An AI Chatbot running to become a mayor in Wyoming with a human serving as its 'humble meat avatar'

An AI Chatbot is running to become Mayor of a Wyoming city with a human serving only as its “humble meat avatar”.

Artificial intelligence is one of the most rapidly growing areas of technology to emerge in recent years and it’s already having an effect on the world we live in.

The technology may soon be making the governing decisions of the city of Cheyenne, the capital city of Wyoming, as it is running in the mayoral race.

It comes as 42-year-old librarian Victor Miller is running for the job, but has said he will let a ChatGPT-powered chatbot called VIC (an acronym of Virtual Integrated Citizen) make the decisions for him if he wins.

Miller explained he would be the AI’s “humble meat avatar” who would essentially be there to sign documents and be the human face of the technology. Meanwhile, Miller has been seen wearing a portable Bluetooth speaker around his neck so its built-in microphone can pick up questions and respond through VIC, the chatbot.

Despite having no prior experience in politics, Miller claims his attempt at running for mayor with the help of AI is not a stunt, but is based on his belief that the technology would perform better due to its ability to process large amounts of information very quickly.

However, AI is far from infallible and a chatbot even lost Google $100bn from its company value after it gave a factually incorrect answer which was spotted by users.

“It is hard for me to talk about the ‘risks’ of having an AI mayor,” Arvind Narayanan told the Washington Post. “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.”

It seems the 64,000 population of Cheyenne don’t have much to worry about, as it’s not thought Miller and “VIC” have much chance of winning. They go up against the incumbent mayor and the runner-up from the last election.

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