Officials, academics and tech leaders may have been sounding alarm bells about the powers of artificial intelligence, but in Romania, the government is fully embracing the AI revolution after appointing a robot adviser.
Developed by Humans.ai, a local start-up, the 7-foot-tall, mirror-clad robot named Ion — the Romanian equivalent of John — features a booming male voice. His findings aim to deepen government understanding of public concerns.
Dystopian? Not really, says Sebastian Burduja, Romania’s innovation minister. “It is the first attempt, the first experiment, in the use TO THE to connect average citizens to their decision-makers,” he told the Financial Times. “I think it has great potential to strengthen democracy and consolidate the legitimacy of governments.”
Ion’s data is based on automated scans of social media posts, a unique hashtag and messages from the public via its dedicated website. The body robot it’s simply designed to help the public – and government employees – understand how AI works. For now, the data is being distilled into reports for government officials.
At least one report has been compiled based on Ion’s findings since March, when the robot was launched, according to Humans.ai. It is unclear how much this affected official policy.
“It’s an experiment, so we haven’t seen any government in the world use it and react on the spot, and we don’t know what it would look like in practice,” Burduja said. “The dream would be for Ion to come up with policy recommendations based on what people are saying [about] current legislation”.
Although Ion received international praise after its launch at a government meeting in early March, opinions among Romanians “were more mixed,” Burduja acknowledges. “Some of the jokes were, ‘Finally the government has found the intelligence, the artificial intelligence,'” she said.
Alexandru Panait, a Romanian blockchain and digital innovation expert, said that while it was good to see Romania pursuing high-tech projects, Ion had “no real utility” and was best described as “smoke and mirrors”.
“You cannot communicate with this ‘artificial intelligence’, only enter text into the database, with the promise that it will be processed by the AI at a later date,” he said. “If you want to know the opinion of Romanians . . . just reading the news or [carrying out] an opinion poll would be a cheaper and less complex tool”.
Ion has received about 1 million messages, its developers said. While the primary concerns were predictable, such as education, healthcare and infrastructure, secondary data can reveal niche needs, such as access to medicines for low-income citizens. About 270,000 people raised waste management issues.
“Romanians can essentially talk to their elected officials every single day, every single second,” said Burduja, Romania’s youngest serving minister. “This is a huge improvement over the current system where this conversation mostly happens around elections.”
Innovation Minister Sebastian Burduja talks to Ion in his Bucharest office © Stephen McGrath
In a rather awkward exchange, the 37-year-old minister attempted to show the Financial Times the robot’s capabilities and how it interacts with citizens. “Every year,” the minister told Ion, Romania “loses 200,000 of its smartest and hardest-working people” who choose to move abroad.
A white line of bars and text lit up on the massive device as he spoke: “What should we do to make Romania a more attractive country for its young and talented professionals?” Ion noted that “254,473 Romanians are also interested in this topic”.
Like a modern-day Socrates, Ion is hardwired to keep asking questions and go “deeper and deeper” into public concerns, explained Vali Malinoiu, head of blockchain at Humans.ai.
But the Socratic method is only the beginning of Romania’s experiment with government AI. An updated version, to be launched this summer, will be scheduled to provide answers, he said.
The update, which Malinoiu described as a “conversation with data,” will feature a dashboard that will allow government officials to filter data across specific times and places, based on categories such as “general sentiment,” “top emotions,” ” and ” Top Topics”. Officials will be able to click on topics and ask Ion questions via a chatbot, such as: “What do people in Bucharest care about?”
“The advantage of Ion is that we designed it from the ground up, no prior information, no nothing, so what Ion knows comes from the population,” he added.
As governments around the world grapple with the rise of artificial intelligence, many are discovering new ways the technology can serve national interests. The UK, for example, is using Artificial intelligence in healthcare for things like X-ray image analysis and remote patient monitoring; the United States has increased investment in artificial intelligence in areas including national defense and transportation.
Meanwhile, in India’s southern Tamil Nadu state, An app has been launched to help farmers identify crop pest infections. More Orwellian uses, particularly in China, include facial recognition technology to closely monitor citizens and rank their behavior on a points system that can limit access to some services.
Romanians are no strangers to the prying eyes of officials. During the reign of communist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, which ended in 1989, Romanians were subjected to ubiquitous surveillance that included the interception of calls, the interception of mail, and sometimes punishment for contact with foreigners. Decades later, however, Ion has met no notable opposition.
Skeptics of Ion’s usefulness say there are useful features for AI in Romania. Panait, the blockchain expert, cited chatbots to help citizens navigate the country’s bureaucracy or algorithms that could reduce wait times on emergency services hotlines.
Burduja, the innovation minister, acknowledged his country’s sometimes Kafkaesque red tape and said AI could cut red tape. But he has rejected the criticisms of experts and technicians leaders calling for a moratorium on generative AI.
“There is always a balance between prudence and innovation, between regulation and innovation, and I would always tend to be wrong on the innovation side. The future truly belongs to the brave and technology will certainly be a part of it.”
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