It feels like every time I turn around, there’s a new artificial intelligence (AI) company trying desperately to sell me their product. Even when I’m not navigating around scams, the generic slop that generative AI puts out clogs up my experience. And I’m not alone in this. While many people online have repeatedly asked for ways to turn off or entirely remove AI from their experience, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) announced that it is set to use AI to start writing regulations going forward.
How Does the DOT Use AI?
Late last year, the DOT updated its Artificial Intelligence Activities page to reflect the ways it’s already incorporating AI into its workflow. They claim to be trying to enable “the safe integration of AI into the transportation system,” and refer to it as “a foundational technology in many automated driving systems and unmanned aircraft systems.” They’re also hoping to integrate it into “conventional aircraft systems as well as traffic management operations across modes.”
Their activities page also looked at how they claim to want to adopt in “internal operations, research, and citizen-facing services.” To this end, the DOT reportedly “has focused investments in the application of AI” in order to improve “the efficiency and effectiveness of internal processes and research” for things like:
- generative AI
- natural language processing
- computer vision
- machine learning-based predictive analytics
Where Do AI Written Regulations Fit into This?
In an article for ProPublica, Jesse Coburn observed that the DOT’s general counsel, Gregory Zerzan, “appeared interested mainly in the quantity of regulations that AI could produce, not their quality.” He cited Zerzan as saying, “We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ,” but rather that “we want good enough.”
If that sounds alarming to you, you’re not alone. Coburn reports that “these developments have alarmed some at DOT.” For those unfamiliar with just how big the DOT’s sphere of influence is, Coburn explains that their rules impact “virtually every facet of transportation safety.” According to him, their regulations “keep airplanes in the sky, prevent gas pipelines from exploding and stop freight trains carrying toxic chemicals from skidding off the rails.”
Offloading the creation of these regulations to “a nascent technology notorious for making mistakes” seems nonsensical, but according to Coburn the DOT is doing this to increase the speed at which they can roll out new regulations. Ordinarily, it can take months or even years to draft, revise, and publish regulations, he explains. “But,” he says, “with DOT’s version of Google Gemini, employees could generate a proposed rule in a matter of minutes or even seconds.”
Sources
- U.S. DOT Artificial Intelligence Activities, U.S. department of Transportation, 2025.
- Government by AI? Trump Administration Plans to Write Regulations Using Artificial Intelligence, ProPublica, 2026.
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