City introduces ordinance that later turned out to have been written by ChatGPT

The Brazilian city of Porto Alegre recently introduced an experimental ordinance, which was later revealed to have been written by ChatGPT. The municipal councilor who submitted the proposal had deliberately concealed this.

In the city, taxpayers had to pay the costs of replacing stolen water meters. Municipal councilor Ramiro Rosário had therefore asked the chatbot to come up with a proposal where this is no longer necessary. He used a prompt of 49 words for this. Rosário then presented the proposal to his 35 colleagues in the council, without saying that he had changed the text. He also didn’t say anything about using ChatGPT.

“If I had revealed it earlier, the proposal wouldn’t even have been voted on. It would be unfair to the residents of the city that the project should not be approved just because it was written by artificial intelligence,” says Rosário to the AP news agency. The council approved it unanimously and the ordinance went into effect on November 23.

“I am convinced that humanity will experience a new technological revolution,” says the council member. “All the tools we have developed as a civilization can be used for evil and good. That’s why we need to show how it can be used for good.”

Ultimately, City Council President Hamilton Sossmeier learned that Rosário had used ChatGPT to write the proposal when the council member revealed it on social media. Sossmeier initially told local media he thought it was a “dangerous precedent.” However, the chairman seems to have changed his mind. “I started to look into it more and saw that, for better or worse, this is going to be a trend.”

It has happened more often that ChatGPT has been used to write bills or amendments. For example, Barry Finegold, a senator on behalf of the Democrats in the American state of Massachusetts, has written a proposal on regulating artificial intelligence with the help of ChatGPT. writes Politico, among others, last July. Finegold thinks that the chatbot can be a good tool for the more difficult aspects of drafting laws, such as consulting existing laws.

The senator does say that it is important to be transparent about the use of AI in this regard. “We want work generated by ChatGPT to be watermarked,” he told AP. “I’m in favor of people using ChatGPT to write proposals, as long as it’s clear.”