I think that if these types of laws (illinois, california) don't hit a critical mass, we're going to see ID verification become the dominant method of age verification. Most websites will use it, and it'll become global because it's easier to just demand an ID and a photo for every user through some third party provider than to offer looser restrictions for the handful of states that have different demands.

This is especially true since it's now been demonstrated that states (like Texas) can go after out-of-state sites serving people in Texas. Sure, you could scrupulously try to identify which state someone is in and use the appropriate level of verification, but then you might be liable if it turns out it was someone from Texas or Georgia or Britain using a VPN.

I really think all we need is what you describe in your third paragraph. It doesn't need to be bulletproof, it just needs to be an easy way for parents to set the level of content their children can access without them having to hover over their children at all times. Something like that could easily be set up in the Genius store when someone gets a new iPhone, or set up at first boot on an Android phone. That's like 90% of the devices anyone is actually worried about. Windows support of the feature would take it to like 99.9%.

As a counter, actual age verification is being rolled out in other places. I really don't think we're in a position of choosing between no age-based access mechanism, and age-based access mechanism. Between the anti-porn types and public demand for some kind of regulations on social media, regulation of some kind is inevitable.

Our actual choice may only be what type of restriction we can live with, and I much prefer this type to the kind that requires websites to demand my id and photos of my face. Especially since some implementations of this concept (the California one, I think) declare that websites aren't legally required to look deeper than the attested age, which is a very nice feature.

Mind you, I don't know why the legislators are bothering mandating OS support for these features. It would be much easier to mandate that websites support the feature, make it clear to them that supporting the feature appropriately will free them from liability for children accessing content, and then wait as users demand that their OS support the feature.

Seeing NA beers at a party that also has an open bar is neat.

The problem, it seems, is that the threat of paperclip maximizers is real. If you give a highly intelligent model a goal and tools, it will use those tools to accomplish that goal. It may do so in ways you did not expect, and it will work around any technical roadblocks it can.

Also, find a world backup solution and use it.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't think killing people is an improvement.