Bogota, Colombia – On March 8, for the first time in Colombian history, an artificial intelligence candidate appeared on the national ballot.
Gaitana IA(AI) is running for the Indigenous seats in the North Sucre Province Senate and House of Representatives.
Gaitana did not win a seat in either of the country’s legislatures, but he sparked debate about the role of AI in Colombian politics.
The vote count showed that Gaitana received less than 3,000 total votes (less than 2% of the total number of votes cast in Indigenous seats). This suggests that many people remain skeptical of this new digital approach.
Many questions have emerged surrounding Gaitana, including why the Registraduría, the Colombian agency responsible for verifying and accepting candidates, allowed this unprecedented candidate and what the intentions behind the AI were.
“A lot of local media outlets have been talking about AI going to Congress, but that’s not true. They have humans leading the projects,” said Natalia Aase, co-founder of Gaitana. Latin America Report.
“It is actually a consensus tool developed by community members aged 14 to 25 from the Senú community of Reparo Torrente in Coveñas,” she explained.
Instead of planning to have an AI take office, Gaitana was designed as a democratic experiment backed by real human candidates.
Aase explained in detail how the platform is designed to work. Colombian citizens could subscribe via a link to participate virtually and propose a variety of discussions on topics such as healthcare, women’s rights, and more. These interactions are also available in the AI database.
Once a proposition reaches collective agreement, those holding seats in Congress will “determine the direction of the proposed law.”
The two people Gaitana represented were Carlos Redondo Rincón, a mechatronics engineer from the Senú community who was running for senator, and Luz Rincón, an Embera-Katio indigenous sociologist who was seeking a seat in the House of Representatives.
Gaitana’s co-founder also said the team conducted in-depth research on global democratic models, such as Norway’s model, and compared them with their own community dynamics.
As the research progressed, the team discovered that the community in Senú had already established a well-functioning model of social interaction, which led them to launch a digital project modeled after their own practices.
This meant digitizing the traditional way of reaching consensus. In the Senú community, men, women and youth gather around a table to discuss specific topics, such as women’s health or local fisheries.
“Gaitana IA is not generative AI. It’s participatory AI. What does that mean? It’s not ChatGPT. Instead, it takes the information provided by the user and organizes it,” Aase pointed out. “Transparency and security are of the utmost importance to us, which is why we are using blockchain technology, or the block system, to power this platform.”
According to Aase, the project was born out of a motivation to prevent corruption, explaining that ‘Gaitana AI’ does not require one person to make decisions, but requires approval from at least 100 people.
“You can control one person, but you can’t control a hundred people without knowing who that person is,” she concluded.
This article originally appeared on The Bogotá Post and is republished with permission.
Featured image caption: Gaitana IA
Main image source: @Gaitana_IA via X
