Environmental impact assessments seem to be long documents that have to discuss various effects that focus more on quantity than quality. How easy would it be for them to be automated?
Environmental impact assessments seem to be long documents that have to discuss various effects that focus more on quantity than quality. How easy would it be for them to be automated?
I bet GPT-4 could already do a lot of this work, perhaps with some fine-tuning and/or careful prompt engineering.
The problem with automating compliance documents is not just the time/effort to prepare them. It’s also the time spent waiting to get a response, and in some cases, “user fees” paid to the government to review them. If everyone started using GPT to do compliance, I suspect that the various agencies would just start to build up an ever-growing backlog of un-reviewed applications, until they’re all like immigration and they have decade-long wait times.
Also, if GPT-4 raises the “productivity” of environmental impact statement, my guess is that they could only increase productivity so long as there is not broad awareness and acceptance of the technology in writing the statements. If GPT-4 becomes the standard in writing statements, then expectations for the length and breadth of the statements have the potential to rise as well.