Point of the spear 🦹‍♂️

"The Trump administration is planning to use artificial intelligence to write federal transportation regulations, according to U.S. Department of Transportation records and interviews with six agency staffers.

"The plan was presented to DOT staff last month at a demonstration of AI’s 'potential to revolutionize the way we draft rulemakings,' agency attorney Daniel Cohen wrote to colleagues. The demonstration, Cohen wrote, would showcase 'exciting new AI tools available to DOT rule writers to help us do our job better and faster.'

"Discussion of the plan continued among agency leadership last week, according to meeting notes reviewed by ProPublica. Gregory Zerzan, the agency’s general counsel, said at that meeting that President Donald Trump is very excited about this initiative. Zerzan seemed to suggest that the DOT was at the vanguard of a broader federal effort, calling the department the point of the spear and the first agency that is fully enabled to use AI to draft rules.

"'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 Bridget Dooling, a professor at Ohio State University who studies administrative law. 'It’s so tempting to try to figure out how to use these tools, and I think it would make sense to try. But I think it should be done with a lot of skepticism.'

"Ben Winters, the AI and privacy director at the Consumer Federation of America, said the plan was especially problematic given the exodus of subject-matter experts from government as a result of the administration’s cuts to the federal workforce last year. DOT has had a net loss of nearly 4,000 of its 57,000 employees since Trump returned to the White House, including more than 100 attorneys, federal data shows."


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