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 told Fortune magazine. “I only have a handful of family and friends, so most of these are real voters who don't know me.”
Miller conceded defeat in a tweet late Tuesday night. “As the first to put artificial intelligence directly on the ballot, offering voters the novel choice of AI governance, our campaign marked an historic moment in politics and technology,” he 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 told Fortune. “Our office is tasked with ensuring uniform application of the election law, which is Title 22.” Wyoming law is clear, Gray said. “To run for office, you have to be what's called a qualified elector, and to do that, you have 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 complainant, but said it was not another mayoral candidate. Gray spoke to Fortune on Wednesday, the day after the results were announced for incumbent Patrick Collins, who came in fourth. “The AI bot's messaging just didn't resonate with voters,” Gray said.
Miller is a libertarian; Gray is a staunch Republican who says “our laws have to 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 told Fortune about Gray's investigation. “It highlights the downside of putting a human being in a position of state power.”)
An uphill battle
OpenAI, which operated VIC, terminated his access in June, CNN reported. An OpenAI spokesperson said Miller's actions violated their terms of use because ChatGPT is not for political campaigns. At the time, Miller told Wired that if OpenAI were to take away his access to VIC, he would simply move to Meta's open source AI product, Llama 3.
But after OpenAI shut down VIC, Miller quickly built VIC 2.0 on the same service, and it works exactly the same. “OpenAI forced me to become a freedom fighter in the open source battle,” Miller told Fortune. “And VIC 2.0 is still running today. Sam Altman has yet to find me in the dark hallways of OpenAI.”
In his concession speech 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 “create a framework where AI can take full responsibility for decision-making in public office, with humans acting 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 guy, and I'm someone who quickly adopts new things as they come along,” he told Fortune magazine the day after dropping out of 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.”
Fortune magazine noted the similarities between VIC's ideals and Miller's, and asked why Miller doesn't run it himself rather than working as a “physical avatar.” Miller said he thinks he's part of the problem. In his view, human-run political systems, like monarchy and feudalism, are in decline. 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.”
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