Probably members of the prime minister’s cabinet Romania, Nicolae Ciucamust have thought of a joke when the premier presented himself with a new member: Ionthe world’s first government consultant who is, on balance, aartificial intelligence.
The new honorary adviser to the Romanian government is called Ion and is an artificial intelligence
Ion is an artificial intelligence created by some Romanian researchers with the task of scan social networks and warn the governmentusing the words of Ciucă, “in real time of the proposals and wishes of the citizens“.
Furthermore, the Prime Minister of Romania was particularly keen to underline Ion’s record, namely his being “the first adviser to a government to use artificial intelligence”, which is truly unique, but which is not surprising given the innovations of the last year and the tech trends of 2023 that see artificial intelligence dominate.
How will Ion work? Basically the AI ”will use technology and artificial intelligence to capture the opinions of society using publicly available data on social networks”. In addition, citizens will be able to chat directly with Ion on an official website, but also propose ideas via social media and, for some locations, even in person.
Ion then will process the information sought and received, synthesizing them and presenting them to the government for consideration. Unfortunately, however, Ion is not expected to respond directly to user requests.
For Ciucă it is essential that the project not only takes hold, but that it is successful, considering it almost an obligation for the government and citizens to use Ion to obtain “close and timely communication”.
And yet, as much as it may be nice to see a government trying to keep up with the times, there have been some initial controversies on the matter. For example Kris Shrishakmember of technology at the Irish Civil Liberties Councilposed some doubts: how can Ion choose what should be considered as a priority?
Hence the awareness that AI must be used with caution, explaining to the public how to best use it and hoping that the government maintains maximum transparency on the matter.