Can AI run government? That’s what Victor Miller from Wyoming wanted to find out by running for mayor on a platform that would enable AI to make decisions.
His interview with the Hard Fork podcast got me thinking about my time working in the federal and municipal governments.
In one job, we would need to brief a federal ministers (to my American friends, very similar to a Secretary in the US government) and members parliament on a variety of topics when they needed to make public announcements.
We provide them with briefing notes that sometimes come in multiple binders.
Same in municipal government where councillors read binders prepared by administration on the various issues:
New subway/LRT proposal – binder full of briefing notes
Budget debate – binder full of briefing notes
Infrastructure – binder full of briefing notes
Housing – binder full of briefing notes
Binders from political aids, binders from administrators, sea of binders with hundreds of pages.
It never ends.
No way any government official can read all that, especially those provided in less than a couple of hours.
This means even more uninformed or less than informed decision making.
However, AI now makes reading and understanding these briefs much easier:
– Summarization
– Analysis
– Transcription of missed meetings
Take it one step further – Government officials can ask their AI assistant questions trained on these briefing notes.
Imagine using the new NotebookLM to get a audio overview of very complex issues and being able to extract the key information?
Not saying AI should make the decision, although with some political decisions of late, you have to wonder if the AI would be better.
But our government leaders and administrators would have an AI advisor they can lean with their day-to-day understanding of issues…ones that no one person would have the bandwidth to remember, let alone make smart decisions from.
Here’s a few very simple AI tactics any politician or political aide or administrator can try from super simple to more advanced:
1. After each council or committee meeting, have AI transcribe and summarize to get the key points, decisions made and follow up actions.
Much more useful than the minutes.
1. Train a CustomGPT, Artifact or NotebookLM on a specific issue important to community, municipality. Train it on all the briefing material you would normally have gotten. Be mindful or privacy and understand what you can train it on.
Use it to retrieve information, as a recommendation tool, make comparisons, do analysis or just a way to bounce ideas off.
1. Create automations immediately analyzing government meetings or relevant situations and provide list of recommendations for decisions.
There’s a lot on the plate of our government officials so why not have AI take some of it so they can be more efficient and smarter with the decisions they make.
What other ways can you think of where AI can help our political representatives and government officials?