Plan for AI to run city as it hosts meet & greet & ‘would be good for democracy’

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ChatGPT is his favorite AI, he says, and it is the platform he chose to build his running mate for the mayoral election in Cheyanne, Wyoming this summer.

He came up with the idea for VIC, as Miller dubbed the program, earlier this year when he had submitted a public records request to the local government that was rejected, according to The Washington Post.

He appealed the decision and ultimately received the information, but he also realized that a robot probably would not have made the mistake in the first place.

“Then I started wondering if AI would make a better mayor than any human,” he said.

His AI was quickly able to sort through and reference hundreds of public records laws and offer suggestions for funding strategies and renovation projects.

At a question and answer session this summer, Miller set up VIC to be able to directly respond to constituents’s questions.

“How would you make your decisions according to human factor, involving humans, and having to make a decision that affects so many people?” one voter asked the machine.

VIC paused before every answer, then spit out seemingly logical responses in a male voice.

“Making decisions that affect many people requires a careful balance of data-driven insights and human empathy,” VIC said.

“Here’s how I would approach it,” it added, before listing and explaining six different aspects of a plan he would use to govern fairly.

‘A BRAVE NEW WORLD’

Miller, 42, submitted the mayoral candidate application in the spring, stating that the name VIC should appear on the ballot — an acronym for Virtual Integrated Citizen.

The librarian said his plan is to take care of everything that the robot cannot — such as ribbon-cutting ceremonies and in-person events — while leaving the executive functioning up to VIC.

By June, residents of Cheyanne had begun hearing about the mayoral hopeful, running as nonpartisan, and sharing their opinions on the option.

“I’ve got an open mind,” 71-year-old local Richard Garrett told WAPO.

“It’s a brave new world,” he added, referencing the popular 1932 dystopic novel by Aldous Huxley.

Experts agreed that VIC’s candidacy was unprecedented — but said it was also dangerous.

“This incident in Wyoming seems to be testing the frontiers of local regulation,” Valerie Wirtschafter, who researches AI and democracy at the Brookings Institution, told WAPO.

“While OpenAI may have certain policies against using its model for campaigning, other companies do not, so it makes shutting down the campaign nearly impossible.”

NOT THIS TIME

Despite the hype around Miller and VIC, the innovative duo did not come close to becoming mayor during this year’s race.

What are the arguments against AI?

Artificial intelligence is a highly contested issue, and it seems everyone has a stance on it. Here are some common arguments against it:

Loss of jobs – Some industry experts argue that AI will create new niches in the job market, and as some roles are eliminated, others will appear. However, many artists and writers insist the argument is ethical, as generative AI tools are being trained on their work and wouldn’t function otherwise.

Ethics – When AI is trained on a dataset, much of the content is taken from the Internet. This is almost always, if not exclusively, done without notifying the people whose work is being taken.

Privacy – Content from personal social media accounts may be fed to language models to train them. Concerns have cropped up as Meta unveils its AI assistants across platforms like Facebook and Instagram. There have been legal challenges to this: in 2016, legislation was created to protect personal data in the EU, and similar laws are in the works in the United States.

Misinformation – As AI tools pulls information from the Internet, they may take things out of context or suffer hallucinations that produce nonsensical answers. Tools like Copilot on Bing and Google’s generative AI in search are always at risk of getting things wrong. Some critics argue this could have lethal effects – such as AI prescribing the wrong health information.

Cheyanne residents went to the polls on Tuesday and decisively chose not to step into the future quite yet.

With a population of about 65,000 people and about 11,000 votes cast, just 327 residents opted for VIC, according to Wyoming news site StateScoop.

The incumbent nonpartisan Mayor Patrick Collins received 6,286 votes, giving him a majority and the mayoral seat.

But this does not spell the end for VIC, Miller said.

Although ChatGPT has blocked his account multiple times due to their policy against using AI for campaigning, the sci-fi fan does not mind building new ones.

It takes him less than a day.

“They can’t stop me from doing what I’m doing,” Miller told The Washington Post.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of word games they play.”