Victor Miller wants a dream job. He’s running for mayor but doesn’t want to do any of the stuff the job would entail. So he’s putting himself forward as a figurehead only – the city would actually be run by an AI-powered chatbot.
Miller, 42, wants to be elected mayor of Cheyenne, the capital of Wyoming, with a population of around 64,000. The city isn’t exactly small, so the job would require his full attention.
Not to worry, Miller, a librarian, says. If he wins, he will unleash a ChatGPT-powered chatbot called VIC, short for Virtual Integrated Citizen, to run Cheyenne.
Technically speaking, Miller is the one on the ballot. But in public, the man wears a portable Bluetooth speaker around his neck with a built-in microphone so that VIC can receive questions, process them, and respond – just like the actual ChatGPT app.
What would Miller do? Yes, walk around with a speaker and sign documents VIC tells him to sign. His campaign slogan is simple: “AI for mayor.”
If you think this is all a joke – Miller has no experience in politics and could indeed think that signing documents and attending various events is all it takes – think again.
Miller became interested in AI when he began using ChatGPT in his personal life and now believes the technology would be a great tool for running a mid-size American city like Cheyenne.
“AI would be objective. It wouldn’t make mistakes. It would read hundreds of pages of municipal minutiae quickly and understand them. It would be good for democracy,” Miller is quoted in a glorious story about his campaign by The Washington Post.
Miller actually presented his ideas in his library, and the questions by the great people of Cheyenne were hilarious. One wanted to know whether “the computer system in city hall” was sufficient to handle AI, and another asked: “If elected, would you take a pay cut?”
On a more serious note, Miller – if he’s for real – is wrong in thinking that AI chatbots do not make mistakes. They indeed like to provide wrong answers, and one would think that a hallucinating AI chatbot would efficiently run a town is actually a terrible idea.
“It is hard for me to talk about the ‘risks’ of having an AI mayor,” said Arvind Narayanan, a Princeton computer science professor quoted in that fantastic Washington Post story about the situation.
“It’s like asking about the risks of replacing a car with a big cardboard cutout of a car. Sure, it looks like a car, but the ‘risk’ is that you no longer have a car.”
OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, had actually shut down Miller’s account, citing policies against using the chatbot for campaigning. But he quickly made a second bot, which allowed him to hold the event in the library as planned.
The primary election is taking place on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the polls show that Cheyenne will probably decide to keep a human mayor in place – both the incumbent and the runner-up in the last election are running again.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are markedmarked