Victor Miller (42 years old) told voters that if elected mayor, he would govern the town of Cheyenne, Wyoming, which has a population of just under 65,000, through an AI chatbot modeled on OpenAI’s GPT-4. Miller named the chatbot he built VIC, an acronym for Virtual Integrated Citizen, and vowed to serve as the “physical avatar” that would carry out the duties of the VIC.
On Tuesday, 11,036 Laramie County residents voted in the mayoral race, with Miller and VIC (or VIC and Miller) receiving 327 votes. The winner was two-term incumbent Patrick Collins, who received 6,286 votes.
“I’ve been really encouraged by the response I’ve gotten from people who voted for me,” Miller said. luck“I only have a handful of family and friends, so most of them are real voters who don’t know me.”
Miller conceded defeat in a tweet late Tuesday night. “As the first to put AI directly on the ballot, offering voters the novel choice to be governed by AI, our campaign marked an historic moment in politics and technology,” Miller wrote.
Although “we” lost the election, he continued, “we accomplished something remarkable: we introduced a new governance paradigm to the world and sparked an important debate about the role of AI in government.”
Man vs. Machine
It’s been an uphill battle for Miller and Victoria from the start, and the drama of his candidacy has sent shock waves through local governments: Earlier this summer, Laramie County quickly clarified that, contrary to claims by national news outlets, AI bots were not, in fact, on the ballot.
“Through countless interviews and statements, Victor Miller has consistently distinguished himself as a ‘physical avatar’ and separate from the AI program he refers to as VIC,” Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee said in a press release on July 5. “Listing VIC as a candidate would violate Wyoming law and would cause confusion among voters. VIC is not a registered voter. Therefore, VIC cannot run for public office in Wyoming and his name will not appear on the official Laramie County ballot.”
Initially, VIC’s name appeared on the ballot instead of Miller’s, but that situation did not last long. In June, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray sent a letter to the Cheyenne County Clerk outlining his position on Miller’s candidacy.
“Under Wyoming law, it’s the city clerk, not the secretary of state, who certifies candidates,” Gray said. luck. “Our office is tasked with ensuring uniform application of the election law, which is Title 22.” Wyoming’s law is clear, he said. “To run for office, you have to be what’s called a qualified elector, and that requires you to be a real person.”
Gray said he learned of Miller’s candidacy through a complaint that came through his office. He did not identify the person who made the complaint, but said it was not another mayoral candidate. luck Miller placed fourth on Wednesday, the day after incumbent Patrick Collins’ election results were announced. “The AI bot’s messaging just didn’t resonate with voters,” Gray said.
Miller is a libertarian, while Gray is a staunch Republican who says “our laws should mean something.” Gray called Miller’s candidacy “unprecedented and deeply disturbing.” Mayor Collins did not respond to multiple requests for comment. (“There was no need to do that,” Miller said.) luck Grayof “It kind of shows the downside of putting humans in positions of state power.”
An uphill battle
OpenAI, the company behind VIC, cut off access to it in June. CNN An OpenAI spokesperson reportedly said that Miller’s actions violated their terms of use because ChatGPT is not intended as a political campaign. Wired If OpenAI were to take away his access to VIC, he said, he would simply move to Meta’s open-source AI product, Llama 3.
But after OpenAI shut down VIC, Miller built VIC 2.0 on the same service, and it worked exactly the same. “OpenAI forced me to become a freedom fighter in the open source battle,” Miller said. luck. “And VIC 2.0 is still working. Sam Altman hasn’t found me in the dark hallways of OpenAI yet.”
In his concession statement on Tuesday, Miller announced plans to launch a new organization called the Rational Governance Alliance, which he said would build on a core tenet of his campaign: bringing AI into the decision-making room. Ideally, the group would “build a framework that allows AI to assume full responsibility for decision-making in public office, with humans serving as the legal and physical intermediaries required by the current system.” In other words, future AI candidates won’t have to go it alone like Miller did.
“We call on all who believe the era of traditional politicians has reached its limits to join us in ushering in a new era of rational governance,” Miller wrote. “The time has come to transcend the constraints of human bias and self-interest in public office.”
Managing the alliance would be a bit of a career change: Miller works on both the facilities and grounds management team and the computer team at his local library in Cheyenne, helping patrons with their everyday technology woes.
“I’ve always been a technology and computer person and a pioneer whenever something new came along,” he said. luck The day after he withdrew from the race.
His first exposure to LLMs was a few years ago, when he fed his resume into ChatGPT and told it to improve things. “I realized this wasn’t just a magic trick anymore,” he says. “This is real stuff that works in the real world.”
The “Twilight” of Human Government
Running for mayor with the Victorian premier combined two of Miller’s main interests, he said: learning more about AI for his own ends, and pushing government to do more (pointing to the recent Sisyphean struggle to access public records from the state ombudsman). “I’ve seen a lot of people in my life who have been left behind by technology, so it’s always in the back of my mind,” Miller said. “I don’t want that to happen to me.”
Miller said VIC will prioritize transparency and openness to bring prosperity to Cheyenne. Trusting that human politicians have the same values is “like believing in the Tooth Fairy or Santa Claus,” Miller said. (The 2024 presidential election is a “perfect showcase” for such dysfunction. “The Democratic National Convention is a total clown show,” he said.) Asked about VIC’s politics, he shrugged. “That’s to be expected,” he said. “It’s a mainstream OpenAI model. The literature on it describes it as being somewhat left-leaning because it came out of Silicon Valley. It’s pretty pragmatic and centrist.”
Noting the similarities between VIC’s ideals and Miller’s ideals, luck Asked why he doesn’t run his own instead of working as a “physical avatar,” Miller said he believes he is part of the problem. Human-run political systems, like monarchies and feudalism, are in decline, in his view. In the near future, we will see an era of AI rule that “will bring prosperity and hopefully peace.”
Ultimately, that’s why Miller isn’t interested in politics. “Obama understands me. Trump understands me. They all understand me,” he said. “AI understands me, too.” A moment’s pause. “I hope they don’t disappoint me.”
