Comment on US | Government by AI? Trump Administration Plans to Write Regulations Using Artificial Intelligence
lvxferre@mander.xyz 5 days ago
This looks like a notoriously bad idea.
In 2023, a city (Porto Alegre) near-ish my homeland approved a law initially proposed by ChatGPT, then manually reviewed and edited. Here’s a link; it shows both the initial proposal and final version (both in Portuguese).
The law addresses some shite the water and sewage department (DMAE) did often:
- install new water meter for a house, with no regards to its placement or securing it properly
- wait until water meter gets stolen for parts (welcome to Latin America!)
- charge house owner for a new water meter
- go back to step 1.
So a councilperson prompted ChatGPT to draft a law addressing it. And the draft sounds reasonable… until you inspect it further, and notice a certain article omitted from the final revision:
[Rough translation] 7th article. DMAE shall be allowed to establish complementary norms to regulate the enforcement of this law.
Why was this article omitted? Remember: DMAE was the very department being legislated against. If allowed to issue “complementary norms” regarding that law, the law would become toilet paper — because all the department had to do is to claim “the law is only valid if the theft happens in the 31st of February!” or some equally dumb shit.
The issue I mentioned above was fairly specific, the solution was straightforward, and mostly non-partisan. And the entity in question was a city government, so no “nested” political entities. And the e-muppet was still able to drop such a huge bollock.
What would happen if this was done on a country level? And it included partisan matters? And the issue was something complex, with no “right” answer?
That’s what I’m thinking, while reading the link in the OP.