The Romanian Prime Minister introduces a new colleague in his cabinet, an "intelligent advisor" who speaks in the mirror in a hushed voice and has been described as the world's first government advisor with artificial intelligence.
Prime Minister Nicolas Chuka claimed the robot, which calls itself Ion, can read people's opinions in the country and relay them to him and his government to help them make decisions.
"Thanks to artificial intelligence, Ion will do what humans cannot do, listen to the voices of all Romanians and represent them before the Romanian government," Ciuka said.
When Chuka asked him to introduce himself at a public meeting on Romanian television on Wednesday, the robot said: “Hi, you greeted me. I am now your role.”
Officials say the bot will help ministers develop policies more relevant to voters' everyday concerns, and will one day be able to come up with their own original ideas.
According to the Romanian Minister of Research, the bot uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to automatically recognize opinions shared by Romanians on social networks or sent to newly created private portals. The bots then organize their thoughts, prioritize the most important, and relay the information to government decision-makers.
"We believe Ion is the world's leading government advisor for artificial intelligence," Romanian Research Minister Sebastian Borduja said in a phone interview with
The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.PM @NicolaeCiuca: As of today, the Government of 🇷🇴 Romania has the first government adviser running on AI, a good example of emerging technologies in public service.
— GuvernulRomâniei (@GuvernulRo) March 1, 2023
Congratulations to the 🇷🇴 researchers on this project that brings us closer to citizens! pic.twitter.com/yP5b5pOs5i
He said the robot developed by his ministry is still in the "learning stage" and urged Romanians to teach it by posting their daily concerns on social media.
"ION will take all this information and start reporting the results, which will be presented to the Prime Minister and the relevant cabinet members," Borduja said.
The government believes that the bot will automatically read social media posts to gather opinions and make more effective decisions.
However, some are skeptical of the technology, raising ethical concerns that algorithms that rely on social media to decide which decisions to prioritize may be biased, leading to biased decision-making and often only catching the opinions of active citizens. Communication, which tends to sideline the interests of non-technical citizens.
The prospect, which Ion engineers hope will teach them to proactively craft policy proposals for consideration by government ministers, is fueling an emerging debate about the role of artificial intelligence in everyday life, particularly in the democratic process.
In addition to informing politicians in writing, the robot will also speak to them in a deep, masculine voice.
Bucharest promotes the technology as a democratic innovation that will allow Romanians, knowingly or unintentionally, to influence decisions at the highest levels of government without having to wait for elections.
Artificial intelligence allows the government to collect vast amounts of data about people's concerns in real time, which officials say is currently impossible without the technology.
So far, Romanians have responded to the call with numerous complaints about daily life on social media, including concerns about corruption, high inflation and even the state pension policy.
As the use of AI technology in everyday tasks becomes more common, governments are striving to develop ethical protocols for its use in public sector decision-making. If it is allowed at all.
One concern is that the algorithms behind the machines could reflect existing human biases, meaning their output could be biased as well. Another problem is that they can be vulnerable to hacking or spam.
Romanian authorities claim that Ion will protect him from spam by using technology that allows him to verify that the other party is a human rather than a machine.