Lawmakers in southern Brazil passed a bill into law in November that was written entirely by artificial intelligence (AI), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Friday.
Porto Alegre Councilman Ramiro Rosário, 37, relied entirely on ChatGPT to skip the lengthy consultations and bureaucratic inefficiency that marked the traditional process of drafting a bill, according to WSJ. The proposal would stop the municipal water company from billing any resident for a new water meter when thieves stole the resident’s meter from their front yard.
ChatGPT, using a one-sentence description from Rosário, reportedly produced the bill in 15-seconds. The usual process would have taken Rosário and his six-person team several days to draft. The chatbot reportedly also added to the eight-article bill a clause exempting a resident from paying their water bill if the water company did not replace the stolen meter in 30 days.
“Who knows where she got the 30-day thing from! She went above and beyond!” Rosário said, according to WSJ. Recognizing the banality of the bill, he expected it to pass, and it won the unanimous support of the 35 other councilors. Sebastian Melo, Mayor of Porto Alegre, signed it into law at the end of November, and ChatGPT drafted the media announcement, per WSJ.
Only then did Rosário reveal the entire bill was AI-generated. Rosário believed his AI-generated bill was the first of its kind globally, while ChatGPT lauded him for working on the “fascinating” subject, per WSJ. (RELATED: Lawyer Uses ChatGPT For Court Filing. It Does Not Go Well.)
A city councilman is trying to replace politicians with computers, and it’s working, to the delight of local voters. “I’d choose artificial intelligence over the intelligence of politicians any day.” https://t.co/lSn3sbm8on https://t.co/lSn3sbm8on
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) December 22, 2023
Support for Rosário’s use of the chatbot fractured following Rosário’s revelation.
João Bosco Vaz, a 68-year-old Democratic Labour Party councilor, reportedly called for the revocation of the law. “It’s a dangerous precedent! It’s just not something you do! He should have talked to the other councilors first.”
However, others didn’t seem to mind.
“I’d choose artificial intelligence over the intelligence of politicians any day,” 21-year-old student Adriano Soares told WSJ.
Rosário reportedly talks to ChatGPT daily. The chatbot once helped him create a recipe and even arbitrated a dispute between him and his brother-in-law over the Israel-Hamas war, WSJ reported.