Romania’s Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca has hired the world’s first AI adviser.
Ciuca unveiled the new honorary government adviser that will be joining his team – run entirely on artificial intelligence (AI).
The AI is called ‘Ion’ and consists of a mirror-like surface that displays text as well as at times a male or female face that responds in a calm voice.
„Hi, you gave me life and my role is now to represent you, like a mirror,” Ion’s voice said at the launch. „What should I know about Romania?”
The AI-powered adviser was developed by researchers to analyze the opinions of Romanian citizens on key issues and policies, Euronews reported.
The AI will also search social media to figure out what topics people are talking about and to carry out sentiment analysis to discern whether there is positive or negative reaction to a certain event, for example.
„I don’t expect that the prime minister will always do what Ion will say but it is more like a suggestion, it’s more like getting the pulse in real-time,” Nicu Sebe, the research coordinator behind Ion and professor of computer science at the University of Trento told Euronews.
While this technology is the first of its kind in the world, it may have some downsides according to experts.
„They [Romanian government] use the term public space. It seems like they are equating social media as the public space, which is problematic because not everyone is represented there,” Kris Shrishak, technology fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, told Euronews.
