AI-STEVE has rapidly become an international political phenomenon after standing in Brighton Pavilion to become the UK’s first AI-powered Member of Parliament. The AI character will be physically represented in parliament by the Sussex Entrepreneur Steve Endacott, who has pledged to follow all its voter-generated instructions.
AI-STEVE is the first of many MPs and council members that the SmarterUK party intends to nominate nationwide to create a recognised political force in the UK.
Interestingly, SmarterUK opposes electronic voting for National Elections as it believes that the government’s current technology and security infrastructures are not robust enough to prevent interference from states such as China and Russia seeking to influence UK politics.
Endacott commented, “As the Horizon scandal demonstrated, large IT projects and Government are not a good match. Millions are often wasted on inefficient and non-secure platforms, making electronic voting in major elections too risky at the current time.
However, SmarterUK logically points out that most UK voters are happy to trust the security of online banking with virtually all their wealth and believe it is possible to develop secure and anonymous online voting platforms via the private sector.
The concept behind the AI-STEVE platform is to give voters 24/7 365 access to their MP to discuss and shape policies. These policies are then validated by another group of “ordinary” voters to ensure their popularity before adoption. Secondly, all MPs must sign up to a pledge to do exactly as instructed by voters or resign, ensuring that voters have ongoing control over the actions of their MPs.
Endacott commented, “Political parties only really engage with voters on a 4-year cycle and are elected based on manifestos promises that half the time fail to deliver. In the meantime, MPs are free to do what they like in Parliament, often ducking the difficult decisions in case they impact their re-election chances.
SmarterUK believes that the debate about the choice of higher taxis or less public services is a perfect example.
Endacott commented, “The lack of positive reaction to the Conservatives cuts in National Insurance shows that the public see these tax cuts as short-term bribes and instinctively know that they will have to pay higher taxes if they want to fix major issues like the NHS and school infrastructure.”
SmarterUK proposes to create a secure electronic voting platform so that these questions can be put directly to voters as they occur and not bundled every four years into manifest policies that get parties elected but are not acted on.
The SmarterUK’s moto is “Policies for the People, by the People”, and they aim to re-connect voters to politicians using AI Technology, but stress that far from AI taking over Parliament, it is just a technology enabler to allow more UK citizens to be actively involved in the management of the country they live in.
