When the House adopted its rules at the beginning of this Congress, there was one provision tucked into the package that proponents think could help Capitol Hill advance in an area of exploding importance: artificial intelligence.
The provision directs the House Administration Committee, the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer and other administrative offices in the House to “continue efforts to integrate artificial intelligence technologies into the operations and functions of the House.” The provision formalizes a year-long effort to adopt AI tools in congressional offices. And while that directive may seem ambiguous, congressional experts think the push for AI could be helpful in some key ways.
“AI can be incredibly useful for personal and committee offices with the mundane, redundant tasks that they often have to do,” Casey Burgat, a legislative affairs professor at George Washington University, told NOTUS.
“Congress often suffers from a lack of capacity to process a lot of the information for which they’re responsible,” said Burgat, who has testified before Congress about modernizing the institution. “And so using machine-learning to help summarize and distill information can reduce a lot of the manual, time-consuming labor that, right now, Congress really struggles to process on a day-to-day basis.”
In a series of reports, the House Subcommittee on Modernization identified “use cases” where member offices and committees could incorporate AI for increased efficiency, a House Administration Committee aide told NOTUS.
The reports note there are AI tools that could help lawmakers draft legislation, identify changes between different drafts of bills, improve searching through large databases and help Capitol Police improve surveillance.
“It largely continues to explore how AI tools could help us run the Congress better and the different agencies associated with us,” Rep. Joe Morelle told NOTUS. “There are things that we do administratively, like payroll and HR. We also continue to look at the Copyright Office, which is under our jurisdiction.”
Morelle added that lawmakers were also looking at “the dangers” that AI can present. But he suggested there were clear ways that Capitol Hill could use the tools to “more efficiently and effectively run the Congress.”
While most of these tools are still small-scale pilots, lawmakers hope AI can eventually help them cut through bureaucratic red tape and solve constituent complaints.
“For example, you have constituents trying to get help with a very specific IRS problem and they need our office to lead them in the right direction. AI is perfect for that,” Rep. Jay Obernolte told NOTUS.
Rep. Greg Murphy pointed to research as a key way of using AI to improve congressional operations.
“Basically any of the tasks that involve essentially file cabinet labor, it’s really gonna be open for helping with AI,” Murphy said.
The provision, largely written with large language models in mind, also leaves the door open to House staffers adopting other technologies, like machine learning software for their operations.
“AI obviously is a moving target, as this technology continues to develop, and because of that, it was written with the intent to be flexible over the next couple of years,” the House Administration Committee aide told NOTUS.
In the committee’s final report on AI implementation in Congress, lawmakers indicated that they hope to run larger-scale test runs and ultimately release “enterprise-wide solutions” over the next few years.
Of course, House officials had already approved some AI tools. In September, officials cleared ChatGPT Pro for download by congressional devices. Other tools, like Amazon’s AI cloud and Microsoft’s Copilot, are also in consideration for approval.
“Generative AI tools like ChatGPT have dozens of useful applications in Congress, from bill summaries and letter drafting to providing instant feedback on legislative proposals,” Samuel Hammond, a researcher at the Foundation for American Innovation, told NOTUS.
Creating guidelines for AI usage within different congressional offices, Hammond said, is the first step toward having a smart usage of the software.
“Clear and forward-leaning rules for the use of AI in the House are needed, given the fact that staff use AI tools on a daily basis regardless of the official policy,” Hammond said. “Embracing AI within the CAO itself will only accelerate that process, helping them set best practices for ensuring privacy and confidentiality and bring more awareness to the potential for AI to boost congressional capacity overall.”
While AI is still a controversial technology in some political circles, another aide working for the House Administration Committee told NOTUS that the push for AI had been bipartisan. And while lawmakers are excited at the prospect of simplifying certain jobs in Congress, this aide said they were also being careful not to get ahead of the technology.
“It’s not just fluff,” this aide said. “They’re trying to figure out how to be responsible. You know, there are places where you can move fast and break things, and then there are places where it’d be really bad to do so.”
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Samuel Larreal is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.