Global Courant
A federal agency questions whether artificial intelligence could one day be used to help the government identify duplicate or overly cumbersome federal rules that need to be shortened.
But officials are already hearing from skeptics who doubt AI will ever be powerful enough to dig through and understand the hundreds of thousands of pages of detailed federal rules.
The United States Administrative Conference (ACUS) is an independent federal agency that works to increase the efficiency and fairness of regulation. In early May, ACUS released a commissioned report on how to use AI and other algorithmic tools to retrospectively review federal rules to improve them.
That report said AI may already be able to perform “household” chores, such as finding typos or incorrect quotes, but said AI could also be trained to do much more.
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A federal agency is exploring how AI can be used to review federal regulations and possibly make recommendations. (Leon Neal/Code of Federal Regulations)
“A tool can identify regulations that are obsolete or redundant with another rule,” the report said challenges of this work. “Both questions may not have an objectively correct answer: a regulation may be old, but is it obsolete? The text of one rule or regulated activity may overlap with that of another, but is one superfluous?
“An algorithm performing even more substantial tasks could identify existing regulations that it believes could benefit from clarification or are overly burdensome,” it added. “These are both arguably entirely subjective questions: when is a regulation too complicated or too burdensome?”
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The report quoted several federal executives, most of whom were open to using AI for retrospective regulatory assessments.
But it also cited groups affected by federal regulations, and they were much more cautious about how AI might be used. Most said AI would at best be a tool to mark rules ready for revision, after which humans should do the revision.
President Biden has issued several guidelines on how AI should be developed. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
Two “skeptics” in this group argued that AI would struggle to penetrate the dense language of federal rules to be useful in any way.
“The skeptics say it would be nearly impossible to write a comprehensive algorithm that would accurately flag rules for review, since so much regulatory text is incredibly difficult to extract and so context-specific,” said the skeptic. report said.
“The concern expressed was that so much of the quality of regulation depends on the expertise and experience of agencies. The representatives were skeptical that AI could replace or even channel this.”
The report said another potential hurdle is whether government officials want to use AI in this way. The Trump administration introduced the use of AI in the regulatory process as a deregulation tool at the Department of Health and Human Services and used AI at the Department of Defense to help people understand the Pentagon’s vast network of rules.
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The two “skeptics” said the Trump administration’s use of AI may have “poisoned the resource” and could make it difficult for agencies to agree to further explore AI.
“A representative went on to explain that it ‘soured community thinking about retrospective review’ as it used retrospective review ‘as a smokescreen for partisan objectives.'”
the report said.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., is also working on AI rules he hopes to pass the Senate. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Several federal agencies are represented in ACUS, and the group’s research director, Jeremy Graboyes, told Fox News Digital that there is some hesitation within the government about using AI.
“I think you’re probably seeing a range of emotions,” Graboyes said, noting that the positives of cost-effectiveness and accuracy may be outweighed by issues such as potential biases that can be built into AI systems. “All the debates that you see outside the government, you also see inside the government.”
ACUS recommends that federal agencies begin using AI to identify redundant federal rules and fix minor errors and use open-source AI tools for this work. ACUS also said agencies should disclose when they use AI or other algorithmic tools when reviewing regulations.
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ACUS will meet in Washington in mid-June to decide whether to adopt the report and recommendations. From there, Graboyes said ACUS would work with federal agencies to implement these recommendations, which he said was a start that could lead the agency to recommend more advanced work with AI tools in the years to come.
“We will do more work in the AI space,” he said.
Pete Kasperowicz is a political editor at Fox News Digital.
