Remember the first time you opened a copy of the Federal Register to feast upon eight pages of tiny print explaining the proper size of a gasket? Did you ever think, what if they replaced all the highly trained engineers and scientists describing the precision crafting required to keep airplanes from falling out of the sky with hallucinating robots?<\/p>\n
Well, good news!<\/em> <\/p>\n ProPublica\u00a0dropped the investigative piece<\/a>\u00a0this morning, revealing that the Trump administration plans to use Google Gemini to draft federal transportation regulations. Turning over to a chatbot the very nuts and bolts of the agency responsible for keeping the nation\u2019s highways safe may scare some people, but really, who can be better trusted to understand the unique challenge of transportation rulemaking than Road Rules\/Real World Challenge<\/em> champion Sean Duffy?<\/p>\n Road? Rules? Challenge? It\u2019s all right there on his resume!<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t necessarily<\/em> a bad idea. Assuming the underlying expertise and science remains sound, AI tools actually excel at the job of converting technical information into approachable and readily comprehensible text. Rulemaking has always involved injecting relative clarity into complex information, a mission that\u2019s even more important in light of a Loper Bright<\/em> world. Without judges deferring to agencies, there\u2019s even more urgency to eradicate ambiguities and deliver rules that even the most out-of-their-depth judges could understand. In a perfect world, regulatory lawyers would use AI to draft clear pronouncements that explicitly spell out contingencies that were once left to deference. As a preliminary drafting tool, married to the legal acumen of veteran practitioners, AI could make rulemaking better for all. <\/p>\n It will shock you not at all to learn that this is not the Trump administration\u2019s logic.<\/p>\n In an internal meeting announcing the new initiative, ProPublica reports that DOT General Counsel Gregory Zerzan expressed enthusiasm for the algorithmic outsourcing, noting \u201cWe don\u2019t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don\u2019t even need a very good rule on XYZ. We want good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Do you feel safer already?<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re flooding the zone,\u201d Zerzan continued, invoking Steve Bannon\u2019s classic advice for the MAGA movement: keep doing more and more outrageous nonsense to prevent anyone from having time to push back. It\u2019s the same mentality that might kidnap a foreign leader, send shock troops to murder civilians in Minnesota, and attempt to take over Greenland so everyone will forget that the Epstein files haven\u2019t been released as required by statute.<\/p>\n Zerzan\u2019s implication is that the Trump Department of Transportation wants to gut federal transportation safety regulations and they want to do it by bombarding the public with so many changes that it doesn\u2019t have time to ask why. If it results in some hallucination-filled half-assery, the administration is willing to live with that.<\/p>\n Mike Horton, DOT\u2019s former acting chief artificial intelligence officer, criticized the plan to use Gemini to write regulations, comparing it to \u201chaving a high school intern that\u2019s doing your rulemaking.\u201d (He said the plan was not in the works when he left the agency in August.) Noting the life-or-death stakes of transportation safety regulations, Horton said the agency\u2019s leaders \u201cwant to go fast and break things, but going fast and breaking things means people are going to get hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I\u2019m sorry, you\u2019re absolutely right! We needed better brakes to keep the train from careening off the track into that schoolhouse and dumping toxic sludge into that reservoir. Do you want me to generate another rule based on this new information?<\/em><\/p>\n But can the administration really use AI to deliver the Mad Max-inspired highway hellscape they seek? I\u2019m skeptical. This administration has already run afoul of AI understanding the rule of law better than its cynical Federalist Society approved handlers. The Pentagon installed a dedicated AI and it instantly identified war crimes<\/a>. Arguably, the only thing more difficult than keeping AI from making mistakes is convincing it to intentionally produce garbage. The thing about a \u201chigh school intern,\u201d as Horton put it, is that it can struggle to act in bad faith because it doesn\u2019t know enough to simulate guile. Lawyers may find themselves substantially rewriting everything the AI puts out anyway.<\/p>\n And even if they do rapidly churn out rulemaking copy, the protections found in the Administrative Procedures Act still exist. Between notice and comment and judicial review, the public will still have mechanisms to put the brakes on the \u2014 in this case literal<\/em> \u2014 runaway train. Zerzan wants to flood the zone but might only succeed in spreading himself out. These rules will have different constituencies, but the Department will be involved in every fight. It doesn\u2019t \u201cflood the zone\u201d to have the shipping industry, the trucking industry, and airlines all involved in fights during the same month. From their perspective, they\u2019re all just having one fight. But the Department is defending three fights at once.<\/p>\n And, of course, when you \u201cgo fast and break things,\u201d it usually ends in a litigation bottleneck. The Department of Transportation already tried its hand at rulemaking the old-fashioned way. Pumping out a rule in six months in an effort to strip licenses from a couple hundred thousand truck drivers<\/a> as part of the administration\u2019s ongoing nativism performance art, the Department only succeeded in getting it blocked by the D.C. Circuit. This effort wasn\u2019t going to be any more successful if they\u2019d pushed the rule out the door faster. If anything, flooding the zone will just clog up the courts trying to untangle the lawsuits. <\/p>\n Also\u2026 have fun with the discovery requests seeking every prompt lawyers used in the drafting process. According to ProPublica\u2019s sources, as part of downplaying the serious repercussions of the proposal, staffers were told that a lot of what the AI would be producing would be \u201cword salad.\u201d Hard to assert any sort of privilege over \u201cword salad.\u201d<\/p>\n All this \u201cflood the zone\u201d talk is just posturing. They want to front like they\u2019re launching some nefarious strategic blitzkrieg on the administrative state, but they just want AI to write these regs for them because they\u2019re fucking lazy. Remember when Elon Musk parachuted into the government promising to cut a trillion dollars in spending, destroyed some agencies, definitely killed hundreds of thousands of people<\/a>, and ultimately walked away having left the deficit worse than before? It\u2019s the same energy.<\/p>\n Lawyers working in tandem with AI technology can marginally enhance their productivity, but consider the rhetoric they\u2019re using according to this report: \u201cflooding the zone,\u201d \u201cpoint of the spear,\u201d \u201cshouldn\u2019t take you more than 20 minutes.\u201d Too often we construe their contempt for the work of government as a problem with the work government performs. But a lot of the animosity is based on a contempt of the idea of work itself. Of the mundane, nose-to-grindstone, detail-oriented work that governments \u2014 and lawyers \u2014 have to do.<\/p>\n Which, in the end, is AI\u2019s greatest threat to society. It enthralls the nation\u2019s laziest.<\/p>\n Government by AI? Trump Administration Plans to Write Regulations Using Artificial Intelligence<\/a>\u00a0[ProPublica]<\/p>\n The post Trump Admin Plans To Let AI Write Transportation Regulations<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n Remember the first time you opened a copy of the Federal Register to feast upon eight pages of tiny print explaining the proper size of a gasket? Did you ever think, what if they replaced all the highly trained engineers and scientists describing the precision crafting required to keep airplanes from falling out of the sky with hallucinating robots?<\/p>\n Well, good news!<\/em> <\/p>\n ProPublica\u00a0dropped the investigative piece<\/a>\u00a0this morning, revealing that the Trump administration plans to use Google Gemini to draft federal transportation regulations. Turning over to a chatbot the very nuts and bolts of the agency responsible for keeping the nation\u2019s highways safe may scare some people, but really, who can be better trusted to understand the unique challenge of transportation rulemaking than Road Rules\/Real World Challenge<\/em> champion Sean Duffy?<\/p>\n Road? Rules? Challenge? It\u2019s all right there on his resume!<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t necessarily<\/em> a bad idea. Assuming the underlying expertise and science remains sound, AI tools actually excel at the job of converting technical information into approachable and readily comprehensible text. Rulemaking has always involved injecting relative clarity into complex information, a mission that\u2019s even more important in light of a Loper Bright<\/em> world. Without judges deferring to agencies, there\u2019s even more urgency to eradicate ambiguities and deliver rules that even the most out-of-their-depth judges could understand. In a perfect world, regulatory lawyers would use AI to draft clear pronouncements that explicitly spell out contingencies that were once left to deference. As a preliminary drafting tool, married to the legal acumen of veteran practitioners, AI could make rulemaking better for all. <\/p>\n It will shock you not at all to learn that this is not the Trump administration\u2019s logic.<\/p>\n In an internal meeting announcing the new initiative, ProPublica reports that DOT General Counsel Gregory Zerzan expressed enthusiasm for the algorithmic outsourcing, noting \u201cWe don\u2019t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don\u2019t even need a very good rule on XYZ. We want good enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Do you feel safer already?<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re flooding the zone,\u201d Zerzan continued, invoking Steve Bannon\u2019s classic advice for the MAGA movement: keep doing more and more outrageous nonsense to prevent anyone from having time to push back. It\u2019s the same mentality that might kidnap a foreign leader, send shock troops to murder civilians in Minnesota, and attempt to take over Greenland so everyone will forget that the Epstein files haven\u2019t been released as required by statute.<\/p>\n Zerzan\u2019s implication is that the Trump Department of Transportation wants to gut federal transportation safety regulations and they want to do it by bombarding the public with so many changes that it doesn\u2019t have time to ask why. If it results in some hallucination-filled half-assery, the administration is willing to live with that.<\/p>\n Mike Horton, DOT\u2019s former acting chief artificial intelligence officer, criticized the plan to use Gemini to write regulations, comparing it to \u201chaving a high school intern that\u2019s doing your rulemaking.\u201d (He said the plan was not in the works when he left the agency in August.) Noting the life-or-death stakes of transportation safety regulations, Horton said the agency\u2019s leaders \u201cwant to go fast and break things, but going fast and breaking things means people are going to get hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I\u2019m sorry, you\u2019re absolutely right! We needed better brakes to keep the train from careening off the track into that schoolhouse and dumping toxic sludge into that reservoir. Do you want me to generate another rule based on this new information?<\/em><\/p>\n But can the administration really use AI to deliver the Mad Max-inspired highway hellscape they seek? I\u2019m skeptical. This administration has already run afoul of AI understanding the rule of law better than its cynical Federalist Society approved handlers. The Pentagon installed a dedicated AI and it instantly identified war crimes<\/a>. Arguably, the only thing more difficult than keeping AI from making mistakes is convincing it to intentionally produce garbage. The thing about a \u201chigh school intern,\u201d as Horton put it, is that it can struggle to act in bad faith because it doesn\u2019t know enough to simulate guile. Lawyers may find themselves substantially rewriting everything the AI puts out anyway.<\/p>\n And even if they do rapidly churn out rulemaking copy, the protections found in the Administrative Procedures Act still exist. Between notice and comment and judicial review, the public will still have mechanisms to put the brakes on the \u2014 in this case literal<\/em> \u2014 runaway train. Zerzan wants to flood the zone but might only succeed in spreading himself out. These rules will have different constituencies, but the Department will be involved in every fight. It doesn\u2019t \u201cflood the zone\u201d to have the shipping industry, the trucking industry, and airlines all involved in fights during the same month. From their perspective, they\u2019re all just having one fight. But the Department is defending three fights at once.<\/p>\n And, of course, when you \u201cgo fast and break things,\u201d it usually ends in a litigation bottleneck. The Department of Transportation already tried its hand at rulemaking the old-fashioned way. Pumping out a rule in six months in an effort to strip licenses from a couple hundred thousand truck drivers<\/a> as part of the administration\u2019s ongoing nativism performance art, the Department only succeeded in getting it blocked by the D.C. Circuit. This effort wasn\u2019t going to be any more successful if they\u2019d pushed the rule out the door faster. If anything, flooding the zone will just clog up the courts trying to untangle the lawsuits. <\/p>\n Also\u2026 have fun with the discovery requests seeking every prompt lawyers used in the drafting process. According to ProPublica\u2019s sources, as part of downplaying the serious repercussions of the proposal, staffers were told that a lot of what the AI would be producing would be \u201cword salad.\u201d Hard to assert any sort of privilege over \u201cword salad.\u201d<\/p>\n All this \u201cflood the zone\u201d talk is just posturing. They want to front like they\u2019re launching some nefarious strategic blitzkrieg on the administrative state, but they just want AI to write these regs for them because they\u2019re fucking lazy. Remember when Elon Musk parachuted into the government promising to cut a trillion dollars in spending, destroyed some agencies, definitely killed hundreds of thousands of people<\/a>, and ultimately walked away having left the deficit worse than before? It\u2019s the same energy.<\/p>\n Lawyers working in tandem with AI technology can marginally enhance their productivity, but consider the rhetoric they\u2019re using according to this report: \u201cflooding the zone,\u201d \u201cpoint of the spear,\u201d \u201cshouldn\u2019t take you more than 20 minutes.\u201d Too often we construe their contempt for the work of government as a problem with the work government performs. But a lot of the animosity is based on a contempt of the idea of work itself. Of the mundane, nose-to-grindstone, detail-oriented work that governments \u2014 and lawyers \u2014 have to do.<\/p>\n Which, in the end, is AI\u2019s greatest threat to society. It enthralls the nation\u2019s laziest.<\/p>\n Government by AI? Trump Administration Plans to Write Regulations Using Artificial Intelligence<\/a>\u00a0[ProPublica]<\/p>\n The post Trump Admin Plans To Let AI Write Transportation Regulations<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Remember the first time you opened a copy of the Federal Register to feast upon eight pages of tiny print explaining the proper size of a gasket? 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