It seems that AI is infiltrating new aspects of our lives daily. President Donald Trump is reportedly “very excited about the initiative” using AI to speed up writing the laws and rules which are the backbone of our government. His administration allegedly made the Department of Transportation the “tip of the spear” and is starting with the regulations that keep airplanes from crashing. Experts are understandably worried.
Note: I’m not against AI. In fact, I think you should let ChatGPT plan your next road trip. But I digress.
After Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency fired 4,000 DOT employees—many of them the lawyers who draft regulations—the agency has struggled to keep up with the rapidly evolving transportation sector. Gregory Zerzan, the agency’s general counsel, recently called a meeting to enthusiastically introduce everyone to a Google AI chatbot (Gemini) and directed them to use it to draft rules and regulations.
After the meeting, six separate employees spoke to the Pro Publica website with concerns. In addition, the minutes of the meeting were public.
DOT: “We don’t need the perfect rule…we want good enough.”
“We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ,” Zerzan’s quoted saying in the meeting notes. He continued: “We want good enough.” The word of the day: “Speed.”
Another presenter insisted that the preamble of DOT regulatory documents is just “word salad” and insisted that Gemini specializes in “word salad.”
I’ll interject here that Pro Publica came out against this shift with a downright alarmist tone. It summarized the staffers interviewed, pointing out “The agency’s rules touch virtually every facet of transportation safety, including regulations that keep airplanes in the sky, prevent gas pipelines from exploding andstop freight trains carrying toxic chemicals from skidding off the rails.” Its summary continued, “Rulemaking is intricate work, they said, requiring expertise in the subject at hand.”
That said, the staffers have an ulterior motive: keeping their jobs. In addition, while some folks are hesitant about AI because it makes a ton of mistakes, others are hopeful about the efficiency it will unlock. It’s important we seek out the opinions of experts on these topics.
Mike Horton was DOT’s former acting chief artificial intelligence officer until last August. You don’t get that role because you’re an amateur, or because you’re anti-progress. But he eventually broke with the agency’s policy. He’s since criticized Gemini-written regulations. He says the plan is like “having a high school intern that’s doing your rulemaking.” He added that the agency leaders “want to go fast and break things, but going fast and breaking things means people are going to get hurt.”
The first thing DOT drafted with the new AI tool? A still-unpublished Federal Aviation Administration rule. I’ve got a better idea. Let’s do a trial run with, say, the rules governing the skidders used by logging crews, or street sweepers, or anything but airplanes.
