Madrid Goes To The Polls As AI Makes Its Electoral Debut
Madrid’s 5.1 million voters go to the polls today, Tuesday 4th May, for the regional assembly elections.
The much awaited election results will in the hands of artificial intelligence for the first time and was unveiled at the Election Data Centre in IFEMA by the regional premier, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, as “Sophia.”
This is the first election in Spain to use digital innovation in such a way.
Developed in Hong Kong by Hanson Robotics, Sophia is capable of interacting with people and providing real-time data and analysis including using speech recognition and learning technology from Alphabet Inc (Google’s parent company.)
Sophia will head the neural election network and have access to data on voter turnout by each municipality, health restrictions or information on voting by mail, so ‘it’ will have all the data necessary to give real-time and accurate information on the election results as they are announced.
There are more than 160 accredited journalists covering the election night and Sophia will interact with them through facial recognition. She is also able to imitate human gestures and facial expressions, as well as able to answer “any question on predefined topics.” according to the regional government´s press release.
Sophia’s technology analyses everything she hears as well as having simultaneous internet access to “create the best possible response”, for real time data analysis.
