Chapter 5 investigates “seamlessly” networked self-tracking tools as symbols of idealized professional mobility and looks to the Quantified Self (QS) as a forum that responds to and registers these business challenges and ambitions. Technologists tend to fetishize frictionless digital mobility. Conversations with digital professionals who participate in forums such as QS, however, indicate that the attractiveness of well-networked devices resonates less with the emerging realities of wearable technology or consumer “needs and wants” (a concern thematized in Chapter 3) than the ideals of lasting and sustainable tech sector careers that are otherwise punctuated by instability and breakdown. These are the additional entrepreneurial desires that motivate the making of self-tracking technology and become embedded in its design. QS also acts as a practical source of mutual aid that facilitates the desired connectivity and agility of working bodies. This chapter thus investigates QS as an interface that reconciles the technological fantasy and its repetitious recital with the difficulties tech executives face in their personal lives and professional work.

Chapter 3 details how business executives have interacted with the Quantified Self (QS) as a site that materializes a particular consumer “segment” and consumer “demand” in ways that accord with the binary and voyeuristic principles of consumer-centric design. QS offers visibility into ways technologists produce the distance they seek to see between themselves and their customers. However, the manner in which they interact with the forum also testifies to the involved role digital professionals frequently play in formulating consumer desire.

The participation of tech executives in collectives such as the Quantified Self (QS) belies their desire to occupy the position of a professional participant observer who is simply looking in on an emerging social scene as though from afar. Chapter 4 looks at the way technologists have leveraged QS to cultivate a professional identity of a digital devotee. In particular, it analyzes how the popular staging of QS as a space for private explorations of self-tracking makes it possible for technologists to recoup their business-driven engagements with the forum as hallmarks of personal – as well as of more general – passion for self-quantification, a display of which has become increasingly necessary for success in the tech sector. Innovation is often enough framed as a product of masculinized heroics and individual acts of daring. Examining QS as an instrument of professional development refocuses attention on the feminized modes of free and affective labor that continue to move the tech industry forward. As these chapters explore the forum both as a mechanism and as a mirror of these professional imperatives, they highlight the knottier role desire plays in the digital economy.

In the conclusion, I consider how the Quantified Self (QS) has evolved since I completed my research in 2017. The composition and social function of this collective have been partially reshaped by its original organizers who have continued to focus group activities on citizen science and academic research. Groups such as QS have also become affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has altered the nature and function of in-person and post-work socializing in the commercial sphere more broadly. Nevertheless, the industry practices, challenges, and promises refracted through the QS interface in this book remain germane as they speak to some of the central dynamics that continue to impact the self-tracking market, if now in a different guise.

This chapter roots the authors' insights about automated legal guidance in a broader examination of why and how to address the democracy deficit in administrative law. As this chapter contemplates the future of agency communications, it also explores in greater detail the possibility that technological developments may allow government agencies not only to explain the law to the public using automated tools but also to automate the legal compliance obligations of individuals. While automated legal compliance raises serious concerns, recent examples reveal that it may soon become a powerful tool that agencies can apply broadly under the justifications of administrative efficiency. As this chapter argues, the lessons learned from our study of automated legal guidance are critical to maintaining values like transparency and legitimacy, as automated compliance expands as a result of perceived benefits like efficiency.

The Conclusion emphasizes the growing importance of automated legal guidance tools across government agencies. It crystalizes the insight that automated legal guidance tools reflect a trade-off between government agencies representing the law accurately and presenting it in accessible and understandable terms. While automated legal guidance tools enable agencies to reach more members of the public and provide them quick and easy explanations of the law, these quick and easy explanations sometimes obscure what the law actually is. The Conclusion acknowledges and accepts the importance of automated legal guidance to the future of governance, and, especially in light of this acknowledgement, recommends that legislators and agency officials adopt the policy recommendations presented in this book.

This chapter explores ways in which administrative law fails to address problems raised by automated legal guidance. Administrative law requires notice-and-comment procedures for so-called legislative rules, or rules that bind agencies and the public. Other, less binding agency statements regarding the law, including, for instance, statements that offer an agency’s interpretation of the law or its enforcement policy, are subject to lesser procedural requirements. This chapter examines how this blind spot in the administrative law framework mirrors a broader democracy deficit in administrative law. Strikingly, this area of law, the purpose of which is to mandate that administrative agencies act in certain ways to protect the public, simply fails to address the pervasive, and impactful, ways that agencies often communicate law to people through the types of informal explanations found in automated legal guidance. As this chapter argues, administrative law reflects a bias toward sophisticated parties, rather than the general public.

As Chapter 4 demonstrated, automated legal guidance often enables the government to present complex law as though it is simple without actually engaging in simplification of the underlying law. While this approach offers advantages in terms of administrative efficiency and ease of use by the public, it also causes the government to present the law as simpler than it is, leading to less precise advice and potentially inaccurate legal positions. As the use of automated legal guidance by government agencies is likely to grow in the future, a number of policy interventions are needed. This chapter offers multiple detailed policy recommendations for federal agencies that have introduced, or may introduce, chatbots, virtual assistants, and other automated tools to communicate the law to the public. Our recommendations are organized into five general categories: (1) transparency; (2) reliance; (3) disclaimers; (4) process; and (5) accessibility, inclusion, and equity.

The Introduction presents an overview of the use of automated legal guidance by government agencies. It offers examples of chatbots, virtual assistants, and other online tools in use across US federal government agencies and shows how the government is committed to expanding their application. The Introduction sets forth some of the critical features of automated legal guidance, including its tendency to make complex aspects of the law seem simple. The Introduction previews how automated legal guidance promises to increase access to complex statutes and regulations. However, the Introduction cautions that there are underappreciated costs of automated legal guidance, including that its simplification of statutes and regulations is more likely to harm members of the public who lack access to legal counsel than high-income and wealthy individuals. The Introduction provides a roadmap for the remainder of the book.

This chapter sets forth how government agencies are using artificial intelligence to automate their delivery of legal guidance to the public. The chapter first explores how many federal agencies have a duty not only to enforce the law but also to serve the public, including by explaining the law and helping the public understand how it applies. Agencies must contend with expectations that they will provide customer service experiences akin to those provided by the private sector. At the same time, government agencies lack sufficient resources. The complexity of statutes and regulations significantly compounds this challenge for agencies. As this chapter illustrates, the federal government has begun using virtual assistants, chatbots, and related technology to respond to tens of millions of inquiries from the public about the application of the law.

This chapter illuminates some of the hidden costs of the federal agencies’ use of automated legal guidance to explain the law to the public. It highlights the following features of these tools: they make statements that deviate from the formal law; they fail to provide notice to users about the accuracy and legal value of their statements; and they induce reliance in ways that impose inequitable burdens among different user populations. The chapter also considers how policymakers should weigh these costs against the benefits of automated legal guidance when contemplating whether to adopt, or increase, agencies’ use of these tools.

This chapter describes the results of the authors' research of automated legal guidance tools across the federal government, conducted over a five-year period from 2019 through 2023. The authors first began this study in preparation for a conference on tax law and artificial intelligence in 2019, and were able to expand it significantly, under the auspices of the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS), in 2021. ACUS is an independent US government agency charged with recommending improvements to administrative process and procedure. The goals of this study were to understand how federal agencies use automated legal guidance and to offer recommendations based on these findings. During their research, the authors examined the automated legal guidance activities of every US federal agency. This research found that agencies used automation extensively to offer guidance to the public, albeit with varying levels of sophistication and legal content. This chapter focuses on two well-developed forms of automated legal guidance currently employed by federal agencies: the US Citizenship Immigration Services’ “Emma” and the Internal Revenue Service’s “Interactive Tax Assistant.”