Comment by mrcwinn
2 years ago
Yes, it's easy to understand. Congress (our legislative branch) grants authority to the departments (our executive branch) to implement various passed laws. In this case, it looks like the Biden administration is instructing HHS and other agencies to study, better understand, and provide guidance on how AI impacts existing laws and policies.
If Congress were responsible for exactly how every law was implemented, which inevitably runs headlong into very tactical and operational details, the Congress would effectively become the Executive.
Of course, if a department in the executive branch oversteps the powers granted to it by the legislative, affected parties have recourse via the judicial branch. It's imperfect but not a bad system overall.
That makes sense but isn’t it reasonable to think congress should be involved if regulating a brand new technology?
The legislature has the right and ability to do so at any time it so chooses, and has chosen not to. As our legislative branch is currently non-functional, it's reasonable to expect that legislative action will not be taken in any kind of time frame that matters.
The executive branch cannot just make up laws because the legislative branch is "non-functional". The executive branch merely enforces the laws. If there is no law regulating AI, it is not reasonable for the executive branch to just up and decide to create regulations and be allowed to enforce them.
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Any body which is delegated authority will push it as far as possible, until legally challenged, and then just keep doing it anyway. That's what the Biden admin did with regards to student loans and rent moratoriums.
In this case, they are framing AI as a homeland security threat, among other things possibly, to give themselves the latitude to create new regulations.
We could complain about this being out of scope, but that ultimately needs to be decided by the judicial system after folks with standing sue or, ideally, the legislative branch could pass more guidance on to what extent this falls within the delegated authority.