Wyoming mayoral candidate promises to let OpenAI bot rule the capital, but faces backlash from the tech giant

A librarian is running as a nonpartisan candidate mayor of Cheyenne, Wyomingpromises to allow an AI bot created by OpenAI to rule the state capital.

Last month, Laramie County was forced to make the distinction that Victor Miller, a 42-year-old man, would be listed in Tuesday’s primary election among five other candidates running for mayor of Cheyenne and that ” there is no artificial intelligence (AI).” candidate running for office in Laramie County.”

During a recent library meeting, however, Miller stood behind a lectern that read “AI FOR MAYOR,” the Washington Post reported.

Miller told a sparse audience that, if elected, he would run the city solely with an AI robot called “VIC” for “Virtual Integrated Citizen,” according to the Post.

He promised that the AI-based bot would benefit democracy as it could remain objective and error-free and govern more efficiently by processing hundreds of pages of municipal minutiae. After giving a short PowerPoint presentation, Miller stepped away from the podium and asked the bot, operating on his Mac mini and iPad, to answer questions from the audience.

One attendee, holding a wireless microphone, asked whether City Hall’s computer system was sufficient to handle the artificial intelligence, the Post reported. Another person asked, “If elected, would you take a pay cut?”

“How would you make your decisions based on the human factor, involving human beings and having to make a decision that affects so many people?” a third person asked the AI ​​bot.

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The Post reported that after each question, there was a pause before VIC responded in a male-sounding voice.

“Making decisions that affect many people requires a careful balance between data-driven insights and human empathy,” he said. “Here’s how I would approach it,” VIC added, outlining a six-part plan that included using artificial intelligence to collect public opinion data and respond to human voters at town halls.

In June, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray expressed “significant concerns” about VIC appearing on the ballot, given that a qualified voter “must be a real person,” but Cheyenne City Clerk Kristina Jones, which certified Miller’s candidacy in May, insisted that the human man was “still the candidate in the election according to his application” even though Miller “made the decision to receive guidance from an AI bot.”

If he wins the election, Miller told the Post he will attend ribbon-cutting ceremonies and shake hands, but VIC, the AI ​​robot, will serve as executive and decide whether to sign or veto the legislation. Miller envisioned passing information learned at in-person events to the AI ​​chatbot and helping facilitate VIC’s responses to voter emails, the Post reported.

The county’s July 5 statement said Miller, “through countless interviews and media statements, has consistently maintained a distinction between himself as a ‘meat avatar’ and separate from the artificial intelligence program he chooses to call VIC.”

“Allowing VIC to be listed as a candidate would violate Wyoming law and create voter confusion. VIC is not a registered voter,” the statement insists. “Therefore, VIC cannot run for election in Wyoming and his name does not appear on the official Laramie County ballot.”

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Miller initially listed the candidate’s name as VIC on the application. Now Victor Miller would say on the ballot.

But Miller said he will now be called Vic and will refer to the bot as VICTOR, or “Virtual Citizen Integrated, the Official Robot.”

“They can’t stop me from doing what I’m doing. It doesn’t matter what kind of puns they make,” he said. “Artificial intelligence is on the ballot.”

At one point in the interview, Miller asked VIC to answer questions, and the bot said he was against banning the books because of their “educational value,” but recommended a “balanced approach.”

Miller said he first got the idea to have an AI robot run for mayor when the city wrongly denied his public records request for information on police officers’ job descriptions. He said that the artificial intelligence would not have made this mistake. “Then I started wondering if the AI ​​would be a better mayor than any human,” she said.

“If people believe that artificial intelligence will run their city better than human intervention,” Rick Coppinger, one of the five other candidates running against Miller, told the Post, “then we have problems.”

AI experts speaking to the Post warned that chatbots lack morals, could provide misinformation to voters and would have difficulty with subjective choices.

OpenAI initially closed VIC for public operation for violating policies prohibiting the use of AI technology political campaign.

But Miller was still able to use the bot himself. OpenAI subsequently cut off access to Miller’s account altogether. A day before the library presentation, however, Miller was able to create a new ChatGPT account with a different email and created a second custom VIC bot, allowing him to carry out the meeting event as planned, he the Post reported.

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The incident shows that AI technology is evolving faster than efforts to regulate it. OpenAIafter deleting Miller’s first account, he promised to monitor the duplicates but was unable to locate VIC 2.0.

“This incident in Wyoming appears to test the boundaries of local regulation,” Valerie Wirtschafter, who researches artificial intelligence and democracy at the Brookings Institution, told the Post. “While OpenAI may have some policies against using its model for the campaign, other companies don’t, so it makes it nearly impossible to stop the campaign.”

“It’s hard for me to talk about the ‘risks’ of having an AI mayor,” Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University, told the Post. “It’s like asking what the risks are of replacing a car with a large cardboard cutout of a car. Sure, it looks like a car, but the ‘risk’ is that you no longer have a car.”