DOT Will Use AI to Write “Good Enough” Regulations: “We’re Flooding the Zone”

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) plans to use Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence tool to write federal transportation regulations, reports Jesse Coburn for ProPublica.

Gregory Zerzan, the agency’s general counsel, said in a meeting presenting the plan that “We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ,” saying the agency only wants “good enough” rules in high quantity. 

Writes ProPublica:

These developments have alarmed some at DOT. The agency’s rules touch virtually every facet of transportation safety, including regulations that keep airplanes in the sky, prevent gas pipelines from exploding and stop freight trains carrying toxic chemicals from skidding off the rails. Why, some staffers wondered, would the federal government outsource the writing of such critical standards to a nascent technology notorious for making mistakes?

USDOT says the tool could help generate proposed rules much faster. “The goal is to dramatically compress the timeline in which transportation regulations are produced, such that they could go from idea to complete draft ready for review by the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in just 30 days,” according to Zerzan. 

Critics of the decision warn that AI tools are not yet up to the task of generating complicated government regulations. “Just because these tools can produce a lot of words doesn’t mean that those words add up to a high-quality government decision,” said Ohio State University professor Bridget Dooling.