Computing can help fix red tape—but it shouldn’t write the rules
How computable regulations can improve governance without replacing judgment
I have a new piece (co-authored with Vinay Chaudri) in Communications of the ACM about how governments could make regulations easier to understand and work with by pairing legal text with computable representations.
The idea is that alongside traditional legal language, we also publish more computer-friendly and AI-friendly versions. We propose that:
“Structured data and machine-readable rules are made available alongside legal text.”
In practice, this could help both humans and software systems interpret regulations more consistently, thereby reducing ambiguity, improving compliance tools, and making it easier to spot conflicts or inefficiencies in complex rule systems.
But we also argue there’s an important boundary: computation can help implement and analyze rules, but it should not be treated as the source of their legitimacy or meaning.
“The ultimate decisions … cannot be made legitimate by computer analysis alone.”
In other words, making regulations more “computable” can improve transparency and administration, but deciding what the rules should be remains a fundamentally human and political responsibility.
The entire post is here.