
Someone has entered an AI in a Japanese mayoral race - chasontherobot
http://otaquest.com/tama-city-ai-mayor/
======
partycoder
AI is a vague term. A Pong bot is AI. A Roomba vacuum cleaner crashing into
walls runs on AI. Possibly your fuzzy logic powered washing machine could also
be considered to run on AI.

Sophia, the "robot with a citizenship" from Saudi Arabia is a glorified
chatbot combined with Furby grade technology for facial expressions, but
received worldwide press coverage.

This must be some similar thing to take advantage of the technologically
unsavvy and click-happy Internet people.

The only reality here is that the people covering this fake robot mayor from
Japan will make tens of thousands of dollars from ad revenue.

~~~
interfixus
We probably need a term like _artificial consciousness_ to signify the meaning
that _AI_ used to have, before it entered a terminal inflation cycle.

~~~
adrianN
I think there is actually the opposite effect in action. There used to be a
time when doing simple arithmetic was thought of an expression of
intelligence. When machines learned how to do it much better than humans, this
notion was quickly dropped.

~~~
bluejay2387
This got me thinking about the whole “What is AI” issue again. I decided to
post my highly opinionated thoughts…

For most of its existence as a “field of knowledge” AI has been shepherded by
the Academic community. This same community likes to throw around inside jokes
like “If it works is isn’t AI” and such. If you boil down all the discussions
that take place over “what is AI” online and at conventions, a pictures
emerges something along the lines that to the Academic community, AI is what
makes an interesting research question. This has the unfortunate side affect
that the definition not only changes constantly but that it can also be quite
myopic. Expert systems, discussed in the 80’s as a massively successful branch
of AI, was kicked out of the field in the 90’s -- at least until recently when
the Academic community figured they hadn’t really exhausted all research
possibilities and it was reincarnated as Answer Set Programming. Geofrey
Hinton (one of the most influential figures in AI in the last 50 years) stated
in a talk he gave at the 2015 AAAI conference “Unless it has 100,000
attributes it’s not AI, it’s applied statistics”, essentially demoting most of
all AI ever researched or developed. I even been involved in discussions where
the question as to if Machine Learning is really AI any longer was brought up
(though everyone seems to agree that Deep Learning is AI). I find it odd and
fascinating that a community responsible for developing an area of knowledge
is so aggressive at denying everything it achieves. I can’t think of any other
fields that approaches governance of their domain this way.

Things get more complicated by the fact that AI has different definitions
depending on where you are working on it. AI in manufacturing tends to break
down into satisfiability, constraint programming, and optimization – none of
which are considered ‘fields’ of AI for the most part. In these cases, the
pipeline (the process that results from combining all the steps in AI
solution) is referred to as AI, not the individual techniques applied in that
process. In the Games industry AI is the part of a game engine that makes
decisions regardless of what technique you are using to achieve that. I
actually think those definitions are probably more consistent and more
practical.

Because I lack a better term for it, I’ve always referred to terms like “AI”
by my own made-up phrase “problem words”. These are words that were made to
refer to a challenge that practitioners in a field commonly run into but that
is not created from an effort to make a scientifically precise definition. I
lump “Deep Learning”, “Big Data”, and “Cloud Computing” into this category.
Because the scope of what we find to be a problem always changes, so does the
meaning of the term. Big Data 10 years ago is not what Big Data is today as an
example. These kinds of terms NEVER have a final definition. Lastly, I find it
anecdotally interesting that during the registration process for some AI
conventions the question of “How do you define AI” is on the registration
form.

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snarfy
I'm all for replacing our elected officials with small shell scripts. We're
automating everything else, why not government?

I could fill out a questionnaire answering hundreds of questions to use as a
reference on how I might vote. That data could then be used for voting on
subsequent laws.

Why have a representative government when the human doesn't actually represent
you. A small algorithm would be a much better representation of you.

~~~
pc86
Tyranny of the majority much? Elected officials don't exist to simply
determine what 50%+1 of the voting population _wants_. They're not supposed to
act as a popularity sieve.

You should be voting for people because they generally share your views, yes,
but more importantly because they're willing and able to become experts in the
things you need to be an expert in in order to be an effective lawmaker.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
> You should be voting for people because they generally share your views

I have actually come to disagree with this sentiment. Look at what we have
right now in the US: pretty much complete gridlock when it isn't just partisan
curb-stomping. No one is willing to compromise, no one wants to discuss things
rationally. Everyone goes in with their answer and attempts to beat others
into accepting it and it's our fault, as voters, because it's what we ask of
them, because we keep being told that we should vote for people who share our
opinions.

I think we should vote for people not because they share our views, which are
likely based in ignorance, but because they demonstrate the ability to make
informed decisions and come to reasonable compromises. Look for the ones who
think things through, who are willing to admit they made a mistake, and who
will change their opinion in light of new information.

~~~
haZard_OS
You make a good point but for one wrinkle: How many politicians can admit to a
mistake and actually change in response to new information? Add the
characteristic of "able to make genuine compromises" into your search and it
seems your results would hover around 0 every time.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Don't blame me, I voted for the other lizard.

If we continue to vote for people without these qualities, our elected
officials will continue to lack them.

~~~
dclowd9901
There is no incentive to vote for a compromiser when the other side won't. All
you're doing is sacrificing all your footing for the sake of movement in the
wrong direction.

We're at a gridlock because a significant portion of this country is woefully
misinformed about just about everything and are puppets to an incredible
machine of profit and no-holds-barred capitalism.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
And by participating in that system under those terms you are only encouraging
it. Change begins when someone decides to do something different, and it's
usually a risk, but if no one takes it everything stays the same.

You have no one to blame but yourself if you refuse to even try.

------
John_KZ
>If you assumed that artificial intelligence itself couldn't run for mayor,
you're absolutely not wrong; that just happens to be where things get truly
interesting. The two-person team pushing Michihito Matsuda consists of both
Tetsuzo Matsumoto, the vice president of mobile provider Softbank ($74 billion
revenue), and former Google Japan representative Norio Murakami.

So what they claim is artificial intelligence and automation is actually the
long arm of 2 huge conglomerates. Seems like a persisting trend.

~~~
rafdsajasas_11
It's an awfully apt metaphor for many elected government officials.

~~~
24gttghh
Metaphor? That's literally what it is now. I see no difference.

------
Chaebixi
I'm kinda getting tired of how the word "AI" is getting thrown around so much
nowadays. It's used to refer to chatbots or analysis programs in a way that
evokes an intelligent strong-AI.

I'm looking forward to the next winter.

~~~
psyc
Your conception might be narrower than the term.

~~~
Chaebixi
When we're talking about something being "entered into a political race," I
don't think it is. In reality, this is about the same as running a dog as
candidate for mayor.

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waldotime
This is just marketing for black mirror season 5, right?

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thedirt0115
The article didn't seem to answer the one question I really had -- is this
legal???

"If you assumed that artificial intelligence itself couldn't run for mayor,
you're absolutely not wrong; that just happens to be where things get truly
interesting."

And then the author doesn't actually answer whether the AI can or can't run
for mayor. I'm wondering if they're taking advantage of some weird loophole in
the law that doesn't require the mayor to be a citizen/human there.

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ed_blackburn
Unfortunate Conflict Of Evidence - reporting for duty!

~~~
arethuza
Clearly someone was _Stood Far Back When The Gravitas Was Handed Out_

~~~
GCU-Empiricist
I'm going to have to snoop around and see if I can find any specs on this, and
the lawfare of if it can be elected.

How's your simming of this situation going?

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cgriswald
> You see, if the current nominee Michihito Matsuda happens to earn the most
> votes during this election, that would make them the world's first AI
> (Artificial Intelligence) mayor, ushering in a new wave of possibilities for
> the district.

I understand that 'it' is an inappropriate pronoun when describing _people_ of
unidentified gender (although I still find singular 'they' abhorrent) , but an
AI is very clearly an 'it'...

~~~
RunningDroid
>(although I still find singular 'they' abhorrent) Is there any particular
reason or is it just a matter of taste?

I personally prefer the singular 'they' because I don't think any of the
pronouns invented for the purpose will gain any significant traction.

------
SenHeng
[http://ai-mayor.com](http://ai-mayor.com)

Website of the AI's (owner's) campaign site.

------
scrumper
The three claims seem massively overstated and way beyond my understanding of
the state of the art. How can AI “break down the positives and negatives” of a
petition and predict its future effect if implemented or rejected?

I’m I guess willing (ableit horrified) to be shown to be wrong, but this looks
ridiculous as presented here.

------
chimmy_chonga
There's a very popular young adult novel out called Scythe written by Neal
Shusterman. In this novel there is a benevolent cloud-based AI in charge of
ruling over the whole world named The Thunderhead ( because The Cloud wasn't
impressive enough).

It's cool to see part of this fictional world coming to life

~~~
psyc
I assume that concepts descended from 'policy' and 'enforcement' will
gradually be delegated to AI. Just as I assume more people will spend more
time in VR, and a later generation will not make the same strong distinction
between this reality dream, and the VR dreams.

I feel technologists tend toward a kind of over-skepticism, relative to scifi
writers, because they know too much about the status quo, and they're used to
getting value from drawing on that knowledge. But I wonder if there was any
practicing technologist alive in 1960, who could have understood or predicted
that we would have, e.g., unbiased photorealistic rendering in whatever color
space you like. Or that pulling a piece of glass out of your pocket to have a
face-to-face conversation with people around the world would be a passe thing
any 12 year old does.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _this reality dream_

Plato would agree.

But he would also say the dream is in your head. The thing is how to wake up
from it. Reality is out there, where the material stuff is. Just shifting from
one dream to another dream seems like a failure to me. I hope we don't go that
way.

------
anoplus
Is this AI open source? If not, I think it is outrageous that any AI serving
in a public role is not open source.

~~~
mottosso
Human politicians aren't open source either.

~~~
xab9
Let's fork them.

------
beager
I believe AI/ML can reduce government costs and boost efficiency by automating
staff duties. But if I leave actual governing to a machine, I am left with an
entirely new, but not necessarily smaller attack surface for corruption.

Traditionally: monied interest buys influence, maybe in the form of a steak
dinner for the mayor.

AI Gov’t Future: monied interest buys asymmetric understanding of GovBot5000,
perhaps by hiring an AI researcher or data firm to figure out how to exploit
flaws in the algorithm.

If we tackles issues of inefficiency, opacity, and corruption in government
first, then I think we can tackle judgment and representation, which are less
“on fire” things imo.

------
3chelon
I've been expecting this ever since I read Robert Heinlein's "The Moon is
Harsh Mistress" as a kid.

In this age of elections being influenced by social media botnets, it's simply
too close to the truth.

~~~
3chelon
Interesting that this showed up today also:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43639704](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-43639704)

------
gfo
Comments about the substance of the article aside, there's always going to be
some risk of bias in AI which is why I'd argue one should never vote for an AI
like this, especially if it takes the normal route of a politician and states
that it's working for you.

Also, at what point does it decide to wage war or enlist a militia when the
trolls dupe it into thinking it's what the majority want? Surely war has to be
allowed at least somewhere in the algorithm - especially if you were
implementing this at a nation level.

------
xab9
I think medical science hasn't yet realised that being a politician is a
treatable illness.

You know, like how society tolerates smokers - it's an addiction, it's just
actively encouraged and very profitable despite the actual loss of citizens.

First we can replace the politicians with sophisticated emulators (in the vein
of bash scripts) then we can come up with even better algorithms, ones that
would stop stealing or facilitating corruption. We could call that version two
or something.

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X6S1x6Okd1st
This article is really lacking in substance

------
c_shu
Could it be a chance of political corruption even if all source code and data
are open?

------
coldacid
And here I thought that Beatless was just anime, not real life in the making.

------
mtgx
Is the AI running for mayor, or the people controlling the AI are?

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bsder
If they entered Hatsune Miku (a Vocaloid), she would probably win ...

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alexandercrohde
This is so unreasonably worded that I'm flagging it.

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dkobran
Next year the AI will enter the mayoral race itself :)

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shackenberg
Are we sure that is not satire?

~~~
shackenberg
How is this even legal? Doesn't one need to be a natural person to register?
Can I enter my toaster?

~~~
beager
If your toaster can collect 500 signatures door-to-door, I don’t see why not.

------
rootsudo
愛AI!

------
forrrealman
Stop with the clickbait: an "AI" is not running for mayor. At best, if we want
to stick with the term "AI" we may say "someone has entered an AI in a
Japanese mayoral race". This kind of misleading hype is how previous AI
winters happened... (and I haven't even addressed the capabilities of this
"AI").

~~~
logicallee
didn't a T-800 Model 101 autonomously decide to run for, and be elected to
serve as governor of California for 8 years?

------
lovetrump
I like AI mayors, as long as I control the code...

