The automated MP

Tom Jones has an interesting CAPX piece on the AI automation of a backbench MP's work.


We’ve automated our first MP. Who’s next?

• That our MPs can be automated away speaks to the devaluation of the role
• Mindless busywork for constituents is diverting legislators from their purpose
• We need MPs who can tackle our national decline – or AI may do a better job

When you think of the jobs most likely to be automated away, which do you think of?

Those most at threat are those that are repetitive and rule-based, require minimal social or emotional intelligence – and don’t rely heavily on creativity or complex judgement. Customer service work is often being quoted as at threat, as are routine manual jobs like fast food fry-slingers, routine cognitive jobs like data clerks and entry-level white collar jobs like paralegals.

Perhaps, then, it should come as little surprise that backbench MP is one of the first jobs to be automated away. If the singularity starts by deleting the lowest-value processes first, the redundant political function seems a logical place to start. Many were chatbots already.

Worth reading as an angle on what MPs actually do as opposed to what they should do and the way AI may focus attention on the issue. For some MPs this may not be a change they can handle, for others it could be.