By Udita Shukla
Scientists in New Zealand have created an artificially intelligent politician named Sam. The robot is capable of answering questions on policy, education and immigration. Sam—the world’s first AI politician—is currently in the process of continuous learning through interacting with people on Facebook Messenger as well as a survey posted on its homepage.
Sam is the brainchild of Nick Gerritsen, a forty-nine-year-old entrepreneur, who claims that at the current rate of learning and data assimilation, the robot will be intelligent and tamed enough to contest, hypothetically, the upcoming general elections in the country in 2020.
Why was Sam built?
As stated by Nick, the idea behind creating Sam was to give rise to an unbiased politician who can make decisions free from cultural, economic, social and gender biases. In his own words, “There seems to be so much existing bias that countries around the world seem unable to address fundamental and multiple complex issues like climate change and equality”.
Although Gerritsen admits the possibility of human bias trickling down into an AI algorithm, he hopes the bot will be of great help in bridging the cultural and political deadlocks prevailing in countries.
AI: A boon or a bane?
As technology matures towards ever higher benchmarks, it has begun searching for solutions to world problems through ingenuity and creativity. The intention behind creating Sam seems entirely benign – a hope for a utopian future where prejudice and personal ambition will not plague the bureaucracy. One perspective supports the advantages of having an unbiased, programmed people’s representative, for whom cultural, socio-economic backgrounds do not matter – a political messiah of sorts.
On the other hand, the cynical approach would be to view the ‘newborn’ bot as ‘too capable’, to the point of being a threat to the freedom of the human civilization. It is worth mentioning that the cinematic world has painted a not-so-rosy future filled with robots who have breached their limits and posed a threat to human civilisations.
Nonetheless, it would do good to remember that the present scenario is nowhere close to AI machines reaching the abilities of humankind. Moreover, an AI politician, when fully matured, would present to us a much-needed mirror to our own prejudices and biases. It would reveal the differences between human judgment subjugated by personal material ambition and conflicts of interest, as opposed to an impartial, honest leadership (though, not-human).
Where are we headed?
As stated by its creator, if Sam indeed learns to be more human and attains the degree of proficiency comparable to a real-world election candidate, it would indeed be an extremely radical and path-breaking scientific experiment.
The changing landscape of technological capabilities and advances in machine learning and neural networks have enhanced the learning abilities of computer algorithms. Algorithms form an integral element of an artificially intelligent system, which needs to learn from every experience and data point they encounter during their operational lifespan. Moreover, recent market transformation in favour of highly (Level 4) and fully (Level 5) autonomous vehicles has further pushed the boundaries of AI systems and raised the bar for ‘decision-making robots’.
Perhaps, there has never been such a time when industrial supply chains were so ingrained with software and programmed cores. Now with a robotic citizen (named Sophia) in Saudi Arabia and a potential candidate in New Zealand, are we on the path to meeting service executives at the counters in shopping malls and banks?
Featured Image Source: Visual Hunt
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