Rosário said the chatbot processed a 250-character command and took about 15 seconds to work its algorithmic magic and pick out a policy — a process that would normally take it about three days. The result, he said, showed how artificial intelligence can be a useful tool to optimize and improve public service. However, Brazil’s first law created by ChatGPT has launched the South American nation into a debate that resonates around the world: As artificial intelligence takes the world by storm, is society heading toward a future where automation replaces humans?
“I go back to that phrase that has already become a kind of cliché in this matter: No one will be replaced by artificial intelligence, but we could all be replaced by those who know how to use artificial intelligence,” Rosário said in Washington Post. . “So we have to prepare for this path.”
The first Brazilian law made exclusively by artificial intelligence is valid in Porto Alegre!
She has nothing ideological. On the contrary, it is very common. Ela impede the collection by the prefecture of stolen hydrometers. Aliás, passaria despercebida se eu não contasse.…
— Ramiro Rosário (@curtaramiro) November 29, 2023
A self-proclaimed tech enthusiast, Rosário wanted to bring “the conversation around the start of a great technological revolution” into the political and public sphere, he said. For months, Rosário had been inundated with complaints from its constituents that it was charged when the city’s water meters were stolen, and it wanted to do something about it.
In June, Rosário sat down at his computer, opened ChatGPT, and typed in a command: “Create a municipal law for the city of Porto Alegre, originating from the legislature, not the executive, that prohibits the Municipal Water Department and Sewerage to charge the property owner to pay for a new water meter when it is stolen.”
The chatbot made a sentence with justification and eight subsections. Rosario was “surprised,” he said. The most “excellent” part? Rosário said ChatGPT came up with two ideas that had never occurred to him: to set a 30-day timeline for replacing stolen water meters and, in cases where that deadline was not met, to exempt property owners from paying water bills.
“If I had followed the normal process, it would have taken days to meet with my team and legal sources,” he said. “But in a fraction of that time, AI looked at the best reports on good practice in drafting legislation at home and abroad in its database. This was an unprecedented process of an AI-authored bill that brought proposals that were consistent with the principles and values of my mandate — I knew I had to sign it.”
Rosário submitted the text on June 7.
As a machine learning model, ChatGPT combines human training with knowledge from a variety of sources, including Wikipedia, books, news articles, and scholarly journals. It parses queries and produces answers by predicting what comes next in a sentence — essentially, digesting vast amounts of data and inferring relationships between words in text.
Although users have used it in various ways — writing college essays, creating Eminem style lyrics, writing a bible verse explaining how to remove a peanut butter sandwich from a video — experts have warned against relying on ChatGPT because it has a tendency to produce minor errors at best and blatant misinformation at worst.
The council’s legislative department revised Rosário’s original proposal and adapted its wording to the standard style used in legislation. But he made minimal changes and did not object to any part of the content, according to before and after copies of the text reviewed by The Post. In fact, the city worker who analyzed the text proposed amending the existing 1987 Porto Alegre Water and Sewer Law with subsections from Rosário’s proposal, records show.
On October 18, after further consideration by the council’s judicial and constitutional committee, the council voted in favor of Rosário’s law, which received its final approval from the mayor of Porto Alegre shortly afterwards.
A week later, Rosário took to social media to reveal his secret: “The first Brazilian law created entirely by artificial intelligence is in force in Porto Alegre!” wrote to Xformerly known as Twitter.
His peers were amazed, he said. Some were fascinated. Others complained about the lack of transparency. First Council President Hamilton Sossmeier he told local media that although the use of artificial intelligence is not expressly prohibited, he thought it could set a “dangerous precedent”.
Sossmeier then changed his mind: “I started reading more in depth and saw that, unfortunately or fortunately, this is going to be a trend,” he later said, according to Associated Press.
Rosário said he initially kept the use of ChatGPT under wraps because “many colleagues still have a prejudice against artificial intelligence and I didn’t want to risk not passing a specific and beneficial law just because it was written by a chatbot.” In addition, he added, his experiment “showed the gains we can make if we use this technology.”
In artificial intelligence, Rosário sees a tool that can be “harnessed for the good of the public, if we are informed about best practices.” He pointed out that the city council recently approved two laws that were already in place and also passed bills that were later found unconstitutional, saying the use of artificial intelligence could help lawmakers better analyze policy proposals.
Moreover, he added, the AI revolution is “not really that different from the changes brought about by the internet and computers. Remember how everyone was afraid of computer dominance? Well, look how helpful they’ve been so far.”