going to happen anytime soon .
That being said , I think it ’ s important that we right now grapple with the reality that we have in our hands a tool that in principle does enable that .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ control of genes in families , and I think that it ’ s essential that we be tackling that issue right now , not running from it , but saying , look , this is a powerful tool .
It has this potential and we need to already be thinking about how it could be used safely and how we appropriately regulate it .
Some people are very excitedly talking about CRISPR as a technology that could be used to prevent certain conditions , and I want to ask you about folks with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about “ fixing deafness , ” “ fixing ” conditions like dwarfism , and folks who are part of that community really get worried when they hear those things , because not everyone feels like they need to be fixed .
They don ’ t feel broken .
Where do you stand on that ?
Your question really to me brings up broader considerations about … fundamentally , what does it mean to be human ?
What does it mean to embrace the diversity that we see across human cultures , human societies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one of the real joys of life .
So I think that to take it to an extreme , you could imagine a world where human beings have been sort of homogenized in a way , and we have a standard set of genes that we want people to inherit .
Again , that ’ s really in the realm of science fiction .
But I think imagining that helps to put in perspective what we ’ re really talking about here , a situation where suppose that in the next decade or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in vitro fertilization clinic and they could choose from a menu of genes .
Would this be a good thing or not ?
What if we could eliminate deafness , for example ?
Would that be a good thing or would it eliminate some of the richness from the world ?
It ’ s a hard question to answer , and I think it has to remain in the hands of individuals at some level .
When you hear these people talk about things like eliminating deafness … do you have a position @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feel about this truly ?
I think it ’ s a very individual choice to me .
If you ’ re asking me if I were a prospective parent and this was a decision that I needed to make about my child , what would I do ?
Boy , that ’ s a hard one .
I have a wonderful son , and I see all the quirks that he has and things that just make him a wonderful person , and I think there ’ s a joy to that .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ knew ahead of time somehow that I had a genetic disorder that I knew he would be inheriting in some way and I could prevent it , well , I think , of course , as a parent , I would have that desire to prevent it .
I think these are some of the really interesting and really challenging questions that are now in front of us given that we have a technology that in principle , at least … will provide some of that type of capability to people .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interesting question , but it ’ s hard to answer .
Do you think that we ’ re going slow enough with CRISPR ?
Boy , how to answer that .
I guess the first thing I would say is that , the technology is so enabling for scientists that there ’ s no way to put the genie back in the bottle , at least at the level of research .
And then , of course , at a whole different level , there ’ s the very tangible opportunities to affect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ genetic disease .
That is very exciting .
So I guess in the end , I don ’ t think it ’ s moving too fast .
But I do think it ’ s moving fast for sure , and that it really does make it imperative that the scientific community deal right up front with the various challenges that we face to make sure it ’ s used safely .

Jennifer Doudna will be the first to tell you that she didn’t invent CRISPR, but she did help start the CRISPR revolution. In 2012, she was part of a small group of researchers at the University of California Berkeley who showed that CRISPR technology can be used to edit the genetic code of just about any organism quickly and precisely.
CRISPR gets its name from DNA fragments found in many bacteria. When bacteria successfully fight off invaders like viruses, they chop up the outside genetic material and store it as CRISPR sequences, creating a “database” of invader genes. Whenever a potential threat arrives, the bacteria can send defense enzymes (called Cas proteins) to search for CRISPR sequences in the invader; if one is found, the enzymes chop up its genetic material, killing it.
Doudna and her team realized that by giving Cas proteins genetic material resembling that of an invading organism, the proteins will cut DNA in a targeted, scalpel-like fashion. In the hands of scientists, the tool has radically simplified gene editing, the process of altering the biological instruction manual of living organisms.
After just eight years since its discovery, gene editing with CRISPR is still a very experimental technique. But the results so far have been promising: Researchers have used CRISPR to treat muscular dystrophy and Alzheimer’s disease in mice, fight drug-resistant bacteria, and create tastier tomatoes.
But editing human DNA is where the use of CRISPR becomes more controversial.
We’re starting to see early and positive results from preliminary trials of sickle cell therapies in humans. But as much as CRISPR has produced promising medical advances, the power of this gene-editing tech has a darker side.
Just a few months ago, Chinese scientist He Jiankui received a three-year jail sentence after using CRISPR to edit the genes of human embryos, twin girls who were born in November 2018.
In this episode of Reset, host Arielle Duhaime-Ross talks with Jennifer Doudna about the promise and peril in CRISPR’s future, what’s next, and how we can edit our genes safely and responsibly.
The transcript of their conversation that appears below has been edited for length and clarity.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
Let’s talk about using CRISPR in humans. Where do you stand on this? How should we think about using CRISPR on people?
Jennifer Doudna
It’s very important to appreciate that there are fundamentally two different ways that CRISPR can be used clinically. When we say clinically, we’re talking about using it in human patients.
One of those ways is to use CRISPR in embryos, and if we do that, then it creates changes to the DNA of embryos that become part of that individual.
The other way to use CRISPR clinically is to use it in individuals. That means changing DNA in the cells of an individual, not in a way that becomes heritable by future generations, but just in a way that affects that individual patient.
That’s something that from the very beginning I have been a proponent of, because of the potential to correct disease-causing mutations.
What I’ve been really vocal about avoiding is the former situation where you would use CRISPR to create heritable changes. I’ve called initially for moratoria on that and more recently for global regulation around that.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
So there are a few human clinical trials happening right now using CRISPR, and one in particular is a treatment for sickle cell anemia. To be clear, this treatment doesn’t make a change in people’s DNA that could be passed down to future generations. So when you hear that there are promising early results coming out of that trial, how do you feel?
Jennifer Doudna
Deeply moved, because I think for any of us working in science, the idea that our work could someday help someone with a health care situation that they and their families are facing, that’s really why we do our work. So I feel very excited about the potential of the technology.
Of course, I’m cautious. I want to make sure that it proceeds in a very appropriate, regulated fashion, and these trials that we’re seeing the early announcements for right now are going exactly down that path.
Assuming that those trials pan out, the big question will be how do we make sure that this technology is affordable and accessible to people that need it? That’s really the challenge that I’m now thinking more and more about and working on at the Innovative Genomics Institute.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
You were one of the first people to hear about what the Chinese scientist He Jiankui did. He created the world’s first babies genetically edited with CRISPR, those two twin girls. Can you tell me the story of hearing about that for the first time?
Jennifer Doudna
So this goes back to the fall of 2018. I had been organizing the second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, which was scheduled to take place in November of 2018 in Hong Kong. And right before that meeting started, I received an email that had the subject line “Babies Born.” It was from Dr. He Jiankui and it was a very short message explaining that he and his colleagues had done clinical work to introduce embryos whose DNA had been altered with CRISPR to create a pregnancy that resulted in the birth of twin girls with altered genomes in China. And immediately, of course, this raised many questions about both the science and the ethics of what had been done.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
So what happened next? You received this email and then what?
Jennifer Doudna
I flew out that night to Hong Kong so I would have a little bit of extra time before the meeting got started, and I ended up meeting with Dr. He before the meeting got started. He was already scheduled to be a speaker at that conference, and so when we met, we talked about what he was planning to present and also just trying to understand what had been done, first of all, and also why. What was his motivation? Why undertake something like this at this time?
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
Were you satisfied with the answer?
Jennifer Doudna
Well, I guess what was really kind of surprising to me honestly at the time was that although it seemed very clear to me and our colleagues that the work that had been done was really inappropriate for a number of reasons and really unethical.
This was not something that had really seemed to have occurred to him. He seemed to see himself more as a pioneer, somebody who was the first to bring this to people that might want to use it that way.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
What would it take for you to feel comfortable about a clinical trial that would change a person’s DNA in a way that would allow that change to be passed on to that person’s offspring?
Jennifer Doudna
I think first and foremost, one would have to identify a real medical need for that and that real need is, right now, certainly, difficult to identify. But I think going forward, if there are real situations where an honest assessment says changing DNA is truly the best option for this family, for their children, etc., I think one would have to really want to have a whole pipeline of regulatory guidelines and a pathway for proceeding that would ensure safety of that kind of application. You would want to be able to follow their health outcomes over the course of their lifetime, especially in the early days of using the technology like that.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
Do you often think about the potential ways that this technology down the line could end up being used? Do you often worry about things like eugenics?
Jennifer Doudna
I think that’s frankly right now still at the level of science fiction. It’s not something that’s going to happen anytime soon. That being said, I think it’s important that we right now grapple with the reality that we have in our hands a tool that in principle does enable that. It does allow control of genes and control of genes in families, and I think that it’s essential that we be tackling that issue right now, not running from it, but saying, look, this is a powerful tool. It has this potential and we need to already be thinking about how it could be used safely and how we appropriately regulate it.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
Some people are very excitedly talking about CRISPR as a technology that could be used to prevent certain conditions, and I want to ask you about folks with disabilities. You sometimes hear people talk about “fixing deafness,” “fixing” conditions like dwarfism, and folks who are part of that community really get worried when they hear those things, because not everyone feels like they need to be fixed. They don’t feel broken. Where do you stand on that?
Jennifer Doudna
Your question really to me brings up broader considerations about … fundamentally, what does it mean to be human? What does it mean to embrace the diversity that we see across human cultures, human societies? To me, that’s one of the real joys of life.
So I think that to take it to an extreme, you could imagine a world where human beings have been sort of homogenized in a way, and we have a standard set of genes that we want people to inherit. Again, that’s really in the realm of science fiction.
But I think imagining that helps to put in perspective what we’re really talking about here, a situation where suppose that in the next decade or two, parents could go to an in vitro fertilization clinic and they could choose from a menu of genes.
Would this be a good thing or not? What if we could eliminate deafness, for example? Would that be a good thing or would it eliminate some of the richness from the world? It’s a hard question to answer, and I think it has to remain in the hands of individuals at some level.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
When you hear these people talk about things like eliminating deafness … do you have a position? Have you figured out how you feel about this truly?
Jennifer Doudna
I think it’s a very individual choice to me. If you’re asking me if I were a prospective parent and this was a decision that I needed to make about my child, what would I do? Boy, that’s a hard one.
I have a wonderful son, and I see all the quirks that he has and things that just make him a wonderful person, and I think there’s a joy to that.
At the same time, if you knew ahead of time somehow that I had a genetic disorder that I knew he would be inheriting in some way and I could prevent it, well, I think, of course, as a parent, I would have that desire to prevent it.
I think these are some of the really interesting and really challenging questions that are now in front of us given that we have a technology that in principle, at least … will provide some of that type of capability to people. It’s a really profound and really interesting question, but it’s hard to answer.
Arielle Duhaime-Ross
Do you think that we’re going slow enough with CRISPR?
Jennifer Doudna
Boy, how to answer that. I guess the first thing I would say is that, the technology is so enabling for scientists that there’s no way to put the genie back in the bottle, at least at the level of research. And then, of course, at a whole different level, there’s the very tangible opportunities to affect people in positive ways that suffer from genetic disease. That is very exciting.
So I guess in the end, I don’t think it’s moving too fast. But I do think it’s moving fast for sure, and that it really does make it imperative that the scientific community deal right up front with the various challenges that we face to make sure it’s used safely.


vox--2020-02-28--Kids’ brains may hold the secret to building better AI

The mathematician and computer science pioneer Alan Turing hit on a promising direction for artificial intelligence research way back in 1950 .
“ Instead of trying to produce a program to simulate the adult mind , ” he wrote , “ why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child ’ s ?
” Now AI researchers are finally putting Turing ’ s ideas into action .
They ’ re realizing that by paying attention to how children process information , they can pick up valuable lessons about how to create machines that learn .
DARPA , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is embracing this approach .
It recently invited proposals from interdisciplinary teams of computer scientists and developmental psychologists , which will work to create AI systems capable of learning the things babies learn in the first few years of life .
To the developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik , this approach is the obvious way to go .
She explains why in an essay titled “ AIs Versus Four-Year-Olds , ” which appears in the anthology Possible Minds : 25 Ways of Looking at AI .
Noting that preschoolers can learn things even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Gopnik argues that studying kids can give programmers useful hints about directions for computer learning .
I was drawn to Gopnik ’ s essay not only because of the catchy title , but also because she and I both majored in philosophy at McGill University ( three decades apart ) , and because her piece is one of only three in the book written by women .
The fact that women represent 12 percent of contributions to the anthology mirrors the gender imbalance in the machine-learning community at large , where only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ female , according to Wired .
Gender may go some way toward explaining why it ’ s taken computer scientists nearly 70 years to act on Turing ’ s ideas about the importance of children in AI research .
Kids have traditionally been considered the domain of women .
I spoke to Gopnik about how her research on children has been perceived by male scientists and how that may finally be changing to the benefit of AI research .
A transcript of our conversation , lightly edited for length and clarity , follows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fearful talk out there about how AI poses a catastrophic risk to humanity .
Do you think that fear is overblown ?
I think it ’ s wildly overblown .
We have a lot more to fear from natural stupidity than from AI .
Obviously if you have , say , an AI system governing your missile launches , that ’ s something that could have catastrophic consequences , and it ’ s very legitimate to be worried about that .
But the fantasy that these systems are going to develop a general @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think that ’ s absurd .
Is that because you ’ ve gotten to see up close just how far our most sophisticated AIs are from the abilities of kids ?
Yeah , that ’ s right .
When you give AIs a large data set , they can figure out the difference between cats and dogs .
That ’ s very impressive .
But they ’ re not good if you introduce a change , or if there ’ s data coming from a different source , or if you alter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ They have what ’ s called “ catastrophic forgetting ” — they have to relearn what they ’ d already learned .
But somehow kids can be facing a brand new task , something they ’ ve never seen before , and they can figure out what the right thing to do is .
So , for example , AlphaZero , amazingly , learned how to play chess .
But if you change the rules — now the bishop can ’ t go diagonally , it can only go horizontally — AI systems @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , because they ’ ve learned their information from all the times they ’ ve played the game before .
A human chess player , even a kid , will immediately understand how to transfer that new rule to their playing of the game .
Flexibility and generalization are something that even human 1-year-olds can do but that the best machine learning systems have a much harder time with .
Why are some of the problems that are easy for kids so hard for computers ?
It ’ s called Moravec ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be hard — like playing chess — are things machines can do very easily , yet they can ’ t do things a 4-year-old can do .
The puzzle for development psychology is we don ’ t really understand how it is that kids can easily do what they do .
We know they can make these wide-ranging inferences from very small amounts of data .
They ’ ve got a lot of [ innate ] knowledge through evolution .
But how can they make good inferences about things that weren ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at a 4-year-old with a smartphone .
They can manage it better than you can !
This system hasn ’ t been out in the world before , yet kids are very good at mastering it .
We don ’ t have a clue how that ’ s possible .
So given that we know very little about how kids learn the stuff they learn , what hints do you think AI researchers can pick up from paying attention to kids ’ learning ?
One difference that could be very relevant is that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The kids are out in the real world .
We know they spend a lot of time doing experiments and getting data that ’ s relevant to the problems they ’ re trying to solve .
They ’ re curious .
They ’ re running to get that smartphone , poking it and swiping it and figuring out how it works .
Same thing with a pile of blocks or a plug .
Psychologists call that active learning .
That ability to go out into the world and experiment , rather than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presented to you — that ’ s something that ’ s very distinct about how children learn .
People in AI are totally becoming cognizant of that now .
My colleagues and I are collaborating with people in Berkeley to see if they can design an AI that ’ s curious .
Not just picking up things from the data it ’ s fed but going out to find information based on something that doesn ’ t fit with what it already knows .
Another difference you highlight between kids and AIs is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
They don ’ t learn in isolation — they learn from other kids in their preschools and from adults .
Right , children are always learning from other people .
And it ’ s not like they ’ re mindlessly imitating those around them .
They ’ re using theory of mind when deciding whether and how to learn from other people — they ’ re understanding what ’ s going on in other people ’ s minds .
Is this person trying to teach me [ to perform a certain action @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accidentally ?
The machines aren ’ t even in the same ballpark as being able to understand basic theory of mind , let alone using those inferences to shape whether they would learn from someone else or not .
Kids also don ’ t just passively obey their teachers or parents ; they bend and break the rules .
That ’ s part of creativity .
Creativity is something we ’ re not even in the ballpark of explaining .
My example is Augie , my grandson .
When he was 4 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who said , “ I really wish I could be a kid again.
” Augie thought about it and said , “ Don ’ t eat any broccoli or green beans .
Then you can be a kid again !
” He was thinking : Everyone tells me that if I eat healthy food I ’ ll grow to be a big , strong adult , so maybe if you do the opposite , you can be a kid again .
That ’ s something an adult would never think of , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ random .
That ability to generate ideas that are genuinely different from what you ’ ve been taught before but are not totally random , that ’ s real creativity , and we don ’ t have a clue how to understand that .
Even the simple “ kids say the darnedest things ” variety — we don ’ t understand it .
I think the creativity issue is really core to people ’ s difficulty grappling with AI .
Many of us want to believe there ’ s more to the human @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There ’ s emotion , there ’ s the ability to express emotion through art .
… People have a resistance to the idea that we ’ ll be able to build a machine that can do that .
We already know there ’ s a machine that can do that .
We ’ re it !
We are this system of relays and neurons that produces creativity and all the rest of it .
So we have an existence proof that there is such a machine .
The best way we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a machine to do all this is to say it ’ s a machine that does computation .
If that big bet is right , we ’ ll be able to figure out how things work .
Maybe computation will turn out to be wrong .
Maybe the panpsychist argument about consciousness [ that it ’ s a universal feature of all things in the natural world ] will turn out to be right .
That seems less likely — we have no evidence for it — but I don ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just don ’ t think it ’ s necessary to believe there ’ s something other than computation .
It ’ s an incredibly productive way of thinking about how a biological system can do what we do .
And I don ’ t think its productivity is anywhere near being used up .
I really appreciate the observation that we already make machines that think — we make children , and they ’ re biological machines and they have consciousness and they have creativity !
And given that , it doesn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ll one day create our children ’ s mechanical analogues .
But I don ’ t think this way of framing it — AI as just another sort of child , or the child as a biological machine — has really soaked into the public consciousness yet .
Why is that ?
I ’ ll be political for a second and say , when I talk about my research to scientists , people still come up to me and say , “ You should talk to my wife , she ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ yeah , I probably should , because preschool teachers do fascinating and important work .
But it reflects an intellectual pecking order — anything to do with kids is soft , it ’ s women ’ s work , it ’ s at the opposite end of the pecking order from computation .
Do you know that in the 1967 Encyclopedia of Philosophy , children just don ’ t even show up at all ?
You ’ d think humans had produced asexual cloning or something !
That way of thinking is still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I know what you mean .
When I was studying philosophy at McGill — this was a decade ago — there were not a lot of female students in the department , and the few who were there didn ’ t speak up in class half as much as the guys .
I always felt like it had an impact on what kinds of topics were even considered part of philosophy .
I ’ m 63 , so I was in philosophy at McGill in the 1970s , and this has kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I remember thinking to myself , you could go do computation theory or philosophy of mind .
But you could solve the same problems by thinking about kids , and that ’ d be a way of saying : These kids who have not been taken seriously — let ’ s treat them with the same intellectual seriousness .
I very self-consciously decided to take that route that has completely been part of what women do , and to show that it ’ s as intellectually profound as what the guys have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ ve succeeded ?
Well , the guys are still telling me to talk to their wives .
They ’ re still treating developmental psychology as if it ’ s something suitable for an education department .
But I do think it ’ s really changed a lot .
The fact that there are more women in computer science and philosophy is making a big difference .
There ’ s no question that people in computer science are excited about this now and are recognizing that children are really important .
It ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who are the lowest on the totem pole , the most philosophically neglected , might turn out to actually be the secret to solving problems that these very high-status geeky male computer scientists can ’ t solve .
I think there ’ s a nice moral inversion there .
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The mathematician and computer science pioneer Alan Turing hit on a promising direction for artificial intelligence research way back in 1950. “Instead of trying to produce a program to simulate the adult mind,” he wrote, “why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child’s?”
Now AI researchers are finally putting Turing’s ideas into action. They’re realizing that by paying attention to how children process information, they can pick up valuable lessons about how to create machines that learn.
DARPA, the Defense Department’s advanced research agency, is embracing this approach. It recently invited proposals from interdisciplinary teams of computer scientists and developmental psychologists, which will work to create AI systems capable of learning the things babies learn in the first few years of life.
To the developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik, this approach is the obvious way to go. She explains why in an essay titled “AIs Versus Four-Year-Olds,” which appears in the anthology Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI. Noting that preschoolers can learn things even the most sophisticated AIs can’t, Gopnik argues that studying kids can give programmers useful hints about directions for computer learning.
I was drawn to Gopnik’s essay not only because of the catchy title, but also because she and I both majored in philosophy at McGill University (three decades apart), and because her piece is one of only three in the book written by women. The fact that women represent 12 percent of contributions to the anthology mirrors the gender imbalance in the machine-learning community at large, where only 12 percent of the leading researchers are female, according to Wired.
Gender may go some way toward explaining why it’s taken computer scientists nearly 70 years to act on Turing’s ideas about the importance of children in AI research. Kids have traditionally been considered the domain of women.
I spoke to Gopnik about how her research on children has been perceived by male scientists and how that may finally be changing to the benefit of AI research. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.
Sigal Samuel
There’s a lot of fearful talk out there about how AI poses a catastrophic risk to humanity. Do you think that fear is overblown?
Alison Gopnik
I think it’s wildly overblown. We have a lot more to fear from natural stupidity than from AI. Obviously if you have, say, an AI system governing your missile launches, that’s something that could have catastrophic consequences, and it’s very legitimate to be worried about that. But the fantasy that these systems are going to develop a general intelligence and then enslave us all — I think that’s absurd.
Sigal Samuel
Is that because you’ve gotten to see up close just how far our most sophisticated AIs are from the abilities of kids?
Alison Gopnik
Yeah, that’s right. When you give AIs a large data set, they can figure out the difference between cats and dogs. That’s very impressive. But they’re not good if you introduce a change, or if there’s data coming from a different source, or if you alter some high-order characteristic of the environment. They have what’s called “catastrophic forgetting” — they have to relearn what they’d already learned. But somehow kids can be facing a brand new task, something they’ve never seen before, and they can figure out what the right thing to do is.
So, for example, AlphaZero, amazingly, learned how to play chess. But if you change the rules — now the bishop can’t go diagonally, it can only go horizontally — AI systems have a really hard time learning that, because they’ve learned their information from all the times they’ve played the game before.
A human chess player, even a kid, will immediately understand how to transfer that new rule to their playing of the game. Flexibility and generalization are something that even human 1-year-olds can do but that the best machine learning systems have a much harder time with.
Sigal Samuel
Why are some of the problems that are easy for kids so hard for computers?
Alison Gopnik
It’s called Moravec’s paradox: The things we thought would be hard — like playing chess — are things machines can do very easily, yet they can’t do things a 4-year-old can do.
The puzzle for development psychology is we don’t really understand how it is that kids can easily do what they do. We know they can make these wide-ranging inferences from very small amounts of data. They’ve got a lot of [innate] knowledge through evolution. But how can they make good inferences about things that weren’t part of our evolutionary ancestry? Look at a 4-year-old with a smartphone. They can manage it better than you can! This system hasn’t been out in the world before, yet kids are very good at mastering it. We don’t have a clue how that’s possible.
Sigal Samuel
So given that we know very little about how kids learn the stuff they learn, what hints do you think AI researchers can pick up from paying attention to kids’ learning?
Alison Gopnik
One difference that could be very relevant is that the AI only exists inside a computer. The kids are out in the real world. We know they spend a lot of time doing experiments and getting data that’s relevant to the problems they’re trying to solve. They’re curious. They’re running to get that smartphone, poking it and swiping it and figuring out how it works. Same thing with a pile of blocks or a plug.
Psychologists call that active learning. That ability to go out into the world and experiment, rather than just taking the data someone’s presented to you — that’s something that’s very distinct about how children learn.
People in AI are totally becoming cognizant of that now. My colleagues and I are collaborating with people in Berkeley to see if they can design an AI that’s curious. Not just picking up things from the data it’s fed but going out to find information based on something that doesn’t fit with what it already knows.
Sigal Samuel
Another difference you highlight between kids and AIs is that kids are social learners, right? They don’t learn in isolation — they learn from other kids in their preschools and from adults.
Alison Gopnik
Right, children are always learning from other people. And it’s not like they’re mindlessly imitating those around them. They’re using theory of mind when deciding whether and how to learn from other people — they’re understanding what’s going on in other people’s minds. Is this person trying to teach me [to perform a certain action,] or are they doing it accidentally?
The machines aren’t even in the same ballpark as being able to understand basic theory of mind, let alone using those inferences to shape whether they would learn from someone else or not.
Sigal Samuel
Kids also don’t just passively obey their teachers or parents; they bend and break the rules. That’s part of creativity.
Alison Gopnik
Creativity is something we’re not even in the ballpark of explaining. My example is Augie, my grandson. When he was 4, he was talking to his grandfather, who said, “I really wish I could be a kid again.” Augie thought about it and said, “Don’t eat any broccoli or green beans. Then you can be a kid again!” He was thinking: Everyone tells me that if I eat healthy food I’ll grow to be a big, strong adult, so maybe if you do the opposite, you can be a kid again.
That’s something an adult would never think of, but it’s not just crazy or random. That ability to generate ideas that are genuinely different from what you’ve been taught before but are not totally random, that’s real creativity, and we don’t have a clue how to understand that. Even the simple “kids say the darnedest things” variety — we don’t understand it.
Sigal Samuel
I think the creativity issue is really core to people’s difficulty grappling with AI. Many of us want to believe there’s more to the human mind than “just” computation. There’s emotion, there’s the ability to express emotion through art. … People have a resistance to the idea that we’ll be able to build a machine that can do that.
Alison Gopnik
We already know there’s a machine that can do that. We’re it! We are this system of relays and neurons that produces creativity and all the rest of it. So we have an existence proof that there is such a machine.
The best way we have for explaining how it’s possible for a machine to do all this is to say it’s a machine that does computation. If that big bet is right, we’ll be able to figure out how things work.
Maybe computation will turn out to be wrong. Maybe the panpsychist argument about consciousness [that it’s a universal feature of all things in the natural world] will turn out to be right. That seems less likely — we have no evidence for it — but I don’t think it’s impossible. I just don’t think it’s necessary to believe there’s something other than computation. It’s an incredibly productive way of thinking about how a biological system can do what we do. And I don’t think its productivity is anywhere near being used up.
Sigal Samuel
I really appreciate the observation that we already make machines that think — we make children, and they’re biological machines and they have consciousness and they have creativity! And given that, it doesn’t seem inconceivable to me that we’ll one day create our children’s mechanical analogues. But I don’t think this way of framing it — AI as just another sort of child, or the child as a biological machine — has really soaked into the public consciousness yet. Why is that?
Alison Gopnik
I’ll be political for a second and say, when I talk about my research to scientists, people still come up to me and say, “You should talk to my wife, she’s a preschool teacher.” I mean, yeah, I probably should, because preschool teachers do fascinating and important work. But it reflects an intellectual pecking order — anything to do with kids is soft, it’s women’s work, it’s at the opposite end of the pecking order from computation.
Do you know that in the 1967 Encyclopedia of Philosophy, children just don’t even show up at all? You’d think humans had produced asexual cloning or something! That way of thinking is still very much out there in the world.
Sigal Samuel
I know what you mean. When I was studying philosophy at McGill — this was a decade ago — there were not a lot of female students in the department, and the few who were there didn’t speak up in class half as much as the guys. I always felt like it had an impact on what kinds of topics were even considered part of philosophy.
Alison Gopnik
I’m 63, so I was in philosophy at McGill in the 1970s, and this has kind of been my dilemma my entire career. I remember thinking to myself, you could go do computation theory or philosophy of mind. But you could solve the same problems by thinking about kids, and that’d be a way of saying: These kids who have not been taken seriously — let’s treat them with the same intellectual seriousness. I very self-consciously decided to take that route that has completely been part of what women do, and to show that it’s as intellectually profound as what the guys have done.
Sigal Samuel
Do you feel like you’ve succeeded?
Alison Gopnik
Well, the guys are still telling me to talk to their wives. They’re still treating developmental psychology as if it’s something suitable for an education department. But I do think it’s really changed a lot. The fact that there are more women in computer science and philosophy is making a big difference. There’s no question that people in computer science are excited about this now and are recognizing that children are really important.
It’s appealing to think that 4-year-olds, who are the lowest on the totem pole, the most philosophically neglected, might turn out to actually be the secret to solving problems that these very high-status geeky male computer scientists can’t solve. I think there’s a nice moral inversion there.
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vox--2020-02-28--An expert’s case for nuclear power

An expert’s case for nuclear power

On the latest episode of The Weeds podcast , I sat down with Jessica Lovering , a fellow with the Energy for Growth Hub and formerly the director of energy at the Breakthrough Institute to talk about the role of nuclear power in a world concerned with climate change .
This conversation often takes place at a superficial culture war level in which environmentalists don ’ t want to embrace nuclear power and nuclear advocates want to scold environmentalists or accuse them of virtue-signaling .
I wanted to understand what ’ s at stake in this argument in concrete policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — it ’ s literally nuclear physics .
But I think it ’ s possible to distill her ideas into a few key takeaways .
• Nuclear power provides about 10 percent of the world ’ s electricity and despite the growth of renewable power in recent years continues to be the world ’ s largest source of zero-carbon electricity .
• Since virtually every plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is relying on large-scale electrification of things like surface transportation and home heating , rich countries need to replace more than 100 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and gas-fired electricity generation to achieve a zero-carbon economy .
Poor countries , meanwhile , are going to want to continue to develop economically and significantly increase the total amount of electricity they make and consume .
• The biggest problem with nuclear power is not safety but financial cost , specifically the huge up-front expenses associated with building safe reactors .
Better regulatory policy could make it easier to reuse the same reactor designs ( as in South Korea ) , but a promising nuclear future is based on innovation and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current margin , new renewable electricity is cheaper than new nuclear electricity .
But as renewables grow and grow that cost calculus will shift , because questions about storage and land consumption will become more important the more we rely on renewable energy .
The long-term case for nuclear is , like hydropower , as a complement to renewables that allows us to keep adding solar and wind without needing to fully solve problems related to the intermittency of renewable sources .
• The most promising new idea in nuclear is “ microreactors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thermal ( MWth ) and be small enough to build in a factory and ship on a truck , rather than the current 1,000 MWth light water reactors that need to be built on sight .
Because they don ’ t require custom installation , 100 microreactors could be built more cheaply than a single conventional size reactor .
And because the reactors are smaller , they don ’ t need the elaborate set of pumps for cooling that create potential failures points in traditional reactors .
• Microreactor technology is too new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a wide scale , but it could be useful in a number of edge cases .
Today , there are island communities and small Arctic towns separated from the grid who need to rely on expensive and extremely dirty diesel generators for power .
Similarly , institutions like universities or large hospital complexes could use microreactors as an alternative to their current backup generators .
These use cases could be a proving ground for microreactors that might then be more widely deployed as manufacturers learn by doing .
• Nuclear needs two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is that climate-focused regulations should require utilities to obtain power from zero-carbon sources , while remaining agnostic about what kind of source that is .
That ’ s less favorable to the wind and solar industry than existing renewable energy mandators , but you can make it up to them by making the overall target more aggressive .
The other is that we need a licensing pathway within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission whereby a microreactor design and factory could be certified as safe — similar to how the FAA certifies airplane designs — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be separately assessed , a process designed with enormous custom-built structures in mind .

On the latest episode of The Weeds podcast, I sat down with Jessica Lovering, a fellow with the Energy for Growth Hub and formerly the director of energy at the Breakthrough Institute to talk about the role of nuclear power in a world concerned with climate change.
This conversation often takes place at a superficial culture war level in which environmentalists don’t want to embrace nuclear power and nuclear advocates want to scold environmentalists or accuse them of virtue-signaling. I wanted to understand what’s at stake in this argument in concrete policy terms, which is of course complicated — it’s literally nuclear physics.
But I think it’s possible to distill her ideas into a few key takeaways.
Nuclear power provides about 10 percent of the world’s electricity and despite the growth of renewable power in recent years continues to be the world’s largest source of zero-carbon electricity. Since virtually every plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is relying on large-scale electrification of things like surface transportation and home heating, rich countries need to replace more than 100 percent of their current coal-, oil-, and gas-fired electricity generation to achieve a zero-carbon economy. Poor countries, meanwhile, are going to want to continue to develop economically and significantly increase the total amount of electricity they make and consume. The biggest problem with nuclear power is not safety but financial cost, specifically the huge up-front expenses associated with building safe reactors. Better regulatory policy could make it easier to reuse the same reactor designs (as in South Korea), but a promising nuclear future is based on innovation and new reactor designs. At the current margin, new renewable electricity is cheaper than new nuclear electricity. But as renewables grow and grow that cost calculus will shift, because questions about storage and land consumption will become more important the more we rely on renewable energy. The long-term case for nuclear is, like hydropower, as a complement to renewables that allows us to keep adding solar and wind without needing to fully solve problems related to the intermittency of renewable sources. The most promising new idea in nuclear is “microreactors” that would generate about 10 megawatts thermal (MWth) and be small enough to build in a factory and ship on a truck, rather than the current 1,000 MWth light water reactors that need to be built on sight. Because they don’t require custom installation, 100 microreactors could be built more cheaply than a single conventional size reactor. And because the reactors are smaller, they don’t need the elaborate set of pumps for cooling that create potential failures points in traditional reactors. Microreactor technology is too new and expensive right now to be deployed on a wide scale, but it could be useful in a number of edge cases. Today, there are island communities and small Arctic towns separated from the grid who need to rely on expensive and extremely dirty diesel generators for power. Similarly, institutions like universities or large hospital complexes could use microreactors as an alternative to their current backup generators. These use cases could be a proving ground for microreactors that might then be more widely deployed as manufacturers learn by doing. Nuclear needs two big policy changes to succeed. One is that climate-focused regulations should require utilities to obtain power from zero-carbon sources, while remaining agnostic about what kind of source that is.
That’s less favorable to the wind and solar industry than existing renewable energy mandators, but you can make it up to them by making the overall target more aggressive. The other is that we need a licensing pathway within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission whereby a microreactor design and factory could be certified as safe — similar to how the FAA certifies airplane designs — rather than requiring each individual reactor to be separately assessed, a process designed with enormous custom-built structures in mind.


vox--2020-02-28--This animation shows what would happen if leap years didn’t exist

For the first time in four years , February has 29 days .
That ’ s right folks , it ’ s a leap year , and it ’ s an exciting time .
Leap years always coincide with the summer Olympic Games and the US presidential election .
There ’ s so much going on this year , we could really use the extra day .
The simple ( and only ) explanation for why we have leap days is that it takes 365.2422 days for our planet to complete one revolution around the sun .
That means each @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s worth short of the complete orbit .
The following animation from planetary scientist James O ’ Donoghue visualizes the discrepancy perfectly .
We can ’ t add quarter days to each year ( you try telling the Earth to spin faster for just one day a year ) .
So a leap day is added every four .
Humans have been accounting for this discrepancy for a while now — as far back as the ancient Egyptians .
The current leap day tradition can be traced back to Pope Gregory in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ set by Julius Caesar ) .
We add leap days to the calendar every four years .
But there are a few exceptions when we skip the leap year .
You might have noticed that a full orbit around the sun takes 365.2422 days , and not a neat 365.25 days .
So if we were to have leap years every four years , then the calendar would still get out of whack over long periods of time .
But we don ’ t because Pope Gregory devised some clever , rare , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As National Geographic explains : Which means the next skipped leap year will be in 2100 .
Remarkably , this system set up in the 1500s still works .
We need it , because without it , the calendar would start to get out of sync with the seasons .
If we started ignoring leap years today , by the year 2100 , O ’ Donoghue explains in the following animation , we ’ d be around 20 days out of sync with the seasons .
New Years wouldn ’ t occur in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ autumn instead .
And by 2400 , the autumn equinox would occur on New Year ’ s Eve .
Madness !
There ’ s no way getting around having to add days to the calendar .
The length of day on Earth and the time it takes to orbit the sun simply neatly aligned .
But that doesn ’ t mean the current calendar is optimal .
Recently , two professors at Johns Hopkins University ( an economist and a physicist ) suggested we switch over to a calendar that doesn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ever changes ( meaning February 2 will always be a Tuesday , no matter what ) .
To make this work , the professors add a whole leap week every fifth or sixth year .
It ’ s effectively creating a new weeklong month that pops up only once a decade .
Is this better ?
I don ’ t know .
Depends if HR lets us have off for the leap week .
Another idea to permanently fix the calendar was championed by Kodak founder George Eastman .
It was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ International Fixed Calendar , ” each month is 28 days long , and there are 13 of them ( the extra month being inserted between July and August and named “ Sol ” . )
There ’ s also a “ leftover day ” added to the end of each year ( meant to be a holiday ) .
This calendar also requires a leap day every four years .
Is this better ?
It makes it so every month is exactly four weeks .
It also makes it so that every 2nd @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every 3rd is a Wednesday , and so on .
Eastman , at least , was sold .
His company used it until 1989 .
There are merits to our chaotic calendar .
Over time , you get to have a birthday on every day of the week .
In the calendars above , if you ’ re born on a Tuesday , your birthday will always be on a Tuesday .
Similarly , isn ’ t there a joy in learning that Christmas is going to fall on a Monday and that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a three-day weekend ?
Our calendar gets a lot of things right .
One of which is the leap year .
You have an extra day this year !
Make the most of it .

For the first time in four years, February has 29 days. That’s right folks, it’s a leap year, and it’s an exciting time.
Leap years always coincide with the summer Olympic Games and the US presidential election. There’s so much going on this year, we could really use the extra day.
The simple (and only) explanation for why we have leap days is that it takes 365.2422 days for our planet to complete one revolution around the sun. That means each 365-day year ends a quarter day’s worth short of the complete orbit.
The following animation from planetary scientist James O’Donoghue visualizes the discrepancy perfectly. We can’t add quarter days to each year (you try telling the Earth to spin faster for just one day a year). So a leap day is added every four.
This is why we have Leap Years pic.twitter.com/bCX31kymMW — Dr James O'Donoghue (@physicsJ) February 6, 2020
Humans have been accounting for this discrepancy for a while now — as far back as the ancient Egyptians. The current leap day tradition can be traced back to Pope Gregory in the 1500s (who corrected an early calendar set by Julius Caesar).
We add leap days to the calendar every four years. But there are a few exceptions when we skip the leap year. You might have noticed that a full orbit around the sun takes 365.2422 days, and not a neat 365.25 days. So if we were to have leap years every four years, then the calendar would still get out of whack over long periods of time. But we don’t because Pope Gregory devised some clever, rare, exceptions to the leap year rules. As National Geographic explains:
Leap years divisible by 100, like the year 1900, are skipped unless they’re also divisible by 400, like the year 2000, in which case they’re observed. Nobody alive remembers the last lost leap day, but dropping those three leap days every 400 years keeps the calendar on time.
Which means the next skipped leap year will be in 2100.
Remarkably, this system set up in the 1500s still works. We need it, because without it, the calendar would start to get out of sync with the seasons. If we started ignoring leap years today, by the year 2100, O’Donoghue explains in the following animation, we’d be around 20 days out of sync with the seasons. New Years wouldn’t occur in the beginning of winter, but late autumn instead. And by 2400, the autumn equinox would occur on New Year’s Eve. Madness!
If we ignored adding Leap Days for the next 1,500 years starting with 29th Feb 2020: this how our calendar would drift through the seasons — pic.twitter.com/wXnE1tgVTh — Dr James O'Donoghue (@physicsJ) February 13, 2020
There’s no way getting around having to add days to the calendar. The length of day on Earth and the time it takes to orbit the sun simply neatly aligned. But that doesn’t mean the current calendar is optimal.
Recently, two professors at Johns Hopkins University (an economist and a physicist) suggested we switch over to a calendar that doesn’t include a leap year, and never, ever changes (meaning February 2 will always be a Tuesday, no matter what). To make this work, the professors add a whole leap week every fifth or sixth year. It’s effectively creating a new weeklong month that pops up only once a decade.
Is this better? I don’t know. Depends if HR lets us have off for the leap week.
Another idea to permanently fix the calendar was championed by Kodak founder George Eastman. It was a bit more radical. In this “International Fixed Calendar,” each month is 28 days long, and there are 13 of them (the extra month being inserted between July and August and named “Sol”.) There’s also a “leftover day” added to the end of each year (meant to be a holiday). This calendar also requires a leap day every four years. Is this better? It makes it so every month is exactly four weeks. It also makes it so that every 2nd of every month is a Tuesday, every 3rd is a Wednesday, and so on. Eastman, at least, was sold. His company used it until 1989.
There are merits to our chaotic calendar. Over time, you get to have a birthday on every day of the week. In the calendars above, if you’re born on a Tuesday, your birthday will always be on a Tuesday. Similarly, isn’t there a joy in learning that Christmas is going to fall on a Monday and that means the holiday has been turned into a three-day weekend?
Our calendar gets a lot of things right. One of which is the leap year. You have an extra day this year! Make the most of it.