A Danish political party whose ideology and programme is built around artificial intelligence intends to participate in the 2023 parliamentary elections. TechExplore reports.
In late May 2022, a group of artists called Computer Lars created the Synthetic Party (SP). They plan to reach around 15% of Danes who did not vote in 2019.
The party believes that voters did not vote because none of the traditional political forces approached them.
After analysing all written publications by Denmark’s micro-parties since 1970, SP’s artificial intelligence developed a programme. In the algorithm’s view, it reflects “the political views of an ordinary person”.
Among the party’s proposals is the introduction of an unconditional basic income of 100,000 kroner ($13,700) per month. The amount is more than double the country’s average wage.
The SP also supports adding the 18th United Nations Sustainable Development Goal, which would allow “people and algorithms to coexist directly”.
Voters can interact with the party’s artificial intelligence via a Discord channel.
The creation of the SP is a mocking response to hundreds of small organisations that have emerged in recent years. Denmark is home to 230 micro-parties, including the Synthetic.
“This is a way to imitate the political process everywhere, but in direct confrontation with the machinery of lawmaking, law enforcement and organisational rights,” said one member of the collective, Asger Brild Staunaes.
The party has not yet secured sufficient support to participate in the 2023 elections. By law, a political force must collect 20,182 signatures to be included on the ballot, and currently they have only four.
However, if the party succeeds in securing a seat in parliament, it plans to use its mandate to connect AI with the work carried out by members of the assembly.
“The idea is to take this enormous political and economic power [algorithms] … and try to embed it into the traditional political system,” said Staunaes.
He added that at present “we do not have the capacity to address people’s and AI’s problems in democratic conditions”.
In September 2022 the party plans to hold its first pre-election rally ‘for a live audience’.
Earlier in July, Chinese researchers created an AI for assessing the loyalty of Communist Party members.
In June, researchers found that in 2018 Facebook promoted posts of local cells of the US Republican Party despite competitors posting more often.
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