AI Could Write Our Laws | Hacker News Reader

AI Could Write Our Laws

schneier.com

26 pointscurmudgeon2223 comments

It doesn’t matter who writes the laws. It’s on whose behalf they are being written. And that’s already a tiny minority of extremely wealthy people with the power to manipulate public opinion and bribe politicians.

No need to go to university. Just ask ChatGPT the right questions over a period of time and you're good to go with the exams.

I wonder if microlaws might be part of a solution to legislative problems. We see endless shenanigans with ammendments and omnibuses. Forced atomic law structures which may be voted upon separately to end abuses. Revenue generation also reflects the fungibility better.

Regardless of what they say about the lotto and schools/seniors any funds to them results in corresponding reduction in general funding. We shouldn't be thinking X for Y based funding because it is fundamentally a lie. It all goes into the same budget stew.

I believe it already is. Someone I know pretty closely created an m&p for the team using chatGPT. So right off the bat there is someone's job that is being dictated by AI. Someone is legally obliged (for sake of employment) to follow an m&p generated by AI.

> an m&p

A what? None of my search results seem relevant.

A "Merge and propose", a technique used during legislative processes to combine the various drafts into one

The AI with enough data about every individual in the population could find a series of law proposals to bring any end state, set by the AI creator. https://youtu.be/goQ4ii-zBMw

Now that we don't need human legal experts anymore, there's no reason to not switch to a system based on sortition. Randomly select a deliberative citizens assembly and have them use AI to write the laws.

Why is this something we would want? We don’t have enough say as it is

Some relevant prior art (some of it 30 years old) can be found via searching for the phrase "The Graph Model of Conflict Resolution".

Nobody knows exactly what's illegal. There are too many codes and laws and jurisprudence. It's just too much.

That's some low-hanging fruit that someone should tackle. Ask the AI, "is X illegal under Y and Z circumstances"?

Ignorance may not be an excuse, but it sure is bliss.

"I thought I was assuming my rights under the 9th Amendment, and the last time I read the Constitution it didn't say nothing about me not allowed to pee in this alley, Officer."

Seems our options are a) deal with the persistent stench of pee in alleyways, or b) deal with the fallout of men driven to madness by Navi the Crime Prevention Fairy.

Considering who are actually writing the laws right now... yeah, it may even improve things for all that it matters.

Perhaps that is the setup. Convince us first that humans are poor lawmakers. Then we get Bot for president.

TLDR: Lobbyists are going to use AI to ply their nefarious trade more effectively. In order to stop them, Congress needs to stop passing "monolithic, multi-thousand-page omnibus bills voted on under deadline" and instead a bill should focus on individual area and undergo through a debate and deliberation process, and we need more transparency over the activities of lobbyists. I can see how the AI part might happen, sadly the rest doesn't seem realistic at all.

Call me a Luddite.

No. AI is not the oracle at Delphi.

I would rather have AI check the laws for grift before they are put to a vote.

The least of our problems with AI but ok.

Does Schneier believe AI exists?

but can it teach us our history and explain philosophy?

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