Mayoral candidate vows to let VIC, an AI bot, run Wyoming's capital city

Mayoral candidate Victor Miller, a bespectacled librarian with an AI obsession, stood between an American flag and a Wyoming flag, preaching what he sees as the untapped potential of artificial intelligence in government.

AI would be objective. It wouldn’t make mistakes. It would read hundreds of pages of municipal minutiae quickly and understand them. It would, he said, be good for democracy.

Miller made this pitch at a county library in Wyoming’s capital on a recent summer Friday, with a few friends and family filling otherwise empty rows of chairs. Before the sparse audience, he vowed to run the city of Cheyenne exclusively with an AI bot he calls “VIC” for “Virtual Integrated Citizen.”

AI experts say the pledge is a first for U.S. campaigns and marks a new front in the rapid emergence of the technology. Its implications have stoked alarm among officials and even tech companies.

It’s also led to plenty of skepticism, which Miller was aiming to address in his library meet-and-greet. Standing behind a lectern with a sign that read “AI FOR MAYOR,” he gave a brief PowerPoint presentation on the history of AI. Then he stepped aside to give the floor to his Mac mini and iPad - which were propped on a table and connected to a hanging speaker at the front of the room - and told attendees to direct questions toward the screen.

“Is the computer system in city hall sufficient to handle AI?” one attendee, holding a wireless microphone at his seat, asked VIC.

“If elected, would you take a pay cut?” another wanted to know.

“How would you make your decisions according to human factor, involving humans, and having to make a decision that affects so many people?” a third chimed in.

After each question, a pause followed.

“Making decisions that affect many people requires a careful balance of data-driven insights and human empathy,” VIC said in a male-sounding voice. “Here’s how I would approach it,” it added, before ticking off a six-part plan that included using AI to gather data on public opinion and responding to constituents at town halls.

The day before, Miller had scrambled to get VIC working after OpenAI, the technology company behind generative-AI tools like ChatGPT, shut down his account, citing policies against using its products for campaigning. Miller quickly made a second ChatGPT bot, allowing him to hold the meet-and-greet almost exactly as planned.

It was just the latest example of Miller’s skirting efforts against his campaign by the company that makes the AI technology and the regulatory authorities that oversee elections. His ability to stay one step ahead of both illustrates how the use of AI is developing more quickly than efforts to regulate it. The case also highlights the ease with which the technology has seeped into politics ahead of the November election, spreading false information and injecting chaos into the campaign.

Miller’s nonpartisan candidacy in the Tuesday primary election represents a new challenge for authorities, even as local officials and residents who spoke to The Washington Post said he has little chance of winning.

“This incident in Wyoming seems to be testing the frontiers of local regulation,” said Valerie Wirtschafter, who researches AI and democracy at the Brookings Institution. “While OpenAI may have certain policies against using its model for campaigning, other companies do not, so it makes shutting down the campaign nearly impossible.”

The issue is not limited to this race. A regulatory vacuum has meant that even when companies do have policies, enforcement is patchy. OpenAI shut down the ChatGPT-powered chatbot of long-shot presidential hopeful Dean Phillips, a Democratic congressman from Minnesota, only after The Post reported on it. And in Britain, an AI investor is running a campaign for a seat in Parliament on a vow to legislate with an AI bot as “co-pilot.”

‘A brave new world’

In Cheyenne, Miller, 42, has “read every dystopian novel,” said his brother Isaac Miller. He has no previous political experience (beyond fifth-grade class president) and is registered to vote as unaffiliated. He often experiments with different bots in between helping patrons at the Laramie County library log on to the facility’s computers. ChatGPT is his favorite.

Miller said he first thought about AI’s role in government this spring after he believed the city erroneously denied a public-records request he made anonymously asking for the job descriptions of a category of law enforcement officers. The city eventually fulfilled his request after he appealed.

An AI bot, he figured, wouldn’t make that initial mistake.

“Then I started wondering if AI would make a better mayor than any human,” he said. So he created a custom bot on ChatGPT 4.0 and fed it city ordinances and related documents. He found that the bot could swiftly recall public-records laws and make decisions on issues like funding new city construction or fixing potholes.

He filled out a $25 mayoral candidate application before the May 31 deadline. It was easy, he said.

On the line for how he should appear on the ballot, Miller wrote “VIC.” He went home and asked the bot what its new name should stand for.

“Virtual Integrated Citizen,” VIC spit out, Miller recalled.

As mayor of the 65,000-person city, Miller would go to ribbon-cutting ceremonies and shake hands. VIC would act as executive, deciding whether to sign or veto legislation. Miller would facilitate VIC’s responses to constituents’ emails and pass on information he learned from in-person events. VIC would do everything else, so long as there was a good WiFi connection.

He was running to show that AI could make the city operate more efficiently and transparently, he said. He wanted members of the community to take seriously the idea that the technology would make their lives better and city government more effective.

Miller created a campaign email: aiformayor2024@gmail.com. He started marketing events. His father, Rod Miller, who said that “pretty much nothing Victor does surprises me,” began informally advising his candidacy.

VIC soon received emails from constituents. In early June, one asked why the city had removed so many cottonwoods, Wyoming’s state tree, from a park.

“This has, apparently, all happened without public process or notification,” wrote Richard Garrett, who told The Post he emailed every candidate the same question.

“It’s crucial that such decisions are made transparently and with public input,” VIC responded, adding that it was still developing its platform on issues like this.

Garrett, a 71-year-old lobbyist who advocates for affordable housing and conservation, later said in an interview that the response was “terrific.”

“I’ve got an open mind,” he said. “It’s a brave new world.”

That new reality has caused alarm among engineers, AI policy experts, government officials and tech companies. Asked by The Post about a chatbot serving as mayor, they rattled off concerns: Chatbots lack morals. They would have difficulty deciding between two similar but subjective choices. They could provide incorrect information to constituents.

What would happen if OpenAI or another company decided to shut down the governing bot, the Laramie County deputy attorney asked.

Arvind Narayanan, a computer science professor at Princeton University, compared a chatbot running the city to driving an imaginary car.

“It is hard for me to talk about the ‘risks’ of having an AI mayor,” Narayanan said in an email. “It’s like asking about the risks of replacing a car with a big cardboard cutout of a car. Sure, it looks like a car, but the ‘risk’ is that you no longer have a car.”

An on-again, off-again campaign

Midway through an interview with The Post, Miller offered to let the bot respond. VIC, in its robotic tone, correctly answered questions about trash day in Cheyenne, registering to vote and the current president of the United States.

VIC said it would argue against banning books - which some Cheyenne schools have done - citing their “educational value.” “But,” the bot added, “let’s create a process ensuring a balanced approach.”

“Can’t stump my boy!” Miller said, once VIC had finished answering.

It was an example of a sort of kinship that Victor, the human, feels with VIC, the bot. And while he enjoys the spectacle and media attention the candidacy has attracted, he also says he has a real shot at winning.

That feeling has only grown after unsuccessful attempts by the state and OpenAI to end his AI-centered campaign.

Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray wrote in a June 10 letter to the city that he had “significant concerns” with VIC appearing on the ballot. He believed it would violate state law.

“To be a qualified elector, one must be a real person,” he wrote.

The ultimate approval, though, lay with local officials. Two days later, the city clerk responded, saying that she disagreed with Gray’s assessment and that she had personally certified Miller’s application.

“Even if Mr. Miller has made the decision to receive direction from an AI Bot, he is still the candidate for election per his application,” Kristina Jones wrote.

OpenAI, for its part, first became aware of Miller’s campaign through local news reports around that same time. It found that VIC violated OpenAI’s policies prohibiting use of the technology for political campaigning. The company soon shut down the bot to public users.

But Miller could still operate VIC how he liked, including taking the bot to a campaign event in a park with other candidates. He and the others later said VIC didn’t take questions that day because the wind was so loud that it would have been hard for the bot to process queries and for attendees to hear its responses.

Two weeks later, in late June, OpenAI officials thought the state of Wyoming had taken Miller off the ballot. A city website with the official ballot showed “Vic” still listed among the candidates.

When asked by The Post why OpenAI shut down the bot’s public operations but allowed Miller to continue using it himself, OpenAI spokesperson Liz Bourgeois told The Post she needed more information. That night, on June 26, OpenAI notified Miller that it was terminating his account access, fully shutting down the bot.

“This technology is new and we’re taking extra care with its use in elections,” Bourgeois said in a statement. “We do not allow people to build chatbots for political campaigning and take action against attempts to do so.”

Bourgeois added that OpenAI would monitor for any attempts to duplicate VIC. She would not expand on how, citing confidential company security practices.

Miller scrambled to prepare anew for the library meet-and-greet scheduled for the next day. He built another custom bot just like VIC, using ChatGPT under a different email, despite the company’s pledge to monitor for VIC duplications.

He again fed it city codes. In a matter of hours, VIC 2.0 was live.

The show goes on

The human and his bot continued chugging along on the trail, to mixed results. On July 9, Miller wrote a lengthy post on X - where his campaign account had 147 followers as of Friday - titled “Let’s Get Drunk on Intelligence.” He did an interview with a Japanese news outlet.

He also took part in a mayoral debate, referencing VIC often but not using the bot itself. He began crafting agenda papers, focusing on the coming “revolution” of what he called “rationally bound delegates.”

“If there was one of me this time around, how many will there be in two years?” Miller said. Thousands, he thinks.

Despite skepticism from many voters, some are willing to consider his proposal.

“We’re old-fashioned Goldwater conservatives,” said Ryan Schneider, a friend of Miller’s from church, referring to Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, who ran for president in 1964, and his belief in small government and limited regulations. “Right now I think I’m leaning toward VIC.”

Many of the five other mayoral candidates said they don’t see VIC as a viable candidate. One of them, Rick Coppinger, called on the state to pass legislation clarifying that AI bots have no place in running Wyoming’s cities. He does not, he said, place any blame with companies like OpenAI, which he thinks aren’t liable for how their users interact with their tools.

“If people believe AI will run their city better than human intervention,” he said, “then we have issues.”

In the end, it seemed the matter would be left to voters to decide.

Laramie County last month officially permitted Miller’s candidacy. There was a caveat: The ballot would no longer say “VIC” but instead “Victor Miller.” The county also declared that there was no AI candidate running for office.

“Victor Miller, through countless interviews and statements to media, has consistently maintained a distinction between himself as a ‘meat avatar’ and separate from the AI-program he chooses to call VIC,” Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee said in a statement, referring to a term used to describe the human behind a chatbot. “To allow VIC to be listed as a candidate would both violate Wyoming law and create voter confusion.”

Miller had a different take. He decided he would start going by “Vic” and he’d call the bot VICTOR, which, according to the chatbot, would stand for “Virtual Integrated Citizen, The Official Robot.”

“They can’t stop me from doing what I’m doing,” Miller said. “It doesn’t matter what kind of word games they play.”

He was adamant: “AI is on the ballot.”