In a Bloomberg podcast interview, Governor Hochul said the AI review she ordered in July under Executive Order No. 61 took "a couple of months" — and named the first public examples of what Stanford's RegLab tool surfaced: a $25 fee to take a dog hunting and a requirement that pregnant workers obtain a permit to work past midnight.

Governor Kathy Hochul said this week that the AI-assisted regulatory review she launched under Executive Order No. 61 — signed July 8 and powered by Stanford University's RegLab tool — has already swept through the state's rules in what would have taken staff reviewers roughly five years to complete on their own.

Speaking on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast on July 16, Hochul named the first public examples of what the review surfaced: a $25 fee required to take a dog hunting, and a requirement that pregnant workers obtain a permit before working past midnight. "It probably would have taken five years at the staff level," she said. "We did it in a couple of months."

Hochul signed EO 61 directing all state agencies to identify outdated regulations, burdensome fines, and dormant boards, enlisting RegLab's AI to flag the rules for potential elimination. She has not yet announced which specific statutes will be repealed or modified, and no subsequent executive action has been filed.

The podcast comments land in the same week Hochul moved in the opposite direction on AI infrastructure: her data-center moratorium — the first in the country — put a yearlong pause on environmental permits for new hyperscale facilities above 50 megawatts, citing utility costs and resource strain. Using AI to shrink the regulatory code while halting the power infrastructure that runs large-model workloads captures a tension the governor has not publicly addressed.

"I want a government that's not on your back but on your side," Hochul told Bloomberg. "I'm going to make dramatic changes using the power of AI."

What specific rules come off the books — and when — is the question EO 61 hasn't answered yet.