“Vote for artificial intelligence”

This is an unprecedented project with which a group of young people from a rural area in the north of the country try to bring the model of “participatory digital democracy” to the Senate and the House of Representatives of the country. The candidacy, named Gaitana in honor of a indigenous chief of the 16th century who led a rebellion against the Spanish conquest, runs for election to the “indigenous constituencies”. That is, the seats designated exclusively for indigenous peoples in order to guarantee the political representation of that minority.

with a program “environmentalist” and “animalist”, Gaitana assures in the videos that are already circulating on social networks that he will submit all his decisions to virtual votes with the citizens. And that, precisely, is the objective of the project that has a person with names and surnames behind it. This is Carlos Redondo, a mechatronic engineer who promoted the initiative as a platform for young people in your communitythe zenú, decided, through digital voting, how they wanted to allocate local budgets. In this way, AI summarized proposals, organized consensus and facilitated collective decision-making.

“We are always recognized as mystical beings who live in the jungle in constant peace with the earth. That Western view hurts us. Within the communities there are problems and we must solve them with contemporary tools, what we did was digitize the way we make decisions,” Redondo explained in an interview with the Efe agency.

Subsequently, this model, which began with a team of “20 crazy people” and which today involves some 95 young people specialized in technology, was presented to the legislative sphere. The road, however, has not been easy. Initially the proposal was rejected by the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Colombia, for considering it unconstitutional.

Finally, they adopted a hybrid model that was approved: a formally registered human candidate (in this case Carlos Redondo), whose decisions in Congress would be determined by the votes carried out on the digital platform. “If a reform is going to be voted on in Congress, the operator uploads the bill to the platform, the AI ​​summarizes it in infographics and sends it to the community. There the consensus is built and the legislator votes according to that decision,” the engineer explained to Efe, who assures that AI does not seek to replace the human being, but to serve as a tool.

One of the pillars of the project is the registration of decisions on the Ethereum network, technology blockchain used in cryptocurrencies, which, according to Redondo, would allow public verification voting traceability. “I would be worried about legislating without empathy, but I also believe that today we legislate without data,” Redondo said.

Likewise, Gaitana IA functions as a technological training foundation. According to its promoters, more than 25 indigenous young people have been trained in artificial intelligence and dozens are currently participating in the development of the project.

Although in countries like Japan, New Zealand or Denmark Political initiatives supported by artificial intelligence have emerged, none of these projects have competed in elections under this hybrid scheme.

An even more transgressive project was proposed in Albania. Last year, the country’s Government announced that the new minister in charge of public procurement was going to be Diella, a bot created with AI. The initial idea was to end corruption because, the Prime Minister of Albania, Edi Rama, explained at the time, technology is “immune to bribes and threats.” However, the initiative is viewed with much more skepticism since the country’s Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office arrested key figures in the Executive, including Diella’s designer.