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Authored by Andrew Singer via CoinTelegraph.com,

Artificial intelligence could soon be governing a city in the United States — at least if one American mayoral candidate has his way.

Victor Miller recently threw his hat into the ring for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming, pledging to manage the 65,000-person city exclusively with a generative AI bot he built himself — called VIC, or Virtual Integrated Citizen.

He argued that it could quickly scan heaps of municipal documents, summarize events and render error-free judgments in near real-time. Its rulings would also be objective — without fear of favor or influence from lobbyists — which would be good for democracy.

Tech-savvy Wyoming is arguably the most crypto-friendly state in the United States, so maybe it’s fitting that its capital city also has the first AI political candidate.

AI governance is “highly irresponsible”

However, some scientists and even AI practitioners are aghast at the prospect of outsourcing local government to an AI-enhanced bot.

Even if the AI bot’s decisions were accurate, there would still be non-routine cases brought to City Hall that are beyond the realm of a bot’s training data.

Often these involve unique individual cases, the sort that have traditionally been settled by courts and lawyers. That shouldn’t change, in Sejnowski’s opinion.

Still, in his view, some low-risk government functions could safely be taken over by generative AI software programs, such as processing social assistance claims or renewing licenses and permits (drivers, hunting, fishing, firearms, etc.).

Also, tax calculation and collection, “and any other transactional function of government where there isn’t a risk of physical harm or injury,” Cardarelli added.

Is candidate Miller for real?

So, what is one to make of Cheyenne mayoral candidate Miller? Is this all just an election gimmick?

According to a Washington Post interview with the candidate, Miller sees himself as a path-breaker for the “untapped potential of artificial intelligence in government.”

His light-bulb moment occurred this spring when the city “erroneously” denied him a public records request, a decision later reversed. But an AI bot might not have made that initial mistake, he reasoned.

“I started wondering if AI would make a better mayor than any human,” Miller told the Washington Post. He created a program using ChatGPT 4.0 and “fed it city ordinances and related documents. He found that the bot could swiftly recall public-records laws and make decisions on issues like funding new city construction or fixing potholes,” reported the newspaper.

Miller campaigning. Source: Morning Brew

“This incident in Wyoming seems to be testing the frontiers of local regulation,” Valerie Wirtschafter, an AI researcher at the Brookings Institution, told the Post.

Elsewhere, Eyal Darmon, North American public service generative AI lead for IT consulting firm Accenture, has said that AI really could make a difference in governments around the world.

Indeed, more than 50% of government activities could one day be “disrupted” by generative AI, he told Government Technology.

“AI is not there yet”

Is Miller really on to something, then?

Chris Rothfuss, an engineer by training, is the senate minority leader of the Wyoming State Legislature. He also co-chairs the legislature’s Select Committee on Blockchain, Financial Technology and Digital Innovation Technology.

Not long ago, Rothfuss and other members of the select committee attended an AI workshop at Stanford University to learn more about AI and government.

Other local and state governments are now experimenting with AI models, including projects in which the computer algorithm would be the final decision-maker.

These included decisions that could harm an individual’s welfare, such as whether to shut off Medicare or Medicaid payments.

These rulings were being made automatically by a bot, with no final review by a human being.

AI eliminates errors and makes faster decisions

But that doesn’t mean that bringing AI into the mayor’s office is necessarily a bad idea — just that it shouldn’t be alone in the office, i.e., it should assist the elected Mayor and others.

Summarizing long documents such as “municipal minutiae” for human users “would certainly create manifold improvements in efficiency,” said Cardarelli. Also, writing presentations and documentation materials, briefing notes, meeting minutes, summarized video calls and so on.

It could also lead to fewer errors in local government — the sort that outraged candidate Miller. “We know that there is a wide degree of variability of output when humans conduct this work,” said Cardarelli. That is not the case with AI, which is very consistent with this kind of work.

High-risk decisions — the sort AI should be kept away from — comprise only 20% of local government, roughly speaking, while the other 80% is administrative and ripe for disruption, in Cardarelli’s estimation, adding:

AI as a social worker

One strength of the modern age is that waves of innovation spread quickly around the world.

Regarding AI and local governance, the city of Sydney, Australia, is using AI to enhance the review process for Complying Development Certificates. The city can receive as many as 30,000 applications a year, and in the past, the review process “was marred by inconsistencies and delays,” reported law firm DLA Piper, adding:

Elsewhere, the transport department in the Australian state of New South Wales is exploring the use of AI to develop “real-time diagnostics of road conditions, paving the way for proactive maintenance.”

Indeed, many have yet to appreciate the sheer breadth of local or state government functions that could be eventually improved by AI. “One that may not come to mind is social services, where empathy is needed,” said Sejnowski, adding:

Rothfuss would oppose using AI as final authority for any decision that could potentially cause human suffering, like cutting off the gas to a person’s house. Those sorts of orders will always require human review. By comparison, a decision whereby an individual gains something, like a reduction in a tax assessment, could be fully automated at some point, according to the state senator.

Need for AI regulation

Sejnowski observed that the Industrial Revolution created tools that greatly enhanced our physical power. The information age has magnified our cognitive power manyfold. “In both cases, people have to decide how to use the tools.”

That’s really the nub of the problem. “The tools can also be misused, so we need to regulate them,” Sejnowski explained. So maybe the questions about AI and government need to be reframed along the lines of, “Ask not what AI can do for you, but what you can do to make AI safer,” he told Cointelegraph.

“But at the end of it, we could reasonably expect to find ourselves with a new kind of government that is more democratic because it is efficient, effective and fair,” he said.