ChatGPT is writing legislation now

Uh oh, Brazilian city lawmakers unknowingly enacted a piece of legislation written by ChatGPT, Associated Press reports.

The legislation was passed in October in the southern city of Porto Alegre and this week city council member Ramiro Rosário revealed it was written using the chatbot. According to AP, Rosário asked ChatGPT to write a proposal to ensure taxpayers don’t have to pay to replace water consumption meters. He presented the proposal to his 35 fellow city council members as the chatbot wrote it without disclosing the origin of the proposal.

“It would be unfair to the population to run the risk of the project not being approved simply because it was written by artificial intelligence,” Rosário told AP. He thought that had he told the group that the legislation was written by ChatGPT the legislation wouldn’t be given a chance to be voted on.

This isn’t the chatbot’s first piece of legislation either. Here in the United States, Massachusetts State Sen. Barry Finegold ironically used ChatGPT to help write his bill aiming to require companies that use AI chatbots to implement risk assessments and security measures for the government to understand their algorithms.

The use of ChatGPT to write legislation calls into question what the role of the chatbot should be in the government and makes government regulations on the chatbot especially urgent.