Ending the foolish fight over Feinstein's future
The fight over Dianne Feinstein's future is a foolish waste of time.
Some Californians say our senior U.S. senator, who turns 90 next month, must step down as soon as possible so that Gov. Gavin Newsom can appoint a politician who is healthy and young enough to show up in person for all votes. Others say Feinstein was elected to the post and is the best judge of when she should leave.
This is a false choice because we can give both sides what they want. We can make sure California is always represented in the Senate while Feinstein can remain in the body for as long as she likes.
How?
Artificial intelligence.
Yes, we could create an artificial intelligence based on Feinstein. Call it DiFi AI.
And it could handle all the tasks of a senator's job.
Fundraising? DiFi could reach more people in more places faster and write less annoying email spam.
Legislation? An algorithm could introduce sensible guncontrol legislation that doesn't pass and faster than the human Feinstein.
Voting the party line? Your 12-year-old could build an AI to do that.
But why stop at handling official duties? A DiFi AI could solve political problems that elude the living, breathing Feinstein.
Right now, Newsom has to worry about the tricky politics of whom he might choose to replace Feinstein if she leaves early or dies; the AI spares him that choice.
In 2024, three Democratic contenders to replace Feinstein will raise millions of dollars to spend against one another — money that donors instead could devote to beating Republican candidates. Better for Democrats to unite behind the DiFi AI and avoid the costly internal warfare.
DiFi AI also could expand the power of democracy, in a historic way. Right now, we can only vote for representatives who are alive at the time the ballots are printed. But DiFi AI would allow Californians to keep Feinstein, or her algorithmic essence, in office long after she's dead.
Yes, there will be knee-jerk objections to letting the dead represent the living, but those objections are easily dismissed. The U.S. is so good at killing people before their time — wars, gun violence, poor pandemic responses — that the dead could use more representation from their own.
Californians can hardly object to governance by ghosts. Today's citizens do less governing of our state than ballot measures approved many decades ago — like 1978's Proposition 13 — by voters who are mostly dead now.
Of course, there would be some technical challenges. Replacing a human senator with an AI of the same human senator doesn't conform with the outdated rules of the Senate. But it wouldn't be hard to convince senators to change those rules. U.S. senators have huge egos and think of themselves as indispensable. They also are old: The average age in the Senate is 64. An amendment making it possible for them to serve long after they've shuffled off this mortal coil might achieve rare bipartisan — even unanimous — passage.
Filling the Senate with AIs also might be good for the public discourse. After all, human senators are hard for constituents and reporters to get on the phone or text, but AI senators would only be a click away. Since AIs adapt to new information — unlike aging senators — AI politicians might be more accountable, too.
I'd benefit personally. Sen. Feinstein doesn't talk to me — or many reporters — but, I recently asked the GPT-4 multimodal model, from Open AI, to pretend it was a 90-year-old California senator facing questions from a “provocative” California columnist.
Here's the AI-generated chat: Columnist: Could an AI replace you?
Senator: Replace me? Well, that's an intriguing idea. Can an AI understand the needs of the single mother in Fresno or the plight of the immigrant family in San Diego? Can it empathize with the struggles of the small business owner in San Francisco? Can it sit across a table from a foreign leader and negotiate peace?
Columnist: Well, with advancements in technology, they could probably do all of that.
Senator: But there's a difference between doing and understanding. It's one thing to process data, quite another to feel the weight of human experiences… AI may have my knowledge, but it can't have my heart.
I marveled at the savvy of this DiFi AI. She seemed to make the case for humanity — without actually answering the question. And she didn't count herself out of the race, either.
Could human Feinstein do any better?