Hunk and Ex-Marine Peter Dixon Running for Congress in Northern California

The TV ads for him are frequent here. Too bad I'm not in the 16th district so I could vote for him. 😇

Perhaps the most interesting feature of his campaign is the use of AI to introduce the candidate to voters in phonecalls. Yes, they're robo-calls. But they're very different. Here's some sample dialogue, which I find highly amusing as well as fascinating:

The first thing you'll notice when you talk with the AI is that it isn't like those annoying automated calls when you deal with health insurance, which will lead you to scream your Social Security number into the receiver after it gets it wrong for the sixth time.

No, this picked up every single word correctly throughout the entire call.

I wanted to throw the robot some curveballs, since this is when things break down with an AI. But to my surprise, the service was surprisingly resilient to my confusing questions and even could handle me interrupting it.

I heard the Democrats are trying to destroy the use of cars, I told it. I heard the congressional candidate is trying to take away my right to drink a cup of coffee. "I understand your concern, but rest assured, Peter Dixon has no plans to take away anyone's coffee," it told me. "In fact, understanding the importance of daily routines and small pleasures like morning coffee is part of his approach to policy focusing on improving quality of life while addressing broader issues. Enjoying a cup of coffee is certainly safe with Peter Dixon."

I told the AI I was worried that the candidate had a history of spending long nights playing soccer (a completely made up past-time for Dixon) and I was concerned about how all this soccer-playing was impacting his ability to successfully govern.

The bot responded that there's no record of soccer impacting Dixon's responsibilities—and it even told me his military service had prepared him for high-stakes environments.