Democrat Shamaine Daniels is running for Congress, eyeing a seat held by Trump-aligned Republican Representative Scott Perry, who played a key role challenging the 2020 election results.
Daniels, who lost to Perry by less than 10 points last year, hopes a new weapon will help her underdog candidacy: Ashley, an artificial intelligence campaign volunteer.
Ashley is not your typical robocaller; none of her responses are canned or pre-recorded. Her creators, who intend to mainly work with Democratic campaigns and candidates, say she is the first political phone banker powered by generative AI technology similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT. She is capable of having an infinite number of customized one-on-one conversations at the same time.
Ashley is one of the first examples of how generative AI is ushering in a new era of political campaigning in which candidates use technology to engage with voters in ways increasingly difficult to track.
To some, it is an exciting new tool for conducting high-quality conversations on a large scale. Others worry this will worsen disinformation in the polarized landscape of American politics already battling "deepfakes," realistic but fabricated videos and images created using AI algorithms.
Over the weekend, Ashley called thousands of Pennsylvania voters on behalf of Daniels. Like a seasoned campaign volunteer, Ashley analyzes voters' profiles to tailor conversations around their key issues. Unlike a human, Ashley always shows up for the job, has perfect recall of all of Daniels' positions, and does not feel dejected when she's hung up on.
"This is going to scale fast," said 30-year-old Ilya Mouzykantskii, the London-based CEO of Civox, the company behind Ashley. "We intend to be making tens of thousands of calls a day by the end of the year and into the six digits pretty soon. This is coming for the 2024 election and it's coming in a very big way. ... The future is now."
For Daniels, the tool levels the playing field: as the underdog, she is now armed with another way to understand voters better, reach out in different languages (Ashley is fluent in over 20), and conduct many more "high bandwidth" conversations.
Everyone loves getting robocalled.
This is going to flip so many votes!
It's ironic, stopping robocalls and spammers would be one of the smallest things the establishment could actually do for people but instead they choose this
It'll be great when the only way to tell whether a phone canvasing call is a real person or not is to say you're too busy writing a python program implementing the navier-stokes equations to go vote for their candidate, could they help with that?
damn, doesn't look like anyone posted which denomination of islam chevy thinks is right
lol I thought that @ was familiar then I realized I used to listen to this guy's podcast.
Unlike a human, Ashley always shows up for the job, has perfect recall of all of Daniels’ positions, and does not feel dejected when she’s hung up on.
Oh wow, truly the party that represents workers.
So do the Democrats feel that a robo call is in the same realm of effectiveness as a real person? They love their polling, is there data to say it even works?
They're probably having trouble finding enough actual humans excited enough about the Democratic party to actually phonebank for them
Campaigns need young people with energy and free time to volunteer but they've been actively alienating everyone under 40
Will work precisely once, due to novelty.
Will piss people off forever after that novelty.
Also someone is going to convince this ai to say that it will execute all homeless people and record the result.
I'm sure Robo voter call is as effective and beloved as robotized customer service
Damn, and here I was looking forward to spending another electoral cycle trying to blackpill democratic campaigners who text and call into quitting and joining their local leftist street organization instead.
But if its just AI on the other line there'll be nobody to hear.
You can probably come up with a canned response that'll convince all the AI robo-callers to claim they'll quit their job and join their local leftist street organization.
It won't actually accomplish anything though, since they're not real.
My response "sorry I couldn't respond to your call. There's just so many robots and spam calls, that method of communication is dead to me" is going to be even more valud.
Mouzykantskii said he is fully aware of the potential downsides, and does not intend to take any venture capital funding which might entice him to prioritize profits over ethics.
lol forever
one in ten will pick up the phone when they see an unknown number and of those who do, one in ten will stomach the entirety of an AI generated stump speech, and of those who do, maybe one in five will react positively, and of those, nearly all would already be in the blue bag. They are spending money to filter OUT anybody who MIGHT vote for them
Why have enthusiastic campaign volunteers when we can pay for a shitty LLM to piss people off
Who the hell is enthusiastically volunteering to campaign for a generic Democrat?
probably not many, but remember that the generic Democrat polls higher than any specifically named Democrat, so it is probably even worse
Just skip to the part where an AI analyzes our life and votes for us. Save us the trouble
How is it “the Democratic Party” when the article is only citing an individual? Isn’t that a little fear mongery and bad faith reporting from Reuters?
Correction - it’s the submitter, not the actual headline. OP just post the actual damn headline.
