Document Type

News Article

Publication Date

Summer 2023

Abstract

The dawn of e-rulemaking promised broader public participation, increased government efficiency, and higher quality decisionmaking. Moving notice and comment rulemaking online has increased the number of persons participating in the process for some rules, but not necessarily the quality of the comments they are submitting. In addition, in some cases, the transformation of the process has created new challenges for agencies by making it easier to flood agencies with duplicative and potentially fraudulent comments to which the agencies must respond. Every technological innovation holds promise for improvement of the rulemaking process, though, and artificial intelligence, including ChatGPT, is the latest tool that might transform, or at least significantly impact, the process.

If ChatGPT is only used to automate the creation of public comments, it may increase public involvement in the commenting process and assist persons in writing clear and intelligible comments, but it is unlikely to improve the quality of public comments because it won’t necessarily make it any easier for commenters to provide agencies with the type of information that agencies are seeking. In addition, the use of ChatGPT to draft comments may create challenges for agencies in identifying useful or accurate information in the comments and responding to the comments, which could delay the completion and implementation of rules.

There is, however, an alternative way that ChatGPT could improve the quality of comments and improve agency decisionmaking. Agencies could use ChatGPT, or other artificial

intelligence tools, to facilitate public understanding of the rules and the types of information that agencies are seeking in the rulemaking process. In addition, ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools might help agencies efficiently organize and summarize comments they receive and generate summaries of comments and responses for final rules.

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