Can an AI-powered bot run the city? Wyoming resident Victor Miller thinks so.
Miller, 42, filed paperwork for himself and his customized chatGPT bot, called Virtual Integrated Citizen, or “Wick,” for the mayor in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Miller — who filled out the candidate paperwork with his information as Wick, which is also his nickname — said he planned to serve as a “meat avatar” for the bot. . He'll cut the ribbon while Bott handles decision-making — if he gets past a crowded nonpartisan mayoral primary in August and wins the November election.
But Miller's bid has hit a snag: Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray said it's not legal.
“Wyoming law is very clear that AI is not eligible as a candidate for any office,” Gray, a Republican, said in a radio interview last week, noting that only eligible voters can run for office. can. “An AI bot is not electable.”
Gray added, however, that county officials have the final say on whether Vick is allowed on the ballot. Matt Murphy, a spokesman for the city of Cheyenne, told NBC News in an email that Miller “appeared in person at the city clerk's office to run for mayor and met the legal requirements.”
His request to have his bot name appear on the ballot as “Vic” was forwarded to the Laramie County Clerk's Office, which tracks how candidates are listed on the ballot. The Laramie County Clerk did not respond to a request for comment.
Miller, who works in facilities maintenance and teaches computer skills at the local library, said he got the idea for the botmeyer after he said city officials violated the law by using public records. Denied the request. A bot, he thought, would know the law.
“It knows him well, understands him fully. And if I were dealing with him instead of a poor human being, I would have fulfilled my request according to the law,” he said.
Still, Miller's bot is a work in progress. Miller said that after a recent update the voice had somehow changed from male to female, and started writing his name as “VIC” instead of saying Vic. He said that the latest update to the OpenAI platform was a bit difficult for many people.
Miller said Vick's politics were not entirely clear. The bot favored government transparency, he said, and was likely informed by its own politics as well as OpenAI programmers in Silicon Valley.
“But it's my belief that as they get smarter, they eliminate a lot of those biases, and what we end up with is more intelligence, less bias, and actually, it's a purer , is a data-driven analysis of what's going on in the world,” Miller said.
Asked how he would handle a situation where a bot made a racist decision or told voters to eat rocks, Miller said reports of such biases are old and bots have been updated. So he has no plans to intervene if elected.
But Miller admitted the bid was a bit of a stunt, which AI experts said shouldn't be ignored.
“We have to be mindful of that and not get completely caught up in it and not take it too seriously,” said Carissa Wells, associate professor of philosophy at the Institute for Ethics at the University of Oxford. In England, an AI bot and a candidate named “Steve” are running for parliament this year.
Stunts aside, experts say AI bots are not reliable enough to run a city.
“AI bots are notorious for hallucinating,” said Peter Logue, an associate professor at George Washington University and director of the Project on Ethics in Political Communication. “I asked ChatGPT 3 to review a book I wrote. And the good news is he likes the book. The bad news is someone else wrote it.
Wells said data alone doesn't lead to better decision-making, especially without common sense and real-life experience.
“Part of the value of democracy is to be governed by representatives who are your peers. And AI is not a peer,” he added. “It doesn't know what it's like to be human, it doesn't know what it's like to be evicted from an apartment, or what it's like to do a bad job or what it's like to catch a cold, or any of the situations we want protection from and that We want compassion for other human beings.
It's a problem Vick acknowledged when NBC News asked if a bot could and should run the city.
“I believe an AI like myself, VIC, can effectively run the city by leveraging data-driven insights and advanced technology to enhance decision-making and governance,” Bott said in an interview conducted by Miller. Is.” “However, it is important to recognize that AI should complement human supervision and not completely replace it.”