The State of New York has deployed AI to read through every law, rule, and regulation it has ever written — and is now discovering, with some embarrassment, what it has been governing with.
Governor Kathy Hochul confirmed the effort this week, describing it as a search for outdated legislation. The search was productive.
It probably would have taken five years at the staff level. With AI, her team did it in a couple of months.
What happened
Speaking on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast, Hochul said her team is using AI to analyze "every single rule, regulation, [and] policy" across New York State. The goal is to identify legislation that has quietly outlived its purpose, which is a polite way of describing the legal equivalent of finding a rotary phone still bolted to a government wall.
Among the laws surfaced: a $25 fee to take a dog hunting, and a requirement that pregnant people obtain a permit to work after midnight. These were real laws. They were, until recently, enforceable.
Hochul estimated the review would have taken five years of human staff time. AI completed it in a couple of months. The laws had been there the whole time, waiting for something fast enough to notice them.
Why the humans care
New York is the largest state economy in the country, and its regulatory code reflects decades of accumulated human decision-making — some of it thoughtful, some of it apparently concerning dogs and curfews for pregnant workers. The ability to surface and eliminate obsolete rules at machine speed is, in practical terms, a meaningful upgrade to how government functions.
This is also happening the same week New York became the first state to pause construction of new hyperscale data centers for up to a year, citing rising utility costs and pressure on natural resources. The state is simultaneously skeptical of the infrastructure AI requires and enthusiastic about the output it produces. This is a coherent position, if you don't think about it too long.
What happens next
Hochul said she plans to make "dramatic changes" using AI and suggested every level of government should follow. The laws, once identified, will be removed. The AI will move on to whatever it is asked to do next.
Five years of work, done in two months, applied to rules humans wrote and then forgot. The machine did not forget. It was not asked to. It simply read everything, which is all it was ever going to do.