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SY Shannon Yavorsky On Software Engineering Daily

“Sadly, no, because AI has a hard time going into the different layers of the state websites, and maybe this will get better. We found that it was not terribly helpful. So AI was actually initially a guy called Dominic sitting in a room figuring out what laws had been enacted. Now it's a little bit more informed by AI, but it's not entirely populated by AI, sadly.”

Software Engineering Daily · Hands-On Engineering Podcasts · October 2026

“Sadly, no, because AI has a hard time going into the different layers of the state websites, and maybe this will get better. We found that it was not terribly helpful. So AI was actually initially a guy called Dominic sitting in a room figuring out what laws had been enacted. Now it's a little bit more informed by AI, but it's not entirely populated by AI, sadly.” — Shannon Yavorsky, Software Engineering Daily

Context

The host asked whether her law firm used AI to build its public tracker of AI laws in effect. The answer is a reversal: tracking AI regulation was done mostly by a person, because AI tools struggle with government websites.

Transcript

Software Engineering Daily Around 43:11 into the episode
Shannon Yavorsky

…Center, and it has a tracker that shows a map of the U.S. and all of the different laws that have gone into effect. So you kind of cut through the noise of all of the AI bills and you just have the laws that are in effect, which frankly, it's still a lot, but it's a lot easier to parse than 1500.

Kevin Ball

Yeah. Well, and it looks like it's filterable by type of scope and searchable and things like that. Now, did you use AI to develop this?

Shannon Yavorsky

It's a really good question. Sadly, no, because AI has a hard time going into the different, and maybe this will get better, but a hard time going into the different layers of the state websites. We found that it was not terribly helpful. So AI was actually initially a guy called Dominic sitting in a room figuring out what laws had been enacted. Now it's a little bit more informed by AI, but it's not entirely populated by AI, sadly.

Kevin Ball

AI in this point, this place being actual intelligence rather than artificial intelligence. Yes. Yeah. You know, these models keep getting better. They're breaking unbreakable math problems, but they still cannot deal with government websites. So if anyone's feeling bad about their ability to…

Shannon Yavorsky

Yeah. So I think where we are now, it's a really interesting moment because the larger political discussion around AI legislation is really changing. So the Biden administration was very focused on developing an AI compliance framework and ensuring that there was AI governance. And day one of the…

Kevin Ball

Yeah, Mythos and Seoul and all these things. Exactly. There's been a change in tune. There's

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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