This year’s UK general election has at least one highly unusual candidate running for office….. “AI Steve.” If elected, it would be the world’s first elected AI politician.
“SmarterUK” is a new AI-powered political party in Britain which has put forward AI Steve as a candidate to fight in next week’s general election to be MP for Brighton and Hove.
The founder of SmarterUK, businessman Steve Endacott, told this site, “SmarterUK wants to reconnect politicians with their constituents using modern technology to create what I call policies for the people, by the people.”
“We have created AI Steve to achieve this goal using the revolutionary new AI Voice platform ‘Neural Voice.’
“AI Steve is better connected to its constituents than traditional MPs, as constituents can access him online from the comfort of their homes 24/7-365 days a year to discuss existing policies and give opinions on policies they would like AI Steve to adopt.”
Endacott added, “People are amazed during their first conversation with AI Steve by how conversational and human-sounding he is, with response times of 0.36 seconds, making him as fast as humans – and much faster than most politicians”.
Although the election strategy team at SmarterUK has set up AI Steve’s initial policies, these, says Endacott, will be expanded by creating a team of 5,000 local “creators” who will chat with AI Steve to create proposed policies for adoption.
All conversations are transcribed and grouped within SmarterUK’s ideas database before being translated into policies using ChatGPT.
All policies are then voted on by 5,000 “validators,” who score them on a scale from 1 to 10 to ensure that only “sensible policies with wider community support” are adopted. Validators also dictate which way their MP should vote in key UK parliamentary debates.
The concept of AI Steve was created by Endacott, a Sussex entrepreneur, who explained, “Having gone to university in Brighton and built a business in the town, I feel a deep attachment and political affiliation with Brighton that simply does not match an area that can select the radical like George Galloway as its MP.
“Although I could attend Parliament from my Brighton home during the week, I felt I would not have enough time for regular interaction with my constituents if I stood in Brighton and Hove.
“Therefore, I turned to the Neural Voice team to help me solve this issue.”
Neural Voice is a new AI platform that, he says, “wraps AI-language models in a deep and unique layer of personalisation.”
This allows the user to create their own voice, rule set and internal database of knowledge that is always referred to before backup is sorted from the knowledge of the internet using tools like ChatGPT.
Jeremy Smith, the CEO of Neural Voice, said, “How many times have we seen flustered MPs without the necessary facts at their fingertips? It’s still to be proven whether AI Steve is smarter than most MPs but I can guarantee he has a better grasp of all the facts and world events”.
SmarterUK also hopes AI Steve will be scandal-proof. He is not allowed to swear, cannot inappropriately touch aides, and cannot drink, making him less likely to make politically incorrect comments.
However, Endacott cautioned, “The technology is still in its infancy, and I’m sure some people will miss the “point” and spend all their time trying to trip it up.
“I personally think it is brilliant and look forward to the connection it will build with potential constituents”.
