Mirror, mirror on the wall: Romanian PM hires AI bot mirror as advisor to track public sentiment
Mirror, mirror on the wall: Romanian PM hires AI bot mirror as advisor to track public sentiment
Romania’s Prime Minister, Nicolae Ciuca, has appointed an AI programme as an “honorary advisor” to the government.
According to a video posted by local media, Ciucă unveiled the bot on Wednesday, calling it a global first. According to Ciuca, the technology was developed by local academics and employs artificial intelligence to “quickly and autonomously record the views and wishes” of Romanian people.
AI bot guiding Romanian politics
As per a report by The Guardian, the bot will monitor social media in real-time to synthesise public opinion for the government, and citizens will be able to contribute ideas through an associated website.
According to the report, the bot, called Ion, defined itself as a “mirror” for the Romanian people during a protest. “Hello, you gave me life, and now my job is to serve you,” the bot said at the start. “What do I need to know about Romania?”
“I am convinced that the use of AI should not be a choice, but rather a responsibility to make better-informed decisions,” Ciuca stated, according to accounts.
Ion takes a physical form as a long, mirror-like structure with a moving graphic at the top suggesting it is listening at all times. According to Romanian Insider, the website for Ion crashed soon after its debut but has since been recovered.
Romania, a hotbed for tech startups
Romania, located in Eastern Europe, has a flourishing digital startup environment. Following the success of Skype and Romania-based UiPath, venture capitalists have been migrating to Central and Eastern Europe, according to Insider.
The startups in the country has seen a surge in investment lately, especially those that deal with AI, machine learning. Startups that are developing their own chatbots and analytical bots are especially in huge demand.
Governments and their relation with AI
The Romanian government is far from the first government to use artificial intelligence to attempt to understand how a populace thinks about policy.
Professor Alan Woodward, a cybersecurity specialist at the University of Surrey told reporters that governments around the globe use machine learning for ‘sentiment analysis’.
“Some countries like Russia, China, Iran – they search online for mood analysis but they look for anyone dissenting. Democracies, on the other hand, are attempting to conduct pseudo-automated polls. It’s similar to how people used to hold focus groups 15 years ago, and now they’re attempting to figure out the same thing using social media,” he said.
“It has been observed that social media serves as an amplifier for individuals voicing negative opinions. People who are very pleased with something do not usually go out and state it, whereas those who are unhappy do. All of this is part of sentiment analysis, but you must modify the models appropriately.” Woodward added.
Ultimately, there must be an openness in adopting this type of systems, not just in terms of data use, but also in terms of the goals for its application, with explicit statements for people to comprehend.
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