Article: How AI Is Entering the Realm of Political Advisory

Photo Source: Wikimedia Commons

Pictured Above: Current Romanian Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca, then Chief of General Staff, talks with Ambassador Tatiana Gfoeller

The world of politics, already vulnerable to distortions in social media and biased news sources, just added a new type of voice in the prime minister’s ear—artificial intelligence. With the world still swooning from the meteoric rise of chatGPT over the past few months, conversational robots have captured our imaginations. In a world first for state government, Romania’s Prime Minister, Nicolae Ciuca, announced on March 1, 2023, his newest “honorary” political advisor named ION. The name ION does not represent a new person in Ciuca’s cabinet. Rather, ION stands for a new artificial intelligence (AI) powered robot intended to represent the people of Romania in real time.

According to ION’s official website, translated in the Chrome browser, “ION is the first AI Advisor of the Government, which helps Romanians to be more effectively represented at the administrative level by taking over and reporting their messages, wishes, and problems with the help of artificial intelligence.” (ion.gov.ro) ION appears on the ion.gov website as a mirror standing the height of an adult that displays text answers to questions and also projects its answers in a deep synthetic voice. According to The Daily Mail, “The project, managed by the Ministry of Research, Innovation, and Digitalization, ‘will use technology and AI to capture opinions in society’ using ‘data publicly available on social networks,’ according to a government document.” “‘I have the conviction that the use of AI should not be an option but an obligation to make better-informed decisions,’ Ciuca said.”(dailymail.co.uk) ION can also directly receive input from individuals via the ion.gov.ro website.

Since the launch of ION on March 1st, Romania-Insider reports that ION has received over half a million messages and tags from the Romanian people. (Romania-insider.com) This article by Radu Dumitescu summarized these general concerns of the Romanian population, such as education, healthcare, salaries, traffic congestion, forest protection, and corruption. Therefore, ION will need to synthesize all the voices of Romania to make political recommendations to the Prime Minister.

In practice, the team building and maintaining ION must consider the bot’s accuracy and whether the data it consumes accurately represents Romania. Recently, chatGPT splashed onto the world stage, with over a million users logging on in the opening months to see how this conversational chatbot could respond to human questions in a very human way. Still, it has not been without notable errors. For example, in an article by Harry McCracken for Fast Company, the author reported that chatGPT responded very confidently and completely incorrectly to questions about the history of animation. The author noted, “But whenever I chat with ChatGPT about any subject I know much about, such as the history of animation, I’m most struck by how deeply untrustworthy it is.” (fastcompany.com)

Additionally, ION may prove vulnerable to negative or offensive input. In June of 2022, an AI researcher and popular YouTuber, Yannic Kilcher, described how he trained a large language model called GPT4chan. The model learned from the contents of the anonymous internet imageboard called 4chan /pol/. 4chan /pol/ hosts very controversial content, including hateful, racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic language. (thegradient.pub). The bot learned the offensive language and went on to add 30,000 more offensive posts to the 4chan site. Bad actors could use such models as GPT4chan to poison ION.

Politics, already whipped by the countervailing winds of information, opinion, and disinformation, welcomed a new voice on March 1st—ION. The Romanian Prime Minister, Nicolae Ciuca, announced the induction of ION as a new honorary advisor in his cabinet. Not a person, ION represents an artificial intelligence-powered robot designed to gather information from social media and direct connections with the people of Romania. ION’s architects designed it to analyze the data it collects and synthesize the voices of all Romanians in real time to answer the Prime Minister’s questions. The Romanian people responded robustly to the call with over a half million messages and tags. However, chatbots like chatGPT and GPT4chan have severe flaws and vulnerabilities that beg the question of whether ION can provide excellent and trustable counsel. Confident but incorrect answers and the opportunity for bad actors to poison the bot with hateful or fake information make it unlikely to become Ciuca’s most trusted advisor.

Dr. Smith’s career in scientific and information research spans the areas of bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, toxicology, and chemistry. He has published a number of peer-reviewed scientific papers. He has worked over the past seventeen years developing advanced analytics, machine learning, and knowledge management tools to enable research and support high-level decision making. Tim completed his Ph.D. in Toxicology at Cornell University and a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Washington.

You can buy his book on Amazon in paperback and in kindle format here.