In effect, an AI chatbot is currently running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming’s capital and largest city. Named VIC by its creator, Victor Miller, the chatbot will be the ballot representative and make all relevant decisions if Miller is elected this November.
As reported by Vittoria Elliott at WIRED:
Victor Miller is running for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and he's making an unusual campaign promise: If elected, he'll: do not have At the helm will be an AI bot: VIC (Virtual Integrated Citizen), a ChatGPT-based chatbot that Miller created that he says has better ideas and understanding of the law than many people currently working in government.
Miller wanted to register his candidacy for mayor with VIC, a name for a chatbot, but decided it would be illegal for a chatbot to run for office itself. He registered under his own name, “Vic,” which is also the name of the bot (VIC recently explained to Miller that the initials can be understood as “Virtual Integrated Citizen”). So while Miller is technically on the ballot, he has pledged that his role will be something like a “meat puppet” or avatar, performing the physical tasks required for the mayoral office (such as physically signing papers, attending various public events, and probably eating copious amounts of shrimp cocktail, cold, chewy spanakopita, and other typical political “function” hors d'oeuvres), except that all policy matters will be decided by the AI chatbot.
Predictably, this has caused a stir in the Wyoming Secretary of State's office. Elliott reports:
“We are monitoring this very closely to ensure uniform application of our election laws,” Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray said in a statement to WIRED. Gray said people running for office must be “qualified electors,” and that “requires a living, flesh-and-blood human being. Therefore, an AI bot is not a qualified elector.” Gray also wrote to the county clerk expressing his concerns about Victoria, suggesting that Miller's application be denied.
As of Friday, the city clerk disagreed with Gray and said it was OK for Vic/Victoria to run for mayor.
Miller may have also violated OpenAI's policies regarding political involvement of AI bots (he did not seek OpenAI's permission to create Vic), but as Elliott points out, those policies target and limit their use for electoral purposes, but do not consider “bot governance.”
According to a report published in the Gillette News-Record yesterday, OpenAI determined that VIC violated its policies, but had not “suspended” VIC at the time of the report. In any case, as Noah Zahn of the Wyoming Tribune Eagle (via the Gillette Record) points out, Miller said that if VIC were to be shut down by OpenAI's ChatGBT, “If ChatGPT shuts him down, he'll probably look for another similar piece of software,” Miller told WIRED, with one such replacement being Meta's Llama 3.
Miller's idea for a bot-led candidacy came after he fought the city over an anonymous records request. The city was denied the records for that reason, but Miller says the public records ombudsman told him the denial was improper. This infuriated Miller, a library employee and “longtime technology enthusiast.” He felt an AI bot could better determine the law, which sparked the idea to run for Victoria mayor, essentially as an avatar for the state.
Elliott reports:
Miller says the bots have a number of advantages over their human competitors. For example, he provided VIC with supporting documents (emails, public records, notices, etc.) from past Cheyenne City Council meetings — there can be hundreds of documents per meeting. By analyzing those documents, Miller says, VIC can make policy recommendations, determine what's important, and decide how the city council should vote.
[***]
When asked if it is aligned with a national political party, VIC responded that it is “non-partisan and focused on data and evidence-based policies that benefit all Cheyenne residents.”
No wonder Wyoming's Secretary of State is concerned.
Miller/VIC's candidacy may seem novel, but it certainly raises some interesting possibilities. For example, how would AI governance respond to social issues and challenges in our country? How would it respond to debates about abortion, climate change, and the effectiveness and usefulness of our criminal justice system? Or foreign policy issues such as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict? Will AI eventually be developed to a point where it can predict the outcome of an election before it even takes place?
“It's crazy, I don't know exactly what goes on behind the scenes with AI, and the more I learn about it, the more it seems like no one really knows,” Miller said.
Of course, we don't know, but it looks like we won't have to wait too long to find out.
Have a wonderful evening everyone!
