A.I. is the most talked about technology in quite sometime—Artificial Intelligence. I will admit I've bristled a bit at how artificial is Artificial Intelligence if a human thought of how to make the computer do something. I've been quite skeptical if A.I. is correctly being called A.I.—at least until I read a recent A-Hed piece in the WSJ about a municipality in Brazil that got ChatGPT to write legislation on water meters. ChatGPT stands for: Chat Generalized Pre-trained Transformer.
Legislation on water meters? How dry for something wet. Turns out in Porto Algre, a town in southern Brazil, there was a need to write legislation to make the water company responsible for incurring the cost of replacing stolen water meters, rather than make the homeowners responsible.
You could do a whole story on how it comes to pass that water meters are stolen. Auto parts, tires, catalytic converters, air bags would seem to be a problem, but it seems in Brazil there's a ring of water meter thefts.
Enter the councilman Ramiro Rosário, who was fed up with how long it takes the municipality to create legislation amongst the 37 council members. A six-member team would be assigned to draft the legislation and with so many layers of input and the fact that Brazilians take long coffee breaks and extend holidays that fall on a Thursday into time off until Monday, a simple statement requiring the water company to bear the expense is a monumental piece of legislation. The Brazilian constitution apparently is 64,488 words, so a country that gave us Bossa Nova music is not known for written legislative brevity. Who knew?
The bill passed, but not because anyone knew it was written by a computer. Ramiro plugged in some key provisions, and violá, out came the bill, even with an unexpected provision that Ramiro didn't think of. The computer added phrasing that makes the water company liable for free service if they haven't re-installed the meters within 30 days! He was impressed, and so am I.
It's too late for The United States to draft a ChatGPT Declaration of Independence. And no need. We're free of British rule, if not British television. And the Constitution?
Well, there I wonder if Thomas Jefferson and the Philadelphia boys would have fought over a document worded by ChatGPT. In Brazil, the other council members were pissed at Ramiro for not telling them ahead of time who the real author was. They passed the bill with no rancor, but accused him of cheating, like to was in college and used ChatGPT for his term papers.
But there can be amendments to our Constitution that could use ChatGPT. I read recently that Congress worked on over 700 pieces of legislation, but only approved 76 bills. That's a lot of verbal treading water.
And what about the 14th Amendment that Colorado is trying to use to keep Donald Trump from occupying a place on the 2024 Republican primary ballot? The 14th Amendment is worded so that anyone who took place in an insurrection, namely Confederate soldiers, couldn't take office in the federal government. This was meant to punish those who tried to succeed from the Union.
Maybe something a little more pointed would emerge with ChatGPT preventing anyone who stood outside clapping their black-gloved hands exhorting a crowd of demonstrators to charge up Capitol Hill and demand a recount could keep the Donald from appearing on a ballot. Or anyone else for that matter. The possibilities are endless.
Ramiro Rosário is also advocating using ChatGPT for their press releases. "There must be 20-30 people who write press releases—they probably won't be needed in the future, well to be honest, they're already no longer needed." ChatGPT wrote the press release for the water meter bill.
No wonder people are worried for their jobs.
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