The question keeps coming up: When will robots write our laws? What will happen when they do? We’re about to find out. Back in January — a week before Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Mass.) read a ChatGPT-generated speech on the House floor, marking the first high-profile use of the technology in Congress — an enterprising state senator in Massachusetts asked the powerful AI chatbot to go a step further and actually write part of a law to regulate its own use, as POLITICO's Kelly Garrity and Lisa Kashinsky reported last week in Massachusetts Playbook. His office introduced it soon afterward, and last week Massachusetts lawmakers on Beacon Hill heard testimony on the bill, called “An Act drafted with the help of ChatGPT to regulate generative artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT.” DFD spoke with state Sen. Barry Finegold, the politician behind the bill — and one of its two official human co-sponsors — about how it went, and what the process means for lawmaking, democracy and, um, humans. (View a screenshot of the ChatGPT prompt and ensuing bill here.) Coaxing ChatGPT to write a law wasn’t all smooth sailing, an aide from his office told me. Getting the bill up to snuff required multiple prompts and language cleanup, since the AI was not immediately familiar with the format of Massachusetts General Laws. But the exercise had a purpose besides just the bill itself. “AI is going to be part of every single thing you do,” Finegold said — much like the internet. The point of using the ChatGPT to write a law, he said, was to focus legislative attention on the emerging technology faster than state or federal legislatures usually move. Finegold sees social media as a cautionary tale in which lawmakers didn’t move nearly fast enough to keep its effects in check. He doesn’t want to make the same mistake with AI. “I fault us, the government, a lot of times for not putting up the basic guardrails and the rules of engagement that we should have had in place years ago,” he said. The AI-written bill, modeled on a longer data privacy law also introduced by Finegold, hits some of the core points in the AI debate. It addresses the problem of plagiarism, requiring companies to implement a watermarking system on AI-generated content. AI companies are also required to disclose their algorithms and data collection practices to the state attorney general’s office, as well as run regular risk assessments on AI systems. He had some words for Washington’s role in all this, or lack of a role. “I do think the federal government should be doing this — that we in the state level should not be,” Finegold said. The senator is looking for “a real bipartisan push in Washington, because unlike privacy you really can have fifty different AI policies in fifty different states. It’s just not gonna be productive.” But the AI bill may hit the same stumbling blocks in Beacon Hill that emerging tech laws face in any legislature — including Congress. Is this law going to pass? POLITICO's Kashinsky told me the state “doesn’t seem to be in any rush to regulate artificial intelligence.” She expects perhaps a commission to study it, an idea in another bill. Finegold says he’s “hopeful” that his data privacy legislation will be passed this term. He is focused on pushing that bill past the finish line of the state legislature first. “Data privacy is more of a priority just because, unfortunately, we've seen the federal government is unable to really get a privacy bill done,” the senator said. “Other states have passed privacy bills and we feel like we need something here in Massachusetts.” On AI, what he wants at a federal level is for Congress to “pass a similar bill that we proposed,” Finegold said. The set of policy points in the Massachusetts AI bill are ones that businesses “can clearly put their arms around,” he said. This time around, the tech sector itself is asking for rules, the senator pointed out, referencing OpenAI CEO’s Sam Altman’s public messaging on needing AI guardrails. It’s up to the federal government now to draft an AI law that people can “live with in the business sector, but at the same time will protect consumers,” he said.
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