Brian Barrett: I do need to say for those who love creative company spellings, that’s Kukun, K-U-K-U-N.
Leah Feiger: No.
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, it is.
Brian Barrett: It is. So they’re claiming this AI exemption, right? They’re saying like, “Oh, we can’t possibly release these to you because it was AI, and AI is exempted from FOIA,” which is not the case. But I guess a two-parter, Leah, what are the implications of that? Are we seeing it beyond HUD or other agencies going to embrace this? And what’s the next step? Do we go to the courts with this? Not we, but do people go to the courts with this to fight this?
Leah Feiger: I mean, great question. Probably. If this is information that the American public wants to know, if this is information that Democracy Forward decides is worth their time, there is no AI exemption under FOIA. AI talking to people and AI talking to each other is not privileged communications, which is the argument that was being made here. There are no laws in the US that require the government to disclose if AI has been used in the creation of rules, policies, or regulation. And so simultaneously, a FOIA like this is the only way that you would find out. And saying that there is this AI exemption then just creates an entire black box.
Zoë Schiffer: I would say also that it’s not just how they used the tools, but how the tools made the decisions that they made, because anyone who’s used AI agents at all knows that you can’t just say, “Identify regulations that we should potentially do X, Y, Z too.” You have to give them a lot of context. And then even then it’s very important to interrogate the tools and say, “How did you make that decision?” So you can understand what the AI is taking into account and what it’s ignoring? These tools are not completely neutral. They are built by humans. They have biases baked in. And I would sincerely hope, but I don’t have that much hope, that DOGE was looking at all of that and not just unleashing AI on these systems willy-nilly.
Leah Feiger: 100 percent.
Brian Barrett: Zoë, how much hope do you actually—
Zoë Schiffer: Yeah, no.
Leah Feiger: The last thing I want to leave you guys with of this too is that Lang Mac of the aforementioned property technology startup Kukun, he’s now the executive director of deregulation AI at the Office of Management and Budget, which falls under the executive office of the president, according to his LinkedIn. So it’s not like this person has now disappeared into obscurity and his decisionmaking—or we actually don’t know a ton about his decisionmaking, because they won’t tell us. It gets to continue being in this black box, which is again, just to say that it very much felt like DOGE swept in and swept out in the same wave of the year, but that’s really not the case. The people that got very involved and entrenched these policies from the beginning are still not just in government but officially in government, entrenched, serious roles, pay scales, etc. And it’s a story we’re paying really, really close attention to. And big ups to our senior reporter, Vittoria Elliot, for staying in the weeds on this for us.
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