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.

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.