AI could become a member of the UK Parliament

AI Steve from Neural Voice. Photo: nbcnews.com

In next month's general election, voters in the Brighton Pavilion constituency on the southern coast of England in East Sussex will be able to vote for an artificial intelligence candidate.

According to the NBC News publication, AI Steve, developed by Sussex businessman Steve Endacott, is included on the ballot alongside traditional candidates. This innovation promises to change the way voters interact with political representatives.

Endacott, chairman of Neural Voice, a company that creates personalized AI-based voice assistants, says that AI Steve acts as his "co-pilot".

The Neural Voice technology underpins this artificial intelligence, one of seven characters created by the company to showcase its capabilities. The idea is to use AI to create a "politician" who is always around to to talk with constituents and who can take their views into consideration.

Voters can ask AI Steve questions or share their opinions about Endacott's policies on his website. The large language model will provide responses in both voice and text based on a database of information about his party's policies.

In cases where there is no policy on a specific issue, the AI conducts internet research and then involves voters in formulating proposals.

Endacott is seeking thousands of people, whom he calls "validators", or people he is targeting because he believes they represent the common man — in particular Brighton locals who have a long daily commute.

"We’re asking them once a week to score our policies from 1 to 10. And if a policy gets more than 50%, it gets passed. And that’s the official party policy," Endacott explains.

"I will say that my decision is my voters’ decision. And I’m connected to my voters at any time on a weekly basis via electronic means," he continued.

In 2022, Endacott unsuccessfully ran in local elections as a Conservative Party candidate, receiving fewer than 500 votes. However, this time the unusual nature of his candidacy has sparked discussion on social media, and news of AI Steve's launch prompted about 1,000 calls to his proxy server in one night.

The main concerns of voters, according to these calls, include safety of Palestinians, trash bins, bicycle lanes, immigration, and abortion.

Endacott notes that using AI allows him to respond to thousands of potential participants daily, without resorting to traditional campaigning methods.

"I don’t have to go knock on their door, get them out of bed when they don’t want to talk to me," he says, adding that now people can choose to contact AI Steve "on their own volition and at their convenience."

If elected, AI Steve would become the first AI legislator to make it into public office. However, he is not the first to experiment with new technologies in elections.

In Wyoming, a candidate for mayor of Cheyenne plans to use an AI bot for decision-making, and two years ago, a political party was founded in Denmark on an AI-derived platform.

While the idea of an AI politician may seem strange to some and alarming to others, Endacott emphasizes that his platform is "not a joke."

He rejects the premise that the AI is replacing human politicians, instead insisting that the aim is to bring “more humans” into politics.

"​​It’s not AI taking over the world. It’s AI being used as a technical way of connecting to our constituents and reinventing democracy," he says.

Previously, it was reported that an Israeli startup pays people to rent digital copies of their faces.

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