Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by mayosmith | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

mayosmith

What happened when ChatGPT was tasked to emulate our city council and draft a law in 2022:

https://open.substack.com/pub/johnmayosmith/p/i-used-chatgpt...

View on HN

>“Leaf Blower” means any device or machine used to blow or move leaves or other debris by means of air or other force.

This ChatGPT definition is so vague that it includes rakes. That’s not a reasonable match to the law that was passed.

Using a rake would arguably be illegal, because

The leaf blower must be powered by electricity or another energy source that does not produce harmful air pollution.

excludes most humans as an energy source.

But that doesn't matter, because

"Wildlife" means any species of animal, including […] insects.

The leaf blower must be operated in a manner that does not disturb wildlife.

excludes almost all practical means of leaf movement at scale.

A human could equally make these same mistakes, and an LLM looks at the world differently to most humans so it could add aspects we wouldn't normally think about.

But these issues is why legislation goes through scruinity, committee and reviews before being passed to iron out these issues. I feel using LLM for a first draft is entirely reasonable.

"reasonable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that post. I haven't examined the input/outputs -- just calling it out as an inherently subjective thing that warrants some further definition.

TLDR: ChatGPT was useful in summarizing arguments that have been repeated ad nauseam on the internet, but not useful in generating an enforceable ordinance. OTOH, it did do an okay job generating a grade-school (meaning, 3rd or 4th grade equivalent) overview of what existing leaf blower ordinances roughly look like when viewed through the eyes of a child.

Lmao why am I hearing a leafblower in the distance right now. Have we really not solved this yet?

Asking an LLM to draft a law banning leaf blowers is ALMOST as asinine as banning leaf blowers.

Correct. The problem isn't leaf blowers, it is equipment that produces unreasonable levels of noise. Leaf blowers are a good example of it, but the law should directly address the noise, not the function. Something like: no power equipment that exceeds 65dB measured from 1' may be operated in the city.

Of course many municipalities already have noise ordinances, the trick is enforcement.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com