Lars is one of us. Would you trust an Artificial Intelligence to make the right political choices? More than you trust our modern politicians? Today we talk to Asker Bryld Staunæs, the founder and acting party secretary of the Danish Synthetic Party - the world's first political party driven by artificial intelligence. But Asker will only be the party secretary until their AI figurehead Leader Lars is legally allowed to take over!

The official representative and face of The Synthetic Party is actually an AI called Leader Lars and also their policies are derived from AI! We talk about what happens if you have a public discussion between Leader Lars and a real conservative politician, what the name Lars stands for, why you can’t use the infamous GPT-3 model for Leader Lars and if data is objective or not.

And let’s be honest, this interview is totally biased: With Tarek being a former AI researcher and Waschi being a real Cyborg with an artificial ear, it’s already clear what our opinion on this topic is going to be!

Hosted by two former CTOs who decided to stay hands-on, both veterans of the industry with decades of experience as engineers. You can expect many stories from current and past ventures. Meet Innovation Engineer Tarek Madany Mamlouk and Principal Engineer Sebastian "Waschi" Waschnick.

Key Takeaways

• If you look at the US elections, it’s already clear that Artificial Intelligence is used for quite a while to make decisions, at least for the various campaigns. 
• After the Cambridge Analytica scandal, many tech companies just try to close their eyes to obvious problems and just forbid any political use of their technology.
• It is possible to have a public AI which is not going to be racist or whatever.
• If you have a discussion between a real politician and an AI it’s surprising how similar both sides' arguments and phrases are. 
• Data is always biased, but in the same way as our democratic system is.
• In the future AI will be more of an assistant, not a replacement.

Show Notes

• 0:00 Intro
• 1:13 The nerdiest mug
• 1:40 Very human
• 2:50 How the Computerlars project actually started
• 5:50 Artist or Engineer?
• 6:50 An anti-political party
• 8:12 Training data for a political AI
• 10:46 Data cares who you are
• 12:24 The origin of the name Leader Lars
• 14:45 The danger of using voting data to target swing voters
• 17:47 We don’t want to f*** it up, like Microsoft
• 19:14 The reaction of the people
• 22:08 The debate with the mayor 
• 23:59 Synthetic voice and people assume sentience 
• 26:24 Qualityland
• 29:25 What would Leader Lars vote for in parliament?
• 33:02 What the psychology of the voters would demand 
• 37:49 The biggest obstacle
• 41:20 Let’s sum it up!
• 46:53 Outro

Stuff we mentioned

We really need to talk more about cool gadgets - I promise we will do this more in future episodes!

• 🧑‍🎨 Computerlars https://computerlars.com/
• 💻 Descript https://www.descript.com/
• 📚 Qualityland https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Marc-Uwe-Kling/dp/3548291872/
• 📄 Cambridge Analytica https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/us/politics/cambridge-analytica-scandal-fallout.html

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• YouTube:  The Innovation Engineer
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