Introduction
ASU Professor Gary Marchant and his co-editors in “The Growing Gap Between Emerging Technologies and Legal-Ethical Oversight,” described as “the pacing problem” – “the growing gap between the pace of science and technology and the lagging responsiveness of legal and ethical oversight society relies on to govern emerging technologies.”³
For the Members of Congress, parliamentarians, state lawmakers, county commissioners, city council members, and myriad other elected representatives around the world and the staff who support them,¹ much of the workflow is similar regardless of country, jurisdiction, or form of government. This can include meeting with constituents, receiving incoming inquiries or expressions of opinion, hearing from advocates, distributing public information, proposing or evaluating policy proposals, seeking expert analysis, processing large volumes of information, collaborating with colleagues, drafting and delivering speeches, issuing statements for the record and to the media, questioning witnesses, conducting oversight, voting, and much more. Many of these actions previously relied upon paper-based processes, but in recent years technology-enabled upgrades have come to include digital and automated technologies, often leveraging some form of artificial intelligence (AI). These process modernizations have — and continue to — improve legislator and staff workflows, increasing government efficiency, transparency, and effectiveness.
This report provides an overview of AI technologies and their gradual adoption in the legislative workflows of legislatures around the world over the past several years, with a primary focus on the United States Congress. The report then turns to a discussion of recent innovations in generative AI (GenAI) and discusses the opportunity for legislatures to proactively establish policies to evaluate potential GenAI use cases and allow for experimentation. The report chronicles actions taken by the US House and Senate as an illustrative roadmap for other legislatures considering their own future AI-adaptation strategy and then offers a list of potential use cases for deployment of GenAI in legislative contexts.
The report is written primarily for nontechnical legislators and staffers seeking to understand how AI is currently being deployed in legislative environments and to provide context as new institutional policies or investments are considered. It does not explore the questions of how AI should or could be regulated, but rather is narrowly focused on examples of AI in legislative workflows. It is written from an American perspective, with future reports under development with partners to tailor the information and examples to specific international audiences, languages, and governing systems. This volume is focused on technological developments and actions through December 31, 2023, with additional volumes planned to track progress, issues, and new technological advances.
This work builds on the authors’ collective experience working both inside Congress and in civil society helping the US Legislative branch modernize through new technologies, updated processes, and increased staff capacity. While this work has always been important, accelerating changes due to AI necessitate even greater focus and investment to address the "pacing problem," a term coined to describe the lag between technological advancements and the development of laws and regulations governing them.² The current pace of AI — still at a nascent stage — accentuates the urgency of bridging legislatures’ capacity gap caused by their use of outdated tools and inadequate skill sets that are disconnected from the evolving needs and expectations of constituents and civil society. By proactively learning about and experimenting with new tools, legislatures can operate more efficiently, better serve constituents, craft more effective policy solutions, and ensure the ongoing relevance of democratic institutions in the years ahead.
¹ The Inter-Parliamentary Union identifies 190 national legislatures in the world — 78 bicameral and 112 unicameral, for a total of 268 national governing chambers with over 44,000 representatives. In 2016, a report from OECD identified a further 1,700 state or regional level legislatures, and over 500,000 municipal level governments with at least partial legislative power.
² Marci Harris, “Congress vs. the ‘Pacing Problem[s],’” Medium (August 29, 2019)
³ Gary E. Marchant, Braden R. Allenby, Joseph R. Herkert, “The Growing Gap Between Emerging Technologies and Legal-Ethical Oversight — The Pacing Problem,” Springer Dordrecht (2011)
