Romania aims to use AI for policy recommendations

Countries around the world are beginning to grapple with the pervasiveness of artificial intelligence (AI). While some look to the emerging technology with concern, others, like Romania, are embracing it. 

According to a report from the Financial Times, officials in Romania have introduced an AI-powered robot named Ion with the goal of enhancing the government’s understanding of public concerns.

Sebastian Burduja, Romania’s innovation minister commented on the development saying:

“It’s the first attempt, the first experiment, in using AI to connect average citizens to their decision-makers. I think it has great potential to strengthen democracy and consolidate the legitimacy of governments.”

The bot obtains data through automatic scans of social media, a particular hashtag and messages from the public through a specific platform set up for this purpose. The data is then transformed into reports for government officials. 

Burduja said “the dream” would be for the AI to propose policy recommendations based on the data it receives from the public.

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Ion was developed by a local startup called Humans.ai, which said at least one report has been created from the data since it was launched in March. Cointelegraph reached out to Humans.ai for further comment on the situation.

The bot is expected to have an upgrade this upcoming summer which will allow it to give answers, and be equipped with a dashboard for officials to filter data based on various parameters. 

This comes as the European Union prepares its AI Act, the union’s first set of comprehensive guidelines and regulations for the development and deployment of AI. Romania is one of the 27 member countries in the E.U. and therefore would be subject to embrace any regulations stemming from the Act. 

On the other side of the world in China, a state-sponsored AI firm recently launched a chatbot to rival and surpass that of OpenAi’s ChatGPT. 

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