Trump administration officials speak candidly about government AI plans

The U.S. Department of Transportation plans to use Google Gemini to draft federal transportation regulations, with officials believing that 80% to 90% of the drafting work normally done by legal and policy experts can be handed to AI. According to ProPublica last week, the department's general counsel said getting a draft regulation from Gemini should take no more than 20 minutes, and said rules do not need to be perfect or even good, just good enough, with the goal of pushing out rules at scale. A Tech Policy Press analysis argues this approach carries legal risk under the APA's arbitrary and capricious review, and that LLM hallucination, sycophancy, and bias could lead courts to overturn rules, with agencies still needing to independently confirm the reliability of a rule's reasoning. The article suggests advocates watch for new proposals in the Federal Register, check them for reasoning errors, and push the department to disclose whether it used AI in specific matters.