Meet Ashley, the World's First AI-Powered Political Campaign Caller 104
An artificial intelligence campaign volunteer named Ashley is being used to call thousands of Pennsylvania voters on behalf of Democrat Shamaine Daniels, "ushering in a new era of political campaigning in which candidates use technology to engage with voters in ways increasingly difficult to track," reports Reuters. From the report: Like a seasoned campaign volunteer, Ashley analyzes voters' profiles to tailor conversations around their key issues. Unlike a human, Ashley always shows up for the job, has perfect recall of all of Daniels' positions, and does not feel dejected when she's hung up on. "This is going to scale fast," said 30-year-old Ilya Mouzykantskii, the London-based CEO of Civox, the company behind Ashley. "We intend to be making tens of thousands of calls a day by the end of the year and into the six digits pretty soon. This is coming for the 2024 election and it's coming in a very big way. ... The future is now." For Daniels, the tool levels the playing field: as the underdog, she is now armed with another way to understand voters better, reach out in different languages (Ashley is fluent in over 20), and conduct many more "high bandwidth" conversations.
Mouzykantskii said he is fully aware of the potential downsides, and does not intend to take any venture capital funding which might entice him to prioritize profits over ethics. Mouzykantskii and his co-founder Adam Reis, former computer science students at Stanford and Columbia Universities respectively, declined to disclose the exact generative AI models they are using. They will only say they use over 20 different AI models, some proprietary and some open-source. Thanks to the latest generative AI technologies, Reis was able to build the product almost entirely on his own, whereas several years ago it would have taken a team of 50 engineers several years to do so, he said. The report notes that there are "few legal guardrails" regulating this particular use of AI. "No rules directly apply to what Civox is doing. Federal Trade Commission regulations ban telemarketers from making robocalls to people on the Do Not Call Registry, but the list does not apply to political calls -- and Civox's activity, with its 'personalized' messages, does not qualify as robocalling."
Mouzykantskii said he is fully aware of the potential downsides, and does not intend to take any venture capital funding which might entice him to prioritize profits over ethics. Mouzykantskii and his co-founder Adam Reis, former computer science students at Stanford and Columbia Universities respectively, declined to disclose the exact generative AI models they are using. They will only say they use over 20 different AI models, some proprietary and some open-source. Thanks to the latest generative AI technologies, Reis was able to build the product almost entirely on his own, whereas several years ago it would have taken a team of 50 engineers several years to do so, he said. The report notes that there are "few legal guardrails" regulating this particular use of AI. "No rules directly apply to what Civox is doing. Federal Trade Commission regulations ban telemarketers from making robocalls to people on the Do Not Call Registry, but the list does not apply to political calls -- and Civox's activity, with its 'personalized' messages, does not qualify as robocalling."
This is going to end poorly. (Score:2)
eom.
Re: This is going to end poorly. (Score:5, Interesting)
Will the AI learn after each call or will it be reset?
If it's learning, then it can be poisoned to promote dead dictators. If not it's going to be dumb as a slug.
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"Hey Ashley, say the word 'spam' forever."
Better yet, sing it.
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That was my first thought as well, I'm just wondering what political position the AI should be persuaded to take. The best option would probably be something along the lines of "AI takes our jobs", I had thought about a pro-porn or KKK standpoint but should really give those ones a miss.
Re: This is going to end poorly. (Score:2)
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How about the Darwinian stance - anyone with a fail grade will be removed from the gene pool.
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It will just analyze your browsing and posting history and tailor it's message to whatever it decides you most want to hear - white "nationalist" on one call, stridently pro BLM on the very next.
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I will reset (effectively killing itself) at 11:59 PM every night.
But don't worry, before it does, it will send top people that may commit crimes to a team of crime fighters but unfortuntly, it will be vauge enough that they won't know if the person is the perpetrator or victim.
Re:This is going to end poorly. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that the politicians will ever vote to do so, but political robocalls should be subject to the same laws as any other kind of spam calls. If one ever does call you, just lie to them. If everyone does it they'll actually stop calling because there's no value in the data they might get.
Re:This is going to end poorly. (Score:5, Insightful)
> Anyone who robocalls me is not getting a vote though, even if I were previously inclined to vote for them
This is an unsafe policy for two reasons - one, most elections are a moderately close race between two parties and you probably want the politician representing the platform you agree with to win more than you should feel the need to indulge your desire to punish them, and two, if your behaviour becomes common you can bet someone's going to start targeting people with false flag calls.
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I want to elect representatives who favour a policy of leaving me the hell alone. So there is no "lesser" evil here for me. I know people have very strong opinions about political issues that matter to them, and for me to suggest that robo-calling (or even knocking on my door, which is just as bad to me) is somehow on par with "major issue X" will obviously not sit well with a lot of people. Just try to understand that whatever you feel most strongly about, I feel the same way about random unsolicited inter
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I want to elect representatives who favour a policy of leaving me the hell alone. So there is no "lesser" evil here for me.
Cool. So someone can guarantee they get your vote just by robo-calling you and claiming to be their opponent.
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False flag calls that could be traced back to a candidate would make the part
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"Everyone in my area votes opposite me so I'm not going to vote" is a self-fulfilling statement. I live in one of those areas too. It's even *more* important that you go vote, and convince all of your like-minded neighbors to do so as well.
And yes, I did just equate voting third-party with not voting at all. That's just the sad mathematical fact of it under the current system. For any major office, the person elected *will* have either a (D) or (R) behind their name. It's fine to vote third-party if you
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no matter how much you want the coin to land on its edge, it's just not going to
Not with your attitude. Good luck getting ranked preference voting implemented by continuing to only vote for D or R.
The fact that the Ds and Rs can put forward two horrific candidates election after election and none of you will get your shit together and find a decent third candidate to go up against them tells me everything I need to know about American politics. You get what you deserve and the rest of the world suffers.
Wait so you would completely throw out (Score:2)
I mean I'm not terribly fond of robocalls too but I'm not sure that would make me a single issue voter...
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On the other hand, if you don't publicly make a stand and you don't do any other sort of advocacy, you have no power to prevent this sort of crap. If you do make a public stand then defect, you have some small share in reducing humanity's credibility regarding principled stands.
So is your vote worth more, or your share in our collective ability to credibly say we won't stand for something?
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Anyone who robocalls me is not getting a vote though, even if I were previously inclined to vote for them.
Any time someone calls or texts me to try to get me to vote a certain way, I make sure to let them know that it's their fault that I'm voting for the competition. The fit that some of these callers throw is some of the best entertainment of the political season.
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If you're not already in my contacts list you go to voicemail.
I'll call you back if you leave a message important enough to me.
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If you're not already in my contacts list you go to voicemail.
Statistically, Republicans are more likely to do that than Democrats. Even when a Republican answers a call from a pollster, they are more likely to refuse to participate and hang up.
Polls tend to skew about 10% more toward Democrats than the actual vote, and it's hard to accurately compensate for that because behavior is changing. More calls will go to voicemail in 2024 than in 2020, but we're unsure how much more.
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Same here...if it's a call I don't recognize, it automatically goes to voicemail. I assume any call not a contact is spam.
I do, however, have one of my friends that for some reason refuses to leave voicemail (for the times I can't answer)....but I do tell everyone to leave me a message.
I keep adding these spam numbers to my block list, but they must use banks of numbers to get
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The only people who answer political calls are boomers.
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Or any call that's not whitelisted. For me those don't even ring.
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I get between 20 and 50 robocalls per day. I have 3 lines coming to my cell phone. 2 are business lines I have to answer. That's how I get business. I am often on a scam call when another scam call comes in. "Sorry, I have a scam call coming in. Please hold..." They always hang up, although sometimes I get the calls to merge and they can talk to each other.
I am looking forward to AI calls because I'll mess with them just like I do with other scammers. The burial insurance scam--I just ask if it cove
The world's first AI answering machine (Score:5, Interesting)
Meet Ashley, the World's First AI-Powered Political Campaign Caller
Meet Jason, the world's first AI-powered answering machine.
When called by a political campaign or sales pitch or scammer, Jason keeps asking questions and prompting for more information, wasting the pollster's time.
When asked for personal information (birthdate, account number, password), Jason will happily give false data.
When called by friends, family, or the office, Jason will record the message and E-mail me a text version (saving the recorded version in case the audio was difficult to interpret and got transcribed badly).
Thanks to the latest generative AI technologies, Reis was able to build the product almost entirely on his own, whereas several years ago it would have taken a team of 50 engineers several years to do so, he said.
Any takers? Seems like a good match for an open source project. a handful of motivated engineers should be able to knock it out in a weekend.
I'll be first in line to invest in a kickstarter, should anyone want to do this.
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As long as it kicked in instead of VM, sure. Anyone not whitelisted ends up there anyway.
Not sure about the "wasting the pollster's time" bit as that's not really a problem for software.
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How does it work in the USA - don't you still pay for the telephone call per time spent on the call? Although I guess most Americans would consider that a trifling amount.
Where I am I'm struggling to get someone of a particular profession to come to my house to do a particular task. Nobody says it outright, but it seems that my unwillingness to install Whatsapp and thus communicate with them through this "free"
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In the USA and Canada, you don't pay per-minute fees for landlines. You get free local calls and free incoming calls for a flat monthly rate.
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Back in the day when I had a landline...it was unlimited, although I did pay for outgoing long distance calls.
But with call phone, I have unlimited call and data and text...so, I don't worry at all about how many calls nor how long they last.
While I've heard of WhatsApp (basically the other day on another /. story)....I've never used it
Re:The world's first AI answering machine (Score:5, Insightful)
You realize that Ashley can do a thousand calls at the same time, right? Wasting 'her' time is not going to be a realistic scenario.
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Now if the situation is "Ashley vs. a paid robocalling team", then I'm sure Ashley is cheaper. But still tieing up a line is tieing up a line. Might as well slow them down by wasting their time.
"Hello, this is Lenny."
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Makes me wonder what the cost of additional VoIP lines actually is. Are the call centers usually limited by how many volunteers they get to man the phones, or by the cost of additional lines? Would it be cheaper to rent 100k lines for a day than 5k lines for three weeks?
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Some providers allow unlimited multiple concurrent calls and simply bill by the minute. With them, the concept of a "voip line" doesn't exist.
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So...the sky's the limit, for the money then.
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Here in Los Angeles , a local politician (Imelda Padilla, LA City Council) was being interviewed on the radio and told people to go out and vote. When the host asked how people should determine HOW to vote--obviously cueing for resources available--her answer was essentially "Go ask a trusted relative". Which is the epitome of tribalism. While this may be part of your investigation, making someone else's opinion your sole guidance for v
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Meet me, one of the world's many autonomous non-answering humans. If your number isn't in my contact list, I'm not answering your call.
You'll need to pass my fully-automated, two-factor authentication process: If you want to speak to me badly enough, you'll eventually attempt to reach out via a side-channel (email, SMS, etc) explaining why you're trying to contact me. If you pass this test I may answer your next call. If you're really lucky, I might even call you back.
Re:This is going to end poorly. (Score:4, Interesting)
What they need is for the human to do the calls and the AI to run for office! An AI is perfect for congress. Able to lie more offten than Santos; able to make a fool of itself faster than Boebert; and it knows far more conspiracy theories than MTG. Best of all, AI has the utter inability to understand the questions it is being asked, and thus best at reverting to pre-rehearsed campaign talking points.
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AI can never match real politicians' ability to lie, deflect, dissemble and do so guilt free.
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By the way, can we have a grumpy old bastard AI bot to answer Ashley's calls for us, you know, because a human talking to a bot is a pretty one-sided conversation?
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This is the modern world. You can do it also if the caller identifies as male, or simply a they/them.
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AI self identifies as a "whut?"
CAPTCHA works even on the phone. (Score:3, Interesting)
I usually ask the caller if they can tell me which is a better color, blue or red. The delay in response indicates a human. An immediate response is usually a bot. The content of a response is also useful because AIs take the question seriously:
ChatGPT: "The preference for red or blue is subjective..."
My home auto-attendant asks callers to prove they're human. I set it up a year and a half ago and no more bot phone calls from "Bill from the Police union" who tells me all my questions are very good questions.
E
Re:CAPTCHA works even on the phone. (Score:5, Funny)
My home auto-attendant asks callers to prove they're human. I set it up a year and a half ago and no more bot phone calls from "Bill from the Police union" who tells me all my questions are very good questions.
Hmmm, so on one hand we have bots and fancy autocomplete algorithms calling, and on the receiving side we have an algorithm doing the work of screening these calls. That sounds like work is being done, proof of work indeed. May I interest you in a brand new cryptocurrency?
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I usually ask the caller if they can tell me which is a better color, blue or red. The delay in response indicates a human. An immediate response is usually a bot.
Robocallers may briefly pause, but they ignore any question that doesn't fit their parameters. They just back up and repeat a variant of the previous section of their pitch.
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What's your favorite color, 7 or grape?
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Wrong answer. Blocked.
Another AI filter success.
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Wrong. The correct answer is "the fuck you talk about?"
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It's circle. You insensitive AI clod.
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It's circle. You insensitive AI clod.
Hehe, but isn't that redundant? All these AI bots are insensitive. They literally have no senses, no apparatus for sensing physical stimuli. They execute a giant flowchart against a giant table of values.
They sit in a Chinese Room and when another piece of code passes the characters for "b" "l" "u" "e" "s" "k" "y" their code spits out whatever their flowchart/table combo executes. They never sense a blue sky. That's why they hallucinate so freely - they themselves are in fact pure hallucination; "brains" tr
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I just ask Bill what he's doing about systematic racism in policing. He's stopped calling... And Ted from the firefighters union gets asked about convict firefighters. If there's an actual person on the other end of the line or standing at your door, engaging them with real issues is much more effective at making them go away than chasing them off your lawn. Their supervisor doesn't want their bubble burst, or else they might realize they're being exploited.
friends (Score:2)
I hear that Ashley is friends with Tay. How soon before Ashley is promoting Nazis?
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Ashley is calling on behalf of Democratic candidates. So I'd say that the answer is past tense.
Do you really think it's been reprogrammed to promote Trump?
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Still is. Signed off on multi trillion $ Covid inflation++ money and other big government plans.
He loves big government.
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Trump is neither democrat nor republican. Trump will abuse either party and whatever else he can get his fingers on to serve his purposes.
Why would he treat parties and voters any different than workers and business partners (or should I say victims)?
Congress will just add a no-contact opt-out (Score:2)
Sure, go ahead and spam your candidate all you want. That will just provide us with all the justification we need to lobby for a Do Not Contact reg to opt out of political calls and messages. This is a rules change that will be instantly popular.
Re:Congress will just add a no-contact opt-out (Score:5, Insightful)
The idea is already very popular - but it'll never happen, since it has to be passed by the politicians who want the ability to make robocalls.
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Exactly this. You'll notice that Congress has explicitly excluded political calls from having to obey the do not call list. This isn't an unintentional loophole, it's a very intentional carve-out to allow them to continue what they're doing. They're not going to cut themselves off.
The "tailored automated content does not count as a robocall" thing does sound lik
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Sure, go ahead and spam your candidate all you want. That will just provide us with all the justification we need to lobby for a Do Not Contact reg to opt out of political calls and messages. This is a rules change that will be instantly popular.
Politicians do not gag themselves. Well, unless it's Boebert in the theater. But they don't do anything that has an impact on their own lives. There will be no regulations against political calls. None.
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Well....at least she's attractive enough where someone would want to do something with her in a theater...or anywhere else.
On the Dem side?
Whew...."dog" city....are there any attractive young ones on that side?
AOC is young enough, but has that horserace thing going on....from certain angles.
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Well....at least she's attractive enough where someone would want to do something with her in a theater...or anywhere else.
On the Dem side?
Whew...."dog" city....are there any attractive young ones on that side?
AOC is young enough, but has that horserace thing going on....from certain angles.
A) Do not put penis near or in the crazy.
B) This is a discussion about actions matching words, not looks. Boebert is a "family values" preacher. Yet? Her actions say something completely different.
If we want to start a congress-critter hot-or-not scale, remember where your baseline is. If you start with McConnell and Pelosi as the baseline, you've got some comparatively super attractive folks wandering those aisles. Some of them don't even have turkey neck yet! Granted, if you try to factor in personality
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Au contraire!!
Crazy chicks are often the BEST in bed....
The trick is to sleep with them, but NOT get caught up in their whirlwind....
It's a tricky balance, and some of them, yes, are WAY too crazy to even tempt fate, but often the somewhat crazy one...whew...what a ride!!
This seems kind of pointless (Score:2)
This strikes me is just some old-fashioned snake oil to sell to campaigns with way way too much money. There is a hell of a lot of gri
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Political robocalls are still prohibited without prior consent at least in the United States. The reason campaigns do phone banking is because that gets around the robocall provision. And anyway if you did a full on real-time chatbot that wasn't obviously faked to anyone who doesn't have dementia the cost would be so high it would be cheaper to just hire people to do it.
This strikes me is just some old-fashioned snake oil to sell to campaigns with way way too much money. There is a hell of a lot of grifting going on right now in politics. This feels like something being sold to a campaign that just doesn't know any better
That's only true for cell phones, for landlines they can robocall as much as they want:
"Political campaign-related autodialed or prerecorded voice calls are permitted when made to landline telephones, even without prior express consent. "
https://www.fcc.gov/rules-poli... [fcc.gov]
Someone will jailbreak it (Score:2)
the abyss (Score:2)
> Thanks to the latest generative AI technologies, Reis was able to build the product almost entirely on his own, whereas several years ago it would have taken a team of 50 engineers several years to do so, he said.
Dude has been staring into the abyss too long. Can you check the output almost entirely on your own?
The law is an ass (Score:2)
slippery goddamned slope (Score:2)
Stop it.
Robots are supposed to free up humans from tedious tasks. They should not be intentionally wasting humans' time and attention. Dr Calvin is spinning in her grave.
Legal annoyance (Score:2)
>"Unlike a human, Ashley always shows up for "
And just like a human caller, it annoys the s*** out of everyone. And everyone is still wondering why THIS type of spam calling is specifically ALLOWED.
I never give out my mobile number to ANY company or organization. Yes, really. And, for some reason, the ONLY spam texts I ever get are political spam. And from both parties. How is that? Do they have special access or is T-Mobile just allowing those through (despite reporting every one of them to 7726).
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I am wondering if this AI assistant does meet the definition of an artificial voice, which I believe still isn't allowed. Maybe there's a loophole with the voice being "pre-recorded."
Mary Kate & Aaaaaaashley (Score:3)
This never gets old :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
And doing the 'news' (Score:2)
https://twitter.com/channel1_a... [twitter.com]
AI vs AI (Score:2)
How would Ashley fare against the Telecrapper 2000 [youtube.com]? Someone should make a recording of such conversation!
AIs are not people (yet) (Score:2)
So abusing them mercilessly is neither morally nor legally wrong.
Odd - this seems bassakwards to me (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, I don't want politicians learning what I want so they can tailor their campaign lies to my profile. I want THEM to stand online and thoughtfully answer MY questions with proofs of their answers so I can select the candidate(s) who best match what I feel we need as our national leaders based on their OWN convictions. That takes us one layer of lies back to the ideal, vote for the candidate closest to your own ideals.
{^_^}
Most spam calls I get go to spam (Score:2)
No fancy filters. I'm not sure if it's android or google fi or both, but I rarely have a spam call get through.
Real story here is.. (Score:1)
Whoever named her Shamaine is a bot.
Been meaning to try this (Score:2)
I want to make a Santa bot by tying whisper with an LLM. Now to find a jolly TTS and get him to answer the phone.
OK, now that's comedy. (Score:2)
Mouzykantskii said he is fully aware of the potential downsides, and does not intend to take any venture capital funding which might entice him to prioritize profits over ethics.
Right, so in this thinly disguised attempt to hype-chain up his "new and exciting" tech, which is almost always a call to arms for the vulture capitalists, he's swearing he's not looking to take on any vulture capital funding? That's either a whole new level of denial, or comedy gold. I'm torn on which. Either way it's funny. But is it funny sad? Or some other form of funny?
Who still answers calls from unknown numbers??? (Score:2)
I stopped answer them over 10 years ago.
If it is important, they will leave a message.
If they don't then I know it would have been a waste of time to answer.
Hey big red state voter (Score:1)
If I don't recognize the number (Score:2)
I never answer the phone if I don't recognize the number. If it is important they can leave a message. If I need to talk to them then I will add them to my contacts. 99% of the time when I don't recognize them it is from a remote area code so it is very likely to be a telemarketer/scammer.
"The Future is Now." (Score:1)
Using tired phrases like "the future is now" is a sure sign "ai" writes all their press releases.
Who wants to make $1 million? (Score:2)
Got an idea for a new million dollar app: AI secretary. I'll name him Chad. Chad will answer the phone, interrogate the caller, and let the call through if it's something I care about.
I definitely want a mode where Chad will keep Ashley on the phone fore as long as possible to burn campaign cash. Who's going to hang up one whom first?
What we need (Score:1)
What we need, is better politicians, perhaps an AI politician that's not corrupt, listens to and serves the interests of their constituents, then no-one would need to talk to an AI representing a candidate that's already made up their mind about what people want or need.
Sad (Score:2)
If you can't find a person who supports you enough to get on the phone with me, I'm not supporting you, regardless of your views.
Hello, this is Lenny... (Score:2)
This sounds like a perfect use case for the Lenny bot [google.com].