"Using machine learning to understand these rules helps decode the DNA of environmental policy," said author Joseph Shapiro, an associate professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley. "We can finally understand what the Clean Water Act actually protects."

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Yikes. We mere humans pass some regulation and then AI steps in to tell us what the scope of that regulation is. The machines have final word? No, not literally, we are "free" to ignore the AI advice.

But, as we have learned, to ignore science can get you branded a heretic, so it safer career wise for politicians, regulators, and scientists to agree with the wise AI. Not only safer, but satisfying when the wise AI is recommending something you want anyway.

eg, Wise AI analyzes infinite information and concludes that beef is bad and eating bugs is better for your diet and for the environment. Ears perk up at the World Health Org and the WEF and at Biden's FDA and CDC, let the regulation making proceed. Wise AI has said "bugs not beef" and AI is science....

We are crossing the Rubicon and the other shore is the lands of our AI overlords and is in sight.