“It’s time to embrace the future. It’s time to get drunk on intelligence.”
Victor Miller ran for mayor of Cheyenne, the capital city of the state of Wyoming, on a platform of putting AI in charge of the city. He says ChatGPT is a “superior intelligence” to humans, and he believes that the advent of AI-led government could enable “a Cambrian explosion of political activity” that would give citizens more rather than less of a say in how they are governed.
Fortune reported on his attempt to change the political game:
If elected mayor, Victor Miller, 42, told voters he would govern Cheyenne, Wyoming, a town of just shy of 65,000 residents, via an AI chatbot modeled on OpenAI’s GPT-4. He named the chatbot, which he built himself, VIC, standing for Virtual Integrated Citizen; Miller himself pledged to serve as a “meat avatar” carrying out VIC’s duties.
As part of his campaign, Victor wore a speaker around his neck that played VIC’s answers to questions from the public and the media.
He placed fourth in the election, with 3% of the vote, but took the result as a sign that the public is ready to try something new. Victor is now raising money for his Rational Governance Alliance, through which he intends to “introduc[e] Rationally Bound Delegates (RBDs) - public servants who use AI for all decision-making,” and “develop AI systems, train RBDs, and place them on ballots across the nation by 2026.”
Is this the beginning of a new, strange chapter in the story of American democracy, or a flight of fancy uncoupled from the practical realities and limitations of governance and technology?
In our conversation, Victor shares his discontent with the status quo of American politics, his hopes for the future, and his fears for a system and a nation that (in his opinion) is mired in corruption, malaise, and incompetence.
I hope you enjoy it.
You can find VIC on X as @AIForMayor.
Episode 125: Victor Miller on Letting AI Take Over The US Government