Swedish Prime Minister's Use of ChatGPT Sparks Debate on AI in Governance

Prime Minister of Sweden Dragged for Admitting He Uses ChatGPT to Help Him Make Decisions

Futurists concerned that we are gliding into an AI-fueled dystopia wherein the human race acquiesces its ethical, decision-making, and intellectual powers to a gaggle of corporate algorithms need look no further than Ulf Kristersson to justify their fears. Kristersson, who happens to be the prime minister of Sweden, recently admitted during a Nordic news site that he sometimes asks ChatGPT for a "second opinion" when it comes to his governance strategies. "I use it myself quite often," Kristersson said during the interview. "If for nothing else than for a second opinion. What have others done? And should we think the complete opposite? Those types of questions." Predictably, Kristersson was immediately dragged for his comments. "The more he relies on AI for simple things, the bigger the risk of overconfidence in the system," Virginia Dignum, a professor of responsible artificial intelligence at Umeå University, said while chatting with the same outlet that interviewed the PM. "It is a slippery slope. We must demand that reliability can be guaranteed. We didn't vote for ChatGPT." The PM was also criticized by a variety of other outlets, all of whom seemed to feel that governance via chatbot was not the ideal route for Western civilization. "Too bad for Sweden that AI mostly guesses," wrote Aftonbladet's Signe Krantz. "Chatbots would rather write what they think you want than what you need to hear." Krantz makes a good point, which is that chatbots can be incredibly sycophantic and delusional. If you have a leader asking a chatbot leading questions, you can imagine a scenario in which the software program's algorithms only serve to reinforce that leader's existing prerogatives (or to push them further over the edge into uncharted territory). Thankfully, it doesn't seem like a whole lot of politicians feel the need to use ChatGPT as a consigliere yet. Whether Kristersson really relies on a chatbot while navigating his leadership duties or whether he was, in reality, just trying to seem hip by namedropping a popular tech product during an interview, it's clear that AI is increasingly being used by all sorts of people to outsource intellectual capacities that, only a few years ago, were exclusively the domain of the human mind. That's a dangerous situation to be in, as the tech industry has already been atrophying our ability to think for two decades now. How much stupider can we all get? I suppose we're all about to find out.

'We didn't vote for Chat GPT': Swedish PM under fire for using AI in role

Tech experts criticise Ulf Kristersson - and Aftonbladet newspaper accuses him of falling for 'the oligarchs' AI psychosis' The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has come under fire after admitting that he regularly consults AI tools for a second opinion in his role running the country. Kristersson, whose Moderate party leads Sweden's centre-right coalition government, said he used tools including Chat GPT and the French service LeChat. His colleagues also used AI in their daily work, he said. Kristersson told the Swedish business newspaper Dagens industri: "I use it myself quite often. If for nothing else than for a second opinion. What have others done? And should we think the complete opposite? Those types of questions." Tech experts, however, have raised concerns about politicians using AI tools in such a way, and the Aftonbladet newspaper accused Kristersson in a editorial of having "fallen for the oligarchs' AI psychosis". "You have to be very careful," Simone Fischer-Hübner, a computer science researcher at Karlstad University, told Aftonbladet, warning against using Chat GPT to work with sensitive information. Kristersson's spokesperson, Tom Samuelsson, later said the prime minister did not take risks in his use of AI. "Naturally it is not security sensitive information that ends up there. It is used more as a ballpark," he said. But Virginia Dignum, a professor of responsible artificial intelligence at Umeå University, said AI was not capable of giving a meaningful opinion on political ideas, and that it simply reflects the views of those who built it. "The more he relies on AI for simple things, the bigger the risk of an over-confidence in the system. It is a slippery slope," she told the Dagens Nyheter newspaper. "We must demand that reliability can be guaranteed. We didn't vote for Chat GPT."

Sweden's leader uses ChatGPT. Should politicians use AI chatbots?

The Swedish leader's use of ChatGPT sparked backlash in the Nordic country. The same week, OpenAI sid the chatbot will be rolled out across the US government. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has stirred up public debate over politicians' use of artificial intelligence (AI) after telling local media he uses ChatGPT to brainstorm and seek a "second opinion" on how to run the country. Kristersson told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri that he uses ChatGPT and the French service LeChat, and that his colleagues also use AI in their everyday work. "I use it myself quite often, if for nothing else than for a second opinion. 'What have others done? And should we think the complete opposite?' Those types of questions," he said. The comment sparked backlash, with critics arguing that voters had elected Kristersson, not ChatGPT, to lead Sweden. Technology experts in Sweden have since raised concerns about politicians using AI tools in such a way, citing the risk of making political decisions based on inaccurate information. Large language models' (LLMs) training data can be incomplete or biased, causing chatbots to give incorrect answers or so-called "hallucinations". "Getting answers from LLMs is cheap, but reliability is the biggest bottleneck," Yarin Gal, an associate professor of machine learning at the University of Oxford, previously told Euronews Next. Experts were also concerned about sensitive state information being used to train later models of ChatGPT, which is made by OpenAI. Its servers are based in the United States. Kristersson's press team brushed aside security concerns. "Of course, it's not security-sensitive information that ends up there. It's used more as a sounding board," Tom Samuelsson, Kristersson's press secretary, told the newspaper Aftonbladet. This is not the first time a politician has been placed under fire due to their use of AI - or even the first time in Sweden. Last year, Olle Thorell, a Social Democrat in Sweden's parliament, used ChatGPT to write 180 written questions to the country's ministers. He faced criticism of overburdening ministers' staff, as they are required to answer within a set time frame. Earlier this year, United Kingdom tech secretary Peter Kyle's use of ChatGPT came under fire after the British magazine, New Scientist revealed he had asked the chatbot why AI adoption is so slow in the UK business community and which podcasts he should appear on to "reach a wide audience that's appropriate for ministerial responsibilities". Some politicians make no secret of their AI use. In a newspaper column, Scottish Member of Parliament Graham Leadbitter said he uses AI to write speeches because it helps him sift through dense reading and gives him "a good basis to work from" - but emphasised that he still calls the shots. "I choose the subject matter, I choose the evidence I want it to access, I ask for a specific type of document, and I check what's coming out accords with what I want to achieve," Leadbitter wrote in The National. And in 2024, the European Commission rolled out its own generative AI tool, called GPT@EC, to help staff draft and summarise documents on an experimental basis. Meanwhile, OpenAI announced a partnership this week with the US government to grant the country's entire federal workforce access to ChatGPT Enterprise at the nominal cost of $1 for the next year. The announcement came shortly after the Trump administration launched its AI Action Plan, which aims to expand AI use across the federal government to boost efficiency and slash time spent on paperwork, among other initiatives. In a statement, OpenAI said the programme would involve "strong guardrails, high transparency, and deep respect" for the "public mission" of federal government workers. The company said it has seen the benefits of using AI in the public sector through its pilot programme in Pennsylvania, where public servants reportedly saved an average of about 95 minutes per day on routine tasks using ChatGPT. "Whether managing complex budgets, analysing threats to national security, or handling day-to-day operations of public offices, all public servants deserve access to the best technology available," OpenAI said.

'We didn't vote for ChatGPT': Prime Minister of Sweden admits he uses AI chatbots for 'second opinions' and an awful lot of people are not happy about it

Ulf Kristersson caused a stir with his admission that he uses chatbots to help with decisions "quite often." In a recent interview with Swedish site Dagens industri (via The Guardian), Ulf Kristersson, the Prime Minister of Sweden, said he regularly consults with AI chatbots including ChatGPT and the French service Le Chat to get a "second opinion" on decisions. Unsurprisingly, that turned out to be an admission he probably should have kept to himself. "I use it myself quite often," Kristersson said in the interview. "If for nothing else than for a second opinion. What have others done? And should we think the complete opposite? Those types of questions." That doesn't seem great, and I say that as a citizen of a country with a former Prime Minister who famously consulted mediums, took part in seances, and saw dead people. On the other hand, while there's certainly some crossover between psychic mediums and AI-powered chatbots, I don't recall King's mother ever suddenly going off as MechaHitler and calling for a second Holocaust. Important distinction there. I'm not the only one who finds the whole thing incredibly dodgy: Experts in the field expressed concerns about Kristersson's AI dalliances too. "The more he relies on AI for simple things, the bigger the risk of overconfidence in the system," Virginia Dignum, a professor of responsible artificial intelligence at Umeå University, told Dagens industri. "It is a slippery slope. We must demand that reliability can be guaranteed. We didn't vote for ChatGPT." Writing in Expressen (Google translated), consultant and "AI enthusiast" Jakob Ohlsson called Kristersson's approach to AI "amateurish," saying that it's good the Prime Minister is curious about new technologies but adding that "he is inputting his political thoughts into a language model he does not understand, owned by a company he does not control, whose servers are located in a country whose democratic future no one can be completely sure of anymore." And while a representative for Kristersson later said that "sensitive information" is never a part of the PM's AI usage, Ohlsson said that's not good enough because "a competent analyst can piece together the government's strategic thinking from small clues," all of which end up in the hands of US tech companies "that are already becoming more powerful than many states, in a USA whose future political development is anything but predictable." Writer and lecturer Signe Krantz wrote in Aftonbladet that "Kristersson has fallen for the oligarchs' AI psychosis," and warned that "chatbots would rather write what they think you want than what you need to hear." Krantz also asked why the PM would use "random number generators" for advice rather than "his large and well-paid staff of experts." "It can take longer for an expert to fix the AI's mistakes than it would have taken to do the job from scratch," wrote Krantz. "It's just as embarrassing every time someone lends their thinking power to AI. When the Prime Minister does it too, it's a different matter. It can pose a security risk." Not everyone is against Kristersson's chatty ways: In a separate Dagens industri editorial (Google translated), Tobias Wikström wrote that the Swedish PM "is absolutely right about AI technology," with a number of caveats including that "of course, the Prime Minister understands that one cannot trust the answers that the internet's enormous search capabilities provide, whether they are AI-produced or not." Which might make one wonder why one is bothering in the first place, but I digress. People who make money -- a whole lot of money -- promoting the cure-all tonic of AI have in recent years poured great effort into convincing us all that the AI-powered future is both inevitable and awesome, as long as we get behind it with sufficient enthusiasm (and money). But reality suggests something rather different: A torrent of slop, suckers, security holes, and a bottomless money pit that's swallowed countless billions of dollars, with countless more to follow. Will artificial general intelligence be a real thing someday? Maybe! But it sure isn't a real thing now, nor is its creation plausibly imminent, no matter what the high-priced hucksters say. Right now it's not much more than Eliza with internet access, and that's probably not something for the leader of any nation to be casually kicking around ideas with.

AI in government? Swedish PM turns to ChatGPT for decisions - VnExpress International

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson says he often turns to AI tools like ChatGPT for a "second opinion" on policy, sparking debate over AI's role in governance. "I use it myself quite often. If for nothing else than for a second opinion. What have others done? And should we think the complete opposite? Those types of questions," Kristersson told Dagens Industri in an interview published Aug. 3. The 61-year-old leader said the government wants to embrace AI and digitalization to process massive amounts of data in national administration. He believes technology can be highly useful for experts and advisers, and noted that other cabinet members also use AI in their daily work. Kristersson mentioned two tools he uses: ChatGPT and the French messaging app LeChat, The Guardian reported. Tom Samuelsson, spokesperson for the Prime Minister's Office, stressed that Kristersson is cautious with AI use. "Naturally it is not security sensitive information that ends up there. It is used more as a ballpark," he said. Still, the admission has drawn mixed reactions in Sweden. Some tech experts worry about politicians relying on AI for decision-making. Simone Fischer-Hübner, a computer science researcher at Karlstad University, cautioned about security risks when politicians use ChatGPT. Virginia Dignum, professor of AI ethics at Umeå University, argued that AI cannot offer truly objective political opinions. "The more he relies on AI for simple things, the bigger the risk of an overconfidence in the system. It is a slippery slope. We must demand that reliability can be guaranteed. We didn't vote for ChatGPT," she told Dagens Nyheter. Others take a more open view. Political analyst Elias Rosell wrote that it is "only a matter of time" before AI becomes common in politics, calling it "one of the key factors shaping this century." Mathias Sundin, a member of Sweden's AI Commission, said Kristersson had "used AI correctly," adding that large language models are trained on "the entire Internet and hundreds of thousands of books," making them a valuable source of reference.