MASSHINE: Interfacing with synthetic mundane politicians
Date:
In urban settings, connecting with local political agendas can be challenging. Existing methods for interfacing with politicians are often mediated by journalists or involve staged events like rallies or town hall meetings, which may not reflect everyday mundane politics. The Copenhagen Municipality offers online access to its agendas and minutes, yet the vast volume makes meaningful engagement with this material difficult for citizens. To address this, we’ve initiated an experiment utilizing a generative AI model to facilitate conversations with synthetic mundane politicians. We ingested the municipality’s 2023 political records into an open GPT4ALL model, thus enabling citizens to engage in Q&A with a chatbot. Its responses are twofold: a generative answer and the presentation of four noteworthy empirical excerpts, which the model has assigned the highest weighting. We are researching the unique manner in which political communication occurs with generative AI, using this Q&A format, to investigate how it distinguishes itself from existing modes of political discourse between citizens and politicians. Can generative AI enable a more informal dialogue between the public and politicians, similar to interpersonal interactions, rather than the traditional rhetoric used in media or town hall meetings? Could this approach introduce a new method of public engagement?
