{"id":8353,"date":"2023-11-30T16:07:19","date_gmt":"2023-11-30T21:07:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8353"},"modified":"2023-11-30T16:07:19","modified_gmt":"2023-11-30T21:07:19","slug":"brazilian-city-enacts-an-ordinance-that-was-secretly-written-by-chatgpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/?p=8353","title":{"rendered":"Brazilian City Enacts an Ordinance That Was Secretly Written by ChatGPT"},"content":{"rendered":"
The logo for OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, appears on a mobile phone, in New York, Jan. 31, 2023. Lawmakers in Brazil\u2019s southern city of Porto Alegre Brazil have enacted legislation written entirely by artificial intelligence. The experimental ordinance was passed in October and city councilman Ramiro Ros\u00e1rio revealed on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2023, that it was written by a chatbot, sparking objections and raising questions about the role of artificial intelligence in public policy. (AP Photo\/Richard Drew, File)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

City lawmakers in Brazil have enacted what appears to be the nation\u2019s first legislation written entirely by artificial intelligence \u2014 even if they didn\u2019t know it at the time.<\/p>\n

The experimental ordinance was passed in October in the southern city of Porto Alegre and city councilman Ramiro Ros\u00e1rio revealed this week that it was written by a chatbot, sparking objections and raising questions about the role of artificial intelligence in public policy.<\/p>\n

Ros\u00e1rio told The Associated Press that he asked OpenAI\u2019s chatbot ChatGPT to craft a proposal to prevent the city from charging taxpayers to replace water consumption meters if they are stolen. He then presented it to his 35 peers on the council without making a single change or even letting them know about its unprecedented origin.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I had revealed it before, the proposal certainly wouldn\u2019t even have been taken to a vote,\u201d Ros\u00e1rio told the AP by phone on Thursday. The 36-member council approved it unanimously and the ordinance went into effect on Nov. 23.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be unfair to the population to run the risk of the project not being approved simply because it was written by artificial intelligence,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The arrival of ChatGPT on the marketplace just a year ago has sparked a global debate on the impacts of potentially revolutionary AI-powered chatbots. While some see it as a promising tool, it has also caused concerns and anxiety about the unintended or undesired impacts of a machine handling tasks currently performed by humans.<\/p>\n

Porto Alegre, with a population of 1.3 million, is the second-largest city in Brazil\u2019s south. The city\u2019s council president, Hamilton Sossmeier, found out that Ros\u00e1rio had enlisted ChatGPT to write the proposal when the councilman bragged about the achievement on social media on Wednesday. Sossmeier initially told local media he thought it was a \u201cdangerous precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n

The AI large language models that power chatbots like ChatGPT work by repeatedly trying to guess the next word in a sentence and are prone to making up false information,<\/a><\/span> a phenomenon sometimes called hallucination.<\/p>\n

All chatbots sometimes introduce false information when summarizing a document, ranging from about 3% of the time for the most advanced GPT model to a rate of about 27% for one of Google\u2019s models, according to recently published research by the tech company Vectara.<\/p>\n

In an article published<\/a><\/span> on the website of Harvard Law School\u2019s Center of Legal Profession earlier this year, Andrew Perlman, dean at Suffolk University Law School, wrote that ChatGPT \u201cmay portend an even more momentous shift than the advent of the internet,\u201d but also warned of its potential shortcomings.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt may not always be able to account for the nuances and complexities of the law. Because ChatGPT is a machine learning system, it may not have the same level of understanding and judgment as a human lawyer when it comes to interpreting legal principles and precedent. This could lead to problems in situations where a more in-depth legal analysis is required,\u201d Perlman wrote.<\/p>\n

Porto Alegre\u2019s Ros\u00e1rio wasn\u2019t the first lawmaker in the world to test ChatGPT\u2019s abilities. Others have done so in a more limited capacity or with less successful outcomes.<\/p>\n

In Massachusetts, Democratic state Sen. Barry Finegold turned to ChatGPT to help write a bill aimed at regulating artificial intelligence models, including ChatGPT. Filed earlier this year, it has yet to be voted on.<\/p>\n

Finegold said by phone on Wednesday that ChatGPT can help with some of the more tedious elements of the lawmaking process, including correctly and quickly searching and citing laws already on the books. However, it is critical that everyone knows ChatGPT or a similar tool was used in the process, he added.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want work that is ChatGPT generated to be watermarked,\u201d he said, adding that the use of artificial intelligence to help draft new laws is inevitable. \u201cI\u2019m in favor of people using ChatGPT to write bills as long as it\u2019s clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was no such transparency for Ros\u00e1rio\u2019s proposal in Porto Alegre. Sossmeier said Ros\u00e1rio did not inform fellow council members that ChatGPT had written the proposal.<\/p>\n

Keeping the proposal\u2019s origin secret was intentional. Ros\u00e1rio told the AP his objective was not just to resolve a local issue, but also to spark a debate. He said he entered a 49-word prompt into ChatGPT and it returned the full draft proposal within seconds, including justifications.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am convinced that … humanity will experience a new technological revolution,\u201d he said. \u201cAll the tools we have developed as a civilization can be used for evil and good. That\u2019s why we have to show how it can be used for good.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the council president, who initially decried the method, already appears to have been swayed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI changed my mind,\u201d Sossmeier said. \u201cI started to read more in depth and saw that, unfortunately or fortunately, this is going to be a trend.\u201d<\/p>\n

– Diane Jeantet and Mauricio Savarese, AP News<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

City lawmakers in Brazil have enacted what appears to be the nation\u2019s first legislation written entirely by artificial intelligence \u2014 even if they didn\u2019t know it at the time. The experimental ordinance was passed in October in the southern city of Porto Alegre and city councilman Ramiro Ros\u00e1rio revealed this week that it was written…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":8356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dims.apnews.com\/dims4\/default\/3017c97\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/5760x3835+0+2\/resize\/820x546!\/format\/webp\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fassets.apnews.com%2Fd8%2F96%2Fce55217de50d52a8929b1fdf75bb%2Fdd098ca653d34f9fbba5225784bae6aa","fifu_image_alt":"Brazilian City Enacts an Ordinance That Was Secretly Written by ChatGPT","footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-polity-governance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8355,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8353\/revisions\/8355"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericasecurityreport.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}