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If elected mayor, Victor Miller, 42, told voters he would govern Cheyenne, Wyoming, a town of just shy of 65,000 residents, via an AI chatbot modeled on OpenAI\u2019s GPT-4<\/a>. He named the chatbot, which he built himself, VIC, standing for Virtual Integrated Citizen; Miller himself pledged to serve as a \u201cmeat avatar\u201d carrying out VIC\u2019s duties.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Tuesday, 11,036 Laramie County residents cast votes for mayor<\/a>; Miller and VIC (or VIC and Miller) received 327. The winner was second-term incumbent Patrick Collins, who received 6,286 votes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m really heartened by the response I did get from the people who voted for me,\u201d Miller told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cI only have a handful of family and friends, so the majority of those people are just real voters who don\u2019t know me.\u201d<\/p>\n In a tweeted statement<\/a> late Tuesday night, Miller conceded his loss. \u201cAs the first person to put artificial intelligence directly on the ballot, offering voters the novel choice of AI governance, our campaign has marked a historic moment in politics and technology,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n While \u201cwe\u201d lost the election, he went on, \u201cwe\u2019ve achieved something remarkable: we\u2019ve introduced the world to a new paradigm of governance and sparked crucial discussions about the role of AI in public administration.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It was an uphill battle from the start for Miller and VIC, and the drama of his candidacy sent shockwaves through the local government. Earlier this summer, the county of Laramie was quick to clarify that, contrary to the denizens of national news outlets claiming otherwise, an AI bot was not actually on the ballot.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cVictor Miller, through countless interviews and statements \u2026 has consistently maintained a distinction between himself as a \u2018meat avatar\u2019 and separate from the AI-program he chooses to call VIC,\u201d Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee wrote in a July 5 press release<\/a>. \u201cTo allow VIC to be listed as a candidate would both violate Wyoming law and create voter confusion. VIC is not a registered voter. Therefore, VIC cannot run for office in Wyoming and the name does not appear on Laramie County\u2019s official ballot.\u201d<\/p>\n Originally, VIC\u2019s name was on the ballot rather than Miller\u2019s. But that didn\u2019t last long; in June, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray sent a letter to Cheyenne\u2019s county clerk outlining their views on Miller\u2019s candidacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn Wyoming law, it\u2019s the municipal clerk, not the secretary of state, who certifies candidates,\u201d Gray told Fortune. <\/em>\u201cOur office is tasked with ensuring uniform application of the election code, which is title 22.\u201d Wyoming\u2019s law is clear, he said. <\/em>\u201cTo run for office, one must be a quote-unquote qualified elector. That necessitates being a real person.\u201d<\/p>\n Gray said he was first alerted to Miller\u2019s candidacy via a complaint that came through his office; he did not specify who complained, but said it was not another mayoral candidate. Gray spoke with Fortune <\/em>on Wednesday, a day after the election was called for incumbent Patrick Collins. Miller came in fourth place. \u201cThe AI bot message did not resonate with voters,\u201d Gray said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Miller is a libertarian; Gray, meanwhile, is a staunch republican who said \u201cour laws have to mean something.\u201d Gray called Miller\u2019s candidacy \u201cunprecedented and very disturbing.\u201d Mayor Collins did not return multiple requests for comment. (\u201cThere was no need for all that,\u201d Miller told Fortune <\/em>of Gray\u2019s <\/em>investigation. \u201cIt kind of showcases the downsides of having humans in positions of state power.\u201d)<\/p>\n OpenAI, which powered VIC, shut down access in June, CNN<\/em> reported<\/a>; an OpenAI spokesperson said Miller\u2019s actions violated its terms of usage, as ChatGPT is not meant for political campaigning. At the time, Miller told Wired<\/em><\/a> <\/em>that if OpenAI took VIC access from him, he\u2019d simply move to Meta\u2019s open-source AI offering, Llama 3.\u00a0<\/p>\n But after OpenAI shut VIC down, Miller worked quickly to assemble VIC 2.0 on the same service, which worked identically. \u201cOpenAI has forced me to become a freedom fighter in the open-source battle,\u201d Miller told Fortune. <\/em>\u201cAnd VIC 2.0 is still functional. Sam Altman has not found me in the dark corridors of OpenAI just yet.\u201d<\/p>\n In his concession note Tuesday, Miller announced plans to develop a new organization called the Rational Governance Alliance, which he said will build off his campaign\u2019s main idea: putting AI in the decision room. Ideally, the group will \u201ccreate a framework where AI can take on the full responsibility of decision-making in public office, with humans serving as the legal and physical intermediaries required by current systems.\u201d In other words, future AI candidates won\u2019t have to go it alone the way Miller did.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo all who believe that the era of traditional politicians has reached its limit, I extend an invitation to join us in ushering in a new age of rational governance,\u201d Miller wrote. \u201cThe time has come to move beyond the constraints of human bias and self-interest in public office.\u201d<\/p>\n Managing the alliance would be a bit of a career change. Miller works for the local library in Cheyenne, both on the facilities and grounds crew as well as on the computer crew, helping patrons with their day-to-day tech woes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve always been a tech and computer guy\u2014an early adopter when things were coming out,\u201d he told Fortune <\/em>the day after conceding the race.\u00a0<\/p>\n His first brush with LLMs came a few years ago when he fed his resume to ChatGPT with a command to improve upon it, which it did. \u201cI thought, okay, this isn\u2019t just a parlor trick anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a real thing that can help us in the real world.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Running for mayor alongside VIC was a nexus of Miller\u2019s two primary interests, he said: becoming more literate in AI for his own purposes, and demanding the government become more responsive (he cited a recent Sisyphean effort to access public records from the state ombudsman). \u201cI see a lot of people in my life who tech has really left behind, so I always have that in the back of my mind,\u201d Miller said. \u201cI\u2019m trying not to let that happen to me.\u201d<\/p>\n He said VIC prioritizes transparency and openness\u2014and bringing prosperity to Cheyenne. Trusting human politicians to have those same values, Miller said, is like \u201cbelieving in the tooth fairy or Santa Claus.\u201d (The 2024 presidential election is the \u201cperfect showcase\u201d of such dysfunctions. \u201cThe DNC is a total clown show,\u201d he said.) Asked about VIC\u2019s politics, he shrugged. \u201cKind of what you\u2019d expect,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a mainstream OpenAI model; the literature on that tends to say it leans a little left coming out of Silicon Valley. Pretty pragmatic and centrist.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Noting similarities between VIC\u2019s ideals and Miller\u2019s, Fortune <\/em>asked why he didn\u2019t simply run himself\u2014rather than work as a \u201cmeat avatar.\u201d Miller said he thinks he\u2019s just as much part of the problem. The human-run political system, as he sees it, is in its twilight, like monarchies and feudalism. On the horizon: the era of AI governance that \u201cwill bring prosperity\u2014and hopefully peace.\u201d<\/p>\n After all, that\u2019s why Miller\u2019s apolitical. \u201cObama got me, Trump got me, they all got me,\u201d he said. \u201cAI got me too.\u201d A pause. \u201cI hope they don\u2019t let me down.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nMan vs. machine<\/strong><\/h2>\n
An uphill battle<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The \u2018twilight\u2019 of human government<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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