The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, has received immense backlash after admitting that he consults AI tools as guidance for when it comes to running the country.
Kristersson, whose Moderate party leads Sweden’s centre-right coalition government, said he used tools including ChatGPT and the French service LeChat.
Talking to the Swedish business newspaper Dagens Industry, the 61-year-old revealed, "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."
Following his candid admission, tech experts have raised concerns about politicians using AI tools involving such significant tasks.
The Aftonbladet newspaper accused Kristersson in an editorial of having "fallen for the oligarchs’ AI psychosis."
Simone Fischer-Hübner, a computer science researcher at Karlstad University, told the outlet, "You have to be very careful."
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.
Virginia Dignum, a professor of responsible artificial intelligence at Umeå University, shared that AI is not designed to provide helpful political ideas and that it simply reflects the views of those who built it.
Discussing the matter with the Dagens Nyheter newspaper, she said, "We must demand that reliability can be guaranteed. We didn’t vote for ChatGPT."
