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The Transportation Department, which oversees the safety of airplanes, cars and pipelines, plans to use Google Gemini to draft new regulations. “We don’t need the perfect rule,” said DOT’s top lawyer. “We want good enough.”
The Trump administration is advancing plans to use artificial intelligence, specifically Google Gemini, to draft federal transportation regulations. This initiative, unveiled at a Department of Transportation (DOT) demonstration, aims to revolutionize rulemaking processes by making them faster. Gregory Zerzan, DOT’s general counsel, indicated President Trump's strong support, positioning DOT at the forefront of this federal AI adoption. Zerzan prioritized the volume of regulations over perfect quality, stating the goal is to produce 'good enough' rules rapidly, effectively 'flooding the zone' with new regulations. This approach marks a significant shift in how federal rules might be formulated, emphasizing efficiency and speed in the administrative process.
The plan to use AI for drafting critical transportation safety regulations, which govern airplanes, pipelines, and freight trains, has generated considerable apprehension among some DOT staff. They question the prudence of entrusting such crucial standards to a nascent technology known for generating errors. However, proponents argue that AI offers unparalleled speed, capable of generating proposed rules in minutes or seconds, a dramatic reduction from the months or years typically required. They rationalize that much of the content in regulatory preambles is 'word salad' that AI can easily produce. The ambitious target is to complete draft regulations for review within 30 days, largely through AI's rapid drafting capabilities, enabling the agency to issue rules at an unprecedented pace.
This DOT initiative represents a significant expansion of the Trump administration's broader campaign to integrate artificial intelligence across the federal government. While AI has been incrementally adopted by agencies for tasks like translation and data analysis over several years, the current administration has shown particular zeal, issuing multiple executive orders and an 'AI Action Plan' to accelerate its use. Notably, none of these prior directives explicitly mandated AI for regulatory drafting, making DOT's plan a novel and potentially precedent-setting application. The department has already used AI to draft an unpublished Federal Aviation Administration rule, confirming that these plans are actively being implemented, raising questions about the implications of such widespread use.
Optimism about AI's potential in government was evident at an AI summit where officials discussed fostering an 'AI culture' and transitioning human roles to oversight of 'AI-to-AI interactions.' However, a December DOT presentation, attended by over 100 employees, revealed a vision where AI handles 80-90% of regulatory drafting, with staff merely proofreading. Attendees noted that the AI-generated draft lacked actual regulatory text, and concerns about AI 'hallucinations' were dismissed. This has deeply unsettled DOT staffers, who highlight the intricate expertise required for rulemaking and warn that errors could lead to lawsuits, injuries, or fatalities in the transportation system. Mike Horton, former acting chief AI officer, criticized the plan, likening it to 'having a high school intern' and cautioning against prioritizing speed over safety. Academics like Bridget Dooling expressed guarded optimism, suggesting AI could be useful as a research assistant with stringent oversight, but warned against ceding too much responsibility to it, especially given the administration's federal workforce cuts, which have seen DOT lose thousands of employees, including over 100 attorneys.
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been a vocal advocate for AI integration into government, with a leaked presentation revealing ambitions to use AI to draft regulatory documents and potentially halve all federal regulations. The presentation explicitly stated, 'Writing is automated,' with AI automatically generating submission documents for attorneys to edit. Neither DOGE nor Musk provided comments on these plans. The White House remained non-committal on whether other agencies would follow DOT's lead in AI-driven rulemaking, and some top technology officials within the administration viewed DOT's claim of being the 'point of the spear' as largely a 'marketing thing,' suggesting a degree of internal skepticism about the broader, aggressive push for federal AI adoption.