Asimov theorized such an AI as Multivac (a joke from Univac) and wrote a number of short stories exploring how it would change the world. He had one short story in particular where one citizen would be called in front of Multivac and, based on their answers to Multivac's questions, Multivac would (accurately) infer who the winner of the presidential election should be, obviating the need for expensive elections to be run. The whole concept wasn't unlike that Kevin Costner movie Swing Vote.
Most companies now sell user data to wherever. It wouldn't be particularly hard to tie user data to individual people given that phone numbers are required for most of the most useful applications (Discord, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc). Given that, you could feed in identifiable user input to an AI, let it develop a model of the US, and then ask it questions about the state of the country, even filtered by identifying characteristics. It would both take much less effort and be more accurate than manual polling or manual outreach. You could have leaders asking which direction they should take the country just by having a quick conversation with their baby-Multivac.
> He had one short story in particular where one citizen would be called in front of Multivac and, based on their answers to Multivac's questions, Multivac would (accurately) infer who the winner of the presidential election should be, obviating the need for expensive elections to be run.
Everyone is of course entitled to their own opinion but my interpretation of Franchise is that the depicted government is a dictatorship. I would say the the end of the story seems pretty sarcastic:
> Suddenly, Norman Muller felt proud. It was on him now in full strength. He was proud.
> In this imperfect world, the sovereign citizens of the first and greatest Electronic Democracy had, through Norman Muller (through him!) exercised once again its free, untrammeled franchise.
Besides, it's obvious that the process is not transparent, denies its citizens their free will by treating them as statistically predictable objects, and requires an amount of personal data that can only be provided by a surveillance state.
Most companies now sell user data to wherever. It wouldn't be particularly hard to tie user data to individual people given that phone numbers are required for most of the most useful applications (Discord, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc). Given that, you could feed in identifiable user input to an AI, let it develop a model of the US, and then ask it questions about the state of the country, even filtered by identifying characteristics. It would both take much less effort and be more accurate than manual polling or manual outreach. You could have leaders asking which direction they should take the country just by having a quick conversation with their baby-Multivac.