New York governor says she’s using AI to analyze ‘every single rule’ in the state
The Verge Emma Roth
NY Gov. Hochul says her team is using AI to scan every state rule and regulation for outdated junk. She just capped new AI data centers, but apparently that doesn't stop her from using the tech to clean house.
Based on reporting by The Verge, Emma Roth — read the original for the full story.
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Kathy Hochul has a complicated relationship with artificial intelligence right now. On one hand, she recently signed a moratorium on new AI data centers going up in New York. On the other, she just told Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast that her own administration is leaning on AI to comb through the state's entire legal code looking for laws that no longer make sense.
The examples she gave are the kind of thing that makes you wonder how long they'd survived without anyone noticing. There's a $25 fee if you want to take a dog hunting. There's also a rule requiring pregnant workers to get a permit if they want to work past midnight. Neither sounds like something a modern government would write today, but neither had been flagged for removal either, until an AI system started reading through the statutes.
Hochul's pitch is really about speed. She estimated that a manual review of every rule, regulation, and policy on the books would have taken her staff roughly five years. That's five years of lawyers and analysts slogging through decades of accumulated bureaucracy, much of it irrelevant, some of it actively strange. AI apparently gets through that same pile fast enough that it becomes a live governing tool rather than a multi-year research project someone shelves after the second budget cycle.
There's an obvious tension here that Hochul didn't shy away from in the interview. She's willing to restrict the infrastructure that AI companies want to build in her state, even as her own office depends on that same technology to function better. It's not necessarily a contradiction, more a sign that governments are starting to treat AI the way they treat any other utility: something to regulate on one side and use gratefully on the other, depending on which side of the ledger you're standing.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is the least controversial use of AI I've seen from a politician all year, and that alone says something about the current climate: even people capping data center growth still want the model doing their homework. I'd bet most state governments have dozens of Hochul's dog-hunting-permit-style relics buried in their code, and if AI is what finally drags them into the light, fine by me. Just don't pretend this is some grand AI strategy; it's spring cleaning with better tools.”
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