By Robert Walton of UtilityDive
The New York Public Service Commission last week launched an inquiry into public utility use of artificial intelligence, noting that AI systems “create risk for organizations” but are also increasingly used to perform basic tasks.
The Sept. 17 order requires electric, gas and water utilities to respond within 60 days with “a written inventory report that describes all use cases of AI systems in their operations.”
Consolidated Edison, which serves New York City, said it uses AI for a range of uses, including customer service and system inspections. “As technology evolves, we will continue to evaluate opportunities,” a spokesperson said in an email to Utility Dive.
Public utilities are increasingly using AI systems for day-to-day operations, and New York regulators are concerned they are “susceptible to hallucinations, algorithmic biases, transparency issues, data privacy concerns, misconfiguration errors, cybersecurity attacks, and functional brittleness.”
“These potential risks may have negative consequences for the safety and reliability of New York’s critical infrastructure,” they said.
The PSC’s order directs utilities to file “a complete inventory” of all AI use cases in their operations and “disclose their policies, procedures, and protocols” around the burgeoning technology. The commission said it will “evaluate those procedures and protocols for adequacy and robustness against commonly accepted AI Governance frameworks.”
The commission’s order defines an “AI system” as a machine-based system that “can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, make predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing real or virtual environments.”
New York utilities are already utilizing AI systems in various ways, including model outage predictions and electric usage. National Grid has deployed a system known as GridCARE to help free up interconnection capacity for large-load customers, regulators pointed out. The New York Power Authority has used AI to analyze drone-captured data for enhanced vegetation management.
Con Edison told Utility Dive the utility is using AI “to improve customer service, proactively identify potential equipment issues before they affect customers or public safety, and to strengthen our inspection and mapping capabilities.”
But more broadly, regulators noted “the actual extent and scope of AI systems in New York utility operations remains unclear.”
“The rapid evolution of AI is a double-edged sword for utilities,” PSC Chair Rory Christian said in a statement. “While AI can be a powerful tool that can result in cost efficiencies and improved operations, it also presents serious risks that must be evaluated and addressed appropriately.”
Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:55The United States is no longer pretending that a tourist visa plus a delivery room equals a legitimate path to American citizenship.
On September 23, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a new visa-restriction policy under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act aimed at the people who actually run the business: owners and managers of commercial birth-tourism networks, visa "fixers" who coach applicants to lie, foreign medical providers who arrange the trips and allegedly tap Medicaid, and anyone else who knowingly enables the trade. Family members of those targets can be swept in as well.
In short, people selling packages to facilitate US entry are on notice (perhaps they should focus on EB-5s like the Kushners).These foreign commercial networks advertise U.S. citizenship as a package - collecting tens of thousands of dollars to coach clients on what to say at the consulate, book housing near hospitals, and deliver a passport-eligible infant. The State Department's position is that this is fraud against the immigration system, not "tourism."
With six weeks until midterms, Rubio's announcement follows of President Trump's August 6 Executive Order 14419, Ending Birth Tourism - aimed at those entering on a nonimmigrant visa for the purpose of giving birth on U.S. soil - or helping someone else do it - and directed State and Homeland Security to deny visas, revoke them, bar re-entry, and act against facilitators. Days after Trump's EO, a Birth Tourism Prevention Task Force was assembled. About a month ago, officials said more than 750 visas tied to suspected birth-tourism activity had been revoked, with more coming. Meanwhile, embassy investigations earlier in the year claimed to have dismantled networks in West Africa (100-plus cases with fraudulent documents and fixers), Europe (400-plus suspected cases since 2024 tied to at least six companies), and North Africa (100-plus visa revocations).
Here's How The Sausage Is MadePregnant women - disproportionately from China, Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, and a handful of other countries - fly in on B-1/B-2 visitor visas, stay in "maternity hotels" or rented houses, deliver, obtain a birth certificate and Social Security number, and leave. The child is treated as a U.S. citizen, and when 21 years later, that child can petition for parents. Neat trick.
It's not just the poors either - packages have been marketed for $20,000 to $100,000: housing, nannies, shopping trips, coaching on how to answer consular questions, and sometimes advice on how to keep hospital bills off the books or shift them onto public programs. In 2019, federal prosecutors in Southern California took down operations charging Chinese clients six figures. This month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced a Houston-area postpartum center had agreed to close after the state alleged it facilitated more than 1,000 births to Chinese nationals. Gov. Greg Abbott had already ordered state agencies to hunt licensed providers participating in the schemes. The 2020 Trump-era consular rule already advised officers they could deny visas if they believed the primary purpose of travel was to obtain citizenship for a child.
The H-1B pipeline is getting the same treatment: a wage-weighted lottery cut FY2027 registrations 38%, even as the courts have blocked Trump's $100,000 fee.
How Many Are We Talking About?The conservative Center for Immigration Studies, using older Census-to-vital-records comparisons, has estimated 20,000 to 26,000 tourist births a year. CIS research director Steven Camarota told Congress this month that if those rates held, 200,000 to 300,000 children were born to birth tourists over the last decade. CDC data show fewer than 10,000 births in 2024 to mothers listing a foreign address - a figure almost everyone agrees undercounts women who use a U.S. hotel or rental as their "residence."
Globally - Jus soli in its American form is an outlier among developed states. Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, and much of Europe require a citizen or permanent-resident parent. The United States and Canada remain the G7 holdouts. A Conservative amendment to Bill C-3 that would have required at least one citizen or permanent-resident parent was voted down in October 2025; Canadian citizenship still attaches automatically to nearly anyone born on Canadian soil, diplomats excepted. The United States spent decades treating a plane ticket and a due date as sufficient allegiance.
Supreme PivotAfter the Supreme Court struck down Trump's broader day-one attempt to withhold birthright citizenship from children of illegal aliens and temporary visa holders, the White House went in a different direction - going after visa fraud, commercial facilitation, and the use of nonimmigrant categories for a permanent benefit.
Here's their angle:
So - in about three seconds, advocacy groups will call it racial profiling of Chinese and Russian applicants. Hospitals that marketed "birth packages" will lawyer up. Fixers will move advertising off open WeChat groups and into quieter channels, and pregnant women will keep trying to make it onto US soil. The order also contemplates denial of entry and removal for prior participants.
Legislation is already in the hopper - including a Ban Birth Tourism Act that would make seeking admission as a B visa holder for birth tourism an explicit ground of inadmissibility. The administration is not waiting for Congress.
American citizenship shouldn't have loopholes.
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Tyler Durden Fri, 09/25/2026 - 09:35