In the age of artificial intelligence, could machines write laws?

Actually, they kind of already do.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty-Karino.

The U.S. Congress is not usually what we think of as the leading edge of innovation.

In fact, the lack of technological proficiency in the body is often pointed to as a liability

when it comes to regulating new tech.

But lawmakers in Washington and around the country have increasingly been turning to software

to help them write and analyze legislation.

Mohar Chatterjee is a computational journalist at Politico who recently wrote about this.

She says there's pretty much just one program they all use, called Legisl Pro.

I asked her what it looks like in practice.

I'm glad you asked because there are a lot of answers to that, actually.

Legisl Pro is one kind of software that helps lawmakers amend, draft, track bills as the bills

make its way through legislatures.

Now the way you kind of think about it is it kind of looks like a word processor.

A lot of different legislatures use it.

So California, the U.S. Congress, soon Oregon, there's a ton of people on that list.

But all of these legislatures work a little bit differently.

Their needs are a little different.

So the software is tailored a little bit differently for each of these legislatures.

What are some of the ways that different legislative bodies are using this?

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