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AI Politics

A New Danish Political Party Is Being Led By An AI (vice.com) 99

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Synthetic Party, a new Danish political party with an artificially intelligent representative and policies derived from AI, is eyeing a seat in parliament as it hopes to run in the country's November general election. The party was founded in May by the artist collective Computer Lars and the non-profit art and tech organization MindFuture Foundation. The Synthetic Party's public face and figurehead is the AI chatbot Leader Lars, which is programmed on the policies of Danish fringe parties since 1970 and is meant to represent the values of the 20 percent of Danes who do not vote in the election. Leader Lars won't be on the ballot anywhere, but the human members of The Synthetic Party are committed to carrying out their AI-derived platform.

Leader Lars is an AI chatbot that people can speak with on Discord. You can address Leader Lars by beginning your sentences with an "!". The AI understands English but writes back to you in Danish. Some of the policies that The Synthetic Party is proposing include establishing a universal basic income of 100,000 Danish kroner per month, which is equivalent to $13,700, and is over double the Danish average salary. Another proposed policy change is to create a jointly-owned internet and IT sector in the government that is on par with other public institutions.

The Synthetic Party's mission is also dedicated to raising more awareness about the role of AI in our lives and how governments can hold AI accountable to biases and other societal influences. The party hopes to add an 18th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) to the United Nations SDGs, which are goals relating to issues such as poverty, inequality, and climate change, to be achieved by all nations by 2030. The Synthetic Party's proposed SDG is called Life With Artificials and focuses on the relationship between humans and AI and how to adapt and educate people to work with machines. [...] So far, The Synthetic Party has only 11 signatures out of the 20,000 that would make it eligible to run in this November's election. If the party were to be in the parliament, [...] it would be the AI powering policies and its agenda, and humans acting as the interpreter of the program.
"Leader Lars is the figurehead of the party. Denmark is a representative democracy, so would have humans on the ballot that are representing Leader Lars and who are committed to acting as a medium for the AI," said Asker Staunaes, the creator of the party and an artist-researcher at MindFuture.

"People who are voting for The Synthetic Party will have to believe what we are selling ourselves as, people who actually engage so much with artificial intelligence that we can interpret something valuable from them," Staunaes said. "We are in conversations with people from around the world, Colombia, France, and Moldova, about creating other local versions of The Synthetic Party, so that we could have some form of Synthetic International."
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A New Danish Political Party Is Being Led By An AI

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  • by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Thursday October 13, 2022 @10:47PM (#62965065) Journal

    This is literally a collective of people that are willing to give up their voice in place of a chatbot, in the hopes that it will consistently represent their desires as they change over time.

    At best, this is like hiring a trained monkey to pick up the right flash card on verbal queue, but the monkey is probably the smarter bet.

    Morons.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 )

      Can't be as insane as having a "Slashdot Daily News" subscription ad popup on every page.

    • Re:Pure insanity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by afaiktoit ( 831835 ) on Thursday October 13, 2022 @10:55PM (#62965079)
      considering the current state of politics its a step in the right direction.
      • by dohzer ( 867770 )

        b'100' more years!
        b'100' more years!

      • Re:Pure insanity (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Thursday October 13, 2022 @11:50PM (#62965157) Journal

        considering the current state of politics its a step in the right direction.

        To be completely fair, you have a real point here, but I would argue that the solution to the modern political debacle (at least in the US) is not to replace them with regarded (wsb'ism) roach level AI stand-ins, but instead address the root of the problem at hand - ie, the incentive system they currently thrive upon.

        - Dark money should not be a thing, ever. All contributions should be traceable back to the contributor, because...
        - Maximum personal contributions should apply universally, and it shouldn't be dodgable by PACs - https://www.fec.gov/help-candi... [fec.gov]
        - Pay for legislation should be illegal - it's well documented that legislation that benefits business is made into law more than 80% of the time, whereas legislation that benefits the people is made into law less than 20% of the time. Don't take my word for it, go look for yourself.

        The STOCK Act is a joke. We've been letting these idiots insider trade for decades, and they get slaps on the wrist for failing to log their obvious insider trades (hundred of dollars fines for millions of dollar trades). It isn't hard to beat the market when you know the upcoming policy changes before they are announced. The SEC is a failed institution if they cannot (or will not) recognize and prosecute this sort of crap.

        So yea, the human reps have been real shitty lately, and there are a few reps that have peaced-out and spoken openly about the obvious corruption going on. Like the politics or not, Tulsi Gabbard is one of them, so is Adam Kinzinger, and there are others. I don't care where on the aisle you sit, if you're willing to give it all up because you see abhorrent moral failing in the system and are pointing it out to your own dismay, you have my sincere thanks.

        But at the same time, AI behavior is really subject to its training inputs, and it doesn't take all that much effort to sway it in very devious and hard to debug ways.

        I would personally never trust an AI to represent me, regardless of how much it emoji-hearts my questions over Discord. I'd rather just unfuck the incentive system that's plaguing our current representatives.

        • Re:Pure insanity (Score:5, Insightful)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday October 14, 2022 @06:28AM (#62965533) Homepage Journal

          The problems go way deeper than just money. Tightening that up is a start but what you really need to do is end two party politics.

          The two main parties in the US are really multiple sub-parties that were forced to band together to stand any chance of ever obtaining power. If the system allowed for and encouraged coalitions that had to work together, you could get much better outcomes.

          Cooperation would be mandatory to achieve anything. The political discourse would get a lot more civil and less polarised, because being on the fringes and constantly insulting other politicians just makes it harder to get what you want.

          For that the system has to change from first-past-the-post to some kind of proportional representation. It would have the added benefit of meaning that every voted counted for something too, and give voters options like being able to choose a first and second preference. It cuts down on voting purely against the person you don't want, no matter how bad the other candidate is. It also means that parties will field more generally acceptable candidates, rather than ones that half the population loves and half the population hates.

          • The two main parties in the US are really multiple sub-parties that were forced to band together to stand any chance of ever obtaining power.

            LOL, the "two main parties" are a uniparty on all the big things. With very few exceptions... abortion comes to mind... they actually diverge very little on all the big questions. They may make noises otherwise, but in practice, they're one entity in thrall to behind-the-scenes companies, New York finance, and government alphabet agencies.

            Don't think so? Try badmouthing Israel. Or canceling the F-35.

        • - Dark money should not be a thing, ever. All contributions should be traceable back to the contributor, because...
          - Maximum personal contributions should apply universally, and it shouldn't be dodgable by PACs - https://www.fec.gov/help-candi... [fec.gov]
          - Pay for legislation should be illegal - it's well documented that legislation that benefits business is made into law more than 80% of the time, whereas legislation that benefits the people is made into law less than 20% of the time. Don't take my word for it, go look for yourself.

          The STOCK Act is a joke. We've been letting these idiots insider trade for decades, and they get slaps on the wrist for failing to log their obvious insider trades (hundred of dollars fines for millions of dollar trades). It isn't hard to beat the market when you know the upcoming policy changes before they are announced. The SEC is a failed institution if they cannot (or will not) recognize and prosecute this sort of crap.

          No complaints about your list. I'd add one more: No more "package" legislation. If you want a buy an aircraft carrier, then pass one bill to buy that ship. If you want to repair an interstate highway, then pass one bill for that purpose. No more "Ominibus" bills where completely unrelated shit is packed into the bill to hide it, because you know that the public would never support it. I'm sick and tired of defense bills or highway legislation where things that have nothing to do with defense or highways are

    • this is like hiring a trained monkey

      I prefer a trained monkey to my current congressional representative.

      I love bananas, and I favor a pro-banana trade policy.

      • And he's probably better at throwing shit at his opponent, too.

        • And he's probably better at throwing shit at his opponent, too.

          Welcome to the 21st century, I hope you have greatly enjoyed your period of hibernation. Whilst there will be some things to amaze you that have improved since the 1830s. The flying machines may really seem out of this world and "candles" are now called "light bulbs" and you can just press a button to turn them on, however you may be sadly disappointed with the role of politicians.

          Trust me, when I tell you that no monkey could ever compete with a modern politician in a shit throwing competition and please r

    • I think it's just a gimmick. That said they're not giving up their voice to a chatbot they're giving up their voice to whoever programs the chatbot
    • At best, this is like hiring a trained monkey to pick up the right flash card on verbal queue, but the monkey is probably the smarter bet.

      And this is how we know that artificial intelligence just isn't. If the AI was really intelligent, it would know that with this skill set, it can make a lot more money by being the CEO of any Fortune 500 company it desires.

      • Your reasoning has a fatal flaw: You're assuming the motivation of the AI is money.

        Note: This should not be construed as support for the belief that AI is "intelligent".
        • Just feed it the information that electricity costs money and with more money, you can buy more electricity and more storage to expand into.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        You're confusing intelligence with motivation. I'd agree that the current "AIs" aren't general intelligences, but within narrow limits they exceed human intelligence. The problem is their motivations.

        FWIW, I expect a general intelligence to arise out of work done on robots rather than on game playing, though the game playing pieces will be extremely useful. But how you install decent motives into something that doesn't actually know there's an external world isn't at all clear to me.

    • Honestly, considering how trash humans are at picking their own leaders, maybe giving the robots a go isnt the worst idea.

      • Honestly, considering how trash humans are at picking their own leaders, maybe giving the robots a go isnt the worst idea.

        (my emphasis)

        and who programmed and controls the robot?

    • Hmm - The scientific, mathematical and statistical foundation of their Asinine Intelligence party platform is just brilliant.
    • It's really more a way to push an agenda. Someone is still writing the chatbot.
    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I give it 5 days before it proclaims "Hitler did nothing wrong!"

    • You say Morons, but is a poorly trained monkey or a barely capable AI really a worse choice for representing "the people" than a politician? There's a lot of unknowns here but the only thing certain is that a politician represents only himself.

    • > Pure insanity

      I am sure you know the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.
      Given the gravity of the situation we will exclude reproduction. /s

      This is not a chat bot, but feel free to shoot me down in flames as of course I have checked nothing.

      In as much AI is AI it might perhaps be better than the fucking dumb fucks we seem to have, and I'd suggest have always had!
    • Any 'I' in politics would be nice, artificial or otherwise.

    • It might be more consistent and transparent than quite a few politicians...
    • It can"t be any worse than voting for one party's candidate, every time, no matter what they say or do...I think they were calling it stopping of the steal this time around.... And at least they thought this out, synthetic party has been around for a long time in europe.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by Freischutz ( 4776131 )

      This is literally a collective of people that are willing to give up their voice in place of a chatbot, in the hopes that it will consistently represent their desires as they change over time.

      At best, this is like hiring a trained monkey to pick up the right flash card on verbal queue, but the monkey is probably the smarter bet.

      Morons.

      Which compares does not compare all that badly with millions of Americans willing to give up their voice in place of malignant narcissist and 3rd rate real estate scammer from New York. I do agree with you that a monkey would probably have made a better president than Trump.

      • Yah, Trump was a bad choice for Supreme Leader.

        Of course, picking a President who thinks he can create prosperity by printing another $2.2T isn't exactly a good choice either.

        "A pox on both your houses" comes to mind a lot when I look toward Washington DC.

        Unfortunately, we'd have to rewrite the Constitution to fix the problem(s). And then we'd have to wait a century or so to see what doesn't work in our New Improved Government.

        And probably have to do it all over again ("it" being rewrite the Constituti

    • This is literally a collective of people that are willing to give up their voice in place of a chatbot, in the hopes that it will consistently represent their desires as they change over time.

      At best, this is like hiring a trained monkey to pick up the right flash card on verbal queue, but the monkey is probably the smarter bet.

      Morons.

      Anyone that picks this form of "government" deserves it. I'd only make one demand: if you're stupid enough to institute this, you have to keep it for a defined period of time. Say, 10 years. That ought to be enough to learn the hard way so that future generations go "OK, Dad was an idiot, and we're not doing THAT again".

  • All hail the hypno AI!
  • Everyone can call it a "party" then. It is just a gimmick. In Denmark it is easy to get on the ballot in a district as an individual but only one or twice have such an individual been elected, because you need all the votes for a seat in a single district, whereas parties can collect votes from the whole country - but that requires many signatures to be allowed to run as a party so it is hard. We have 14 parties on the ballot and no-one really cares about those individuals listed outside the parties.
    • They're still useful to show that you showed up for election day, you were there to cast your vote but NONE of the parties deserved it.

    • by Teun ( 17872 ) on Friday October 14, 2022 @03:26AM (#62965347)
      Right now I'm in Denmark and the press is very busy presenting the parties taking part in the election in a few weeks from now.
      But so far I've seen no message about this Synthetic Party.
      On a world scale Danish politics is probably quite democratic and the decisions made are often good so I don't see any reason or significant support for this idea.
      Besides, many Danes are in their hart afraid of anything foreign which would probably include this AI :)
    • Technically you need half the votes of a single district to get direct in, but yes, only happened once in my lifetime.

  • There's no such thing as "Artificial Intelligence". Not least of which because there's no such thing as "intelligence" in the first place. What they're actually using is a large database and a heuristically trained search algorithm. This is a chess engine with delusions of grandeur. And unlike chess, which as a logical game with constrained rules which make it "solvable", reality has too many confounding variables and too many degrees of freedom to be effectively interacted with by such a program.

    • It's more a programmer going "we're going to take over, but we're not accepting blame for our stupid policies, so worship the chatbot, I'll control it's decisions over time and you can blame the inanimate object if you dislike the results."
    • Re:No Such Thing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by DamnOregonian ( 963763 ) on Friday October 14, 2022 @03:22AM (#62965341)

      What they're actually using is a large database and a heuristically trained search algorithm.

      Hm, yes. Human intelligence works nothing like that.....
      ...

      This is a chess engine with delusions of grandeur.

      I'm unsure if I've ever seen humans described so succinctly, before.

      reality has too many confounding variables and too many degrees of freedom to be effectively interacted with by such a program.

      And yet we do on a daily basis.

      • What they're actually using is a large database and a heuristically trained search algorithm.

        Hm, yes. Human intelligence works nothing like that..... ...

        Human intelligence doesn't work anything like that! That's something any neurologist can tell you. It's just a common misconception among programmers. Historically, humans tend to assume the mind works like whatever the most sophisticated technology of the time is. In the Bronze age that was ceramics and distillation; humans were made from clay by a god and imbued with a spirit (there's a reason we use that word for distilled liquors). In the classical period, it was hydraulics; humans were governed by the

        • Human intelligence doesn't work anything like that!

          Citation needed.

          That's something any neurologist can tell you.

          Wrong answer.
          Do you think programmers invented the idea of the neural network?
          It was a neurophysiologist and a neuroscientist.

          It's just a common misconception among programmers.

          lol, no.

          Historically, humans tend to assume the mind works like whatever the most sophisticated technology of the time is.

          Patently false.
          The brain was thought to do nothing, and then it was thought to house a soul.
          A technical hypothesis for how the brain worked wasn't developed until the 2 men above looked at it from a non-mystical perspective.

          In the Bronze age that was ceramics and distillation; humans were made from clay by a god and imbued with a spirit (there's a reason we use that word for distilled liquors).

          That genesis story of an area's bronze-age culture does not imply any theory for how the brain works with regard to extant technology.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Actually, "intelligence" exists and has real impact on this physical reality. Whether its instances are part of this physical reality or channeled in by some kind of interface is a different question and unsolved at this time. At least the current standard model of Physics seems to not allow (general) intelligence due to complexity limitations and a finite universe. On the other hand, this model is known to be inaccurate and incomplete. In addition, while some Humans are capable of using their intelligence

      • Yet, we create things labeled "smart" enough to completely take over some "intelligent" task for us and we are never to think about it again, until it breaks down. Then we create artificial intelligence that is "smart" enough to do all those "intelligent" tasks plus whatever else we can imagine we don't ever want to do for ourselves again. Maybe the question should be how intelligent are we then ask how intelligent AI are?

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Not really. The thing we are finding out is some things can done without intelligence that human beings use intelligence fore. An example of a thing that can be brute-forced with a bit of strategy thrown is chess. Another is driving a car in relatively standardized conditions. That something can be done both with automation and with intelligence does not mean the automation is intelligent. It does mean the task does not require intelligence, even if it can be done using it. The other thing is, humans use ge

          • For example, automation for a self-driving car cannot play chess, yet people can do both, even if they generally will be worse at both tasks

            This is literally true for a DCNN as well.

            What you attribute to "intelligence", is actually training.
            You provide zero evidence that there's a reasonable distinction between the two, something the parent intelligently points out in a platonic matter: Perhaps what we should really be asking, is how intelligent are we?

            • by gweihir ( 88907 )

              This is literally true for a DCNN as well.

              Nope. What can be done is train them to do both at the same time. If large enough. With not so good results. But add a few more skills and you rapidly run into limits. That does not happen with humans using intelligence to do something. Sure, Humans can also be _trained_ but then the same limits show up. The point is that humans can play chess or drive a car _without_ training or with just minimal _instruction_ (which is different from training as it contains explanations). Not too well, sure, but still fun

              • Nope. What can be done is train them to do both at the same time.

                This is patently untrue.

                If large enough. With not so good results.

                Which is literally what you said.
                I'll quote just so we're on the same page.

                For example, automation for a self-driving car cannot play chess, yet people can do both, even if they generally will be worse at both tasks

                But add a few more skills and you rapidly run into limits.

                Of course. The size of the largest DCNNs are smaller than human-scale biological NNs by 4-5 orders of magnitude.
                That being said, ~10 billion parameter DCNNs have shown the ability to do many different tasks with minimal additional training.

                That does not happen with humans using intelligence to do something.

                See above.
                Further, you are misusing the word intelligence. You're trying to imply that it's something more than a NN's ability to process data that comes in.

                The point is that humans can play chess or drive a car _without_ training or with just minimal _instruction_ (which is different from training as it contains explanations).

                What you are

                • by gweihir ( 88907 )

                  Sorry, but all you demonstrate is lack of understanding for the basic mechanisms. And a deep desire to believe, which is not conductive to actually understanding things. I will hence do what any real experts needs to do in the face of persistent ignorance: I will stop answering.

                  • This is a pretty weak cop-out.
                    You could at least be honest and say, "I lack the time to come up with some manufactured responses to the inconsistencies in my reasoning that you have pointed out"

                    Further, you're not expert. You're constantly caught bending the truth and invoking magical thinking, while refusing to back up said magical thinking with any kind of evidence or even sound reasoning.

                    Your argument can always be distilled down to: ^(AI|Intel) sucks.$
                    Remember your triggers: Intel, and AI. The soo
      • You're misunderstanding so much it's genuinely hard to know where to being to unpack that. First, you're conflating multiple different definitions of the word "intelligence" in a very nonsensical way. I would suggest you begin by explicitly defining what you mean by "intelligence". Any attempt to do so will quickly reveal that it is an amorphous, socially defined concept largely divorced from the actual function of physical reality. It's largely a conflation of the Christian conceptualization of a soul with

  • The Synthetic Party, a new Danish political party with an artificially intelligent representative and policies derived from AI, ...

    The DAInish Party or DAnIsh Party.

  • Skynet just got smarter, rather than killing all people and creating a huge mess, just control them with politics. Also a big bonus of pocketing public funds.

  • "The oracle isn't where the power anyway. The power's always been with the priests. â¦Even if they had to invent the oracle."

  • by Seahawk ( 70898 ) <tts.image@dk> on Friday October 14, 2022 @05:32AM (#62965463)

    I just happened to read the Danish rules for how to get elected yesterday, and what they have done is register their part name - nothing else. They are basically no closer to be in charge of anything than any other adult Danish citizen.

    So do take this with quite a bit of grain of salt :)

    • They have 11 signatures, ie they couldn't even get all the people in their commune to sign it.

      • Heck, Herschel could get more signatures than that just by telling all the women he's having sex with to sign!
    • Yeah, I wondered how they would have gotten 40000 signatures from.

    • The party was founded in May by the artist collective [...]

      And that's where I stopped reading. This isn't a political party and doesn't have anything to do with AI. It's an art project.

  • Joshua, that's fucking hilarious, it looks like pretty soon they're just going to vote you into office. Brilliant mate!

    Archer - Idioms [youtube.com]

    Qubitdyne, Inc. [qubitdyne.com]

  • No "AI" is capable of "leading" anything at this time. A political party may get away with being leaderless for a while though.

  • Well-established fact that so-called shitty AIs they keep trotting out to us just end up being reflections of humanity -- so their AI 'leader' will end up being racist, bigoted, and sexist, just like humans, and all it's policy decisions will be racsit, bigoted, and sexist as well. Oh, and also: when the actual humans in this so-called political 'party' start tweaking the AI to get what they really want from it, it'll get even worse.

    I think it's time for people to wake up and realize that all this 'AI' cr
    • -- so their AI 'leader' will end up being racist, bigoted, and sexist, just like humans, and all it's policy decisions will be racsit, bigoted, and sexist as well.

      Sounds like the current administration and controllers of congress currently in power in the US.

      But man, I have a hard time labeling them with any form of the word "intelligence"...

  • Amusing concept but with 21 signatures not much to see. Unless they meant party as in Halloween party and even then it's not much of a turnout

  • "Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity!" Who actually said that?
  • 1. All people with hair shorter than 5cm, but not shorter than 3cm will have their right thumb nail painted green during the months May, June and September.
    2. Trees that have a circumference larger than 1 meter should be duplicated.
    3. Eastern will be moved to 14th of December.

    The AI has spoken.

  • Some of the policies that The Synthetic Party is proposing include establishing a universal basic income of 100,000 Danish kroner per month, which is equivalent to $13,700, and is over double the Danish average salary.

    Thats not basic. I'm thinking thats not paid per month, but per year. You can rent and eat on that, but not much else.

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