AI's growing role in rulemaking raises new transparency questions - GovExec.com

So the US government is now outsourcing parts of its rulemaking process to AI — because nothing says 'democratic accountability' like letting an opaque algorithm decide which public comments matter. GovExec reports that federal employees have already used AI for years to analyze public comments on proposed rules, and a panel of experts warns that AI could 'supercharge' deregulation efforts. Because of course: the fastest way to make regulation disappear is to hand the wheel to a system that can't explain its decisions.

One panellist reportedly cautioned that AI might 'take over more steps' in the process — as if there's a single government IT project in history that didn't expand its scope once given a toehold. 'Transparency questions' is a gentle way of saying 'no human will have the faintest idea how a rule was made, assuming anyone still cares.'

The real kicker? This isn't a hypothetical. The feds have been using AI on comments for years, entirely unremarked, until now. So we've already crossed the Rubicon blindfolded. Expect future rules to come stamped with a disclaimer: 'This regulation was generated by an AI model based on analysis of public sentiment. Appeals regarding the model's training data, weighting, or hallucinated legal precedent will not be entertained.' Parliamentary sovereignty, meet the black box.