The United Arab Emirates will become the first country in the world to use AI to write new laws, as well as to review and amend existing ones, The Financial Times reports.
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State media are calling the initiative “AI-powered regulation.” Other countries are trying to use AI to improve efficiency, using the technology for tasks ranging from summarizing draft laws to improving public service delivery, but not actively proposing changes to existing laws by processing government and legal data.
«“This new AI-powered legislative system will change the way we make laws, making the process faster and more accurate,” said Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and Prime Minister and Vice President of the UAE. Last week, the country approved the creation of a new cabinet office, the Regulatory Intelligence Office, to promote AI in lawmaking.
The UAE plans to use AI to track the impact of legislation on the country’s population and economy by creating a large-scale database that combines federal and local laws with public sector data such as court decisions and government services.
AI will “regularly suggest updates to our legislation,” Sheikh Mohammad says. The government estimates that AI will speed up lawmaking by 70%. But researchers warn of numerous problems and pitfalls with the initiative, starting with the fact that AI logic may be incomprehensible to users and questions about whether AI interprets laws in the same way as humans do. In addition, AI models “continue to hallucinate and have reliability and robustness issues,” warned Vincent Straub, a researcher at the University of Oxford. “We cannot trust them,” he said.
However, Straub noted that what is also new about the UAE’s plans is that they propose using AI to predict changes to laws that may be needed. This initiative could also help save on the fees of law firms hired to review legislation, the analyst said.