What if laws were no longer created by our imperfect human minds… and instead, dictated by, also imperfect, but oh-so-efficient, artificial intelligence?
What happened: A councilman for the Brazillian city of Porto Alegre revealed that a law passed earlier this year, which he proposed, was secretly written entirely by ChatGPT.
Why it matters: This likely isn’t the last time that legislation written by a chatbot will become law. This year, multiple U.S. politicians have already put forward bills generated by ChatGPT.
- In fact, a California congressman and a Massachusetts state senator each pitched AI regulation bills devised by ChatGPT—who’d know better what to do with AI than AI?
- Costa Rican lawmakers also proposed AI regulations written by ChatGPT, which were heavily criticized for being too lofty and including completely made-up stats.
Zoom out: While drafting laws entirely using chatbots is a new practice, using AI to help draft laws predates the chatbot boom. U.S. Congress has been using machine learning tech for some time to compare different versions of bills.
- Back in 2021, an EU study also found that AI could help improve the European Commission’s operations, including developing legislation and policy.
Yes, but: As with anything written by AI, legislation will face heavy skepticism—the Brazillian councilman kept his new law’s origins a secret out of fear that it would be voted down just because it was generated by AI.
Bottom line: The skepticism towards AI-generated laws will be merited, as today’s chatbots love to fabricate info, and their inherent biases could creep into any laws they develop.—QH
