This AI is trolling distracted politicians and I’m 100% here for it

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

Ever wonder how much attention your local politicians are paying when they’re supposed to be focusing on serving their constituents?

Yeah, me too, but thanks to AI, video-streamed parliament sessions, and a Belgian digital artist, now we know (Okay, for the Flemish province of Belgium, but it’s probably easy to scale this tool out to any government proceedings).

If you want to follow along, “The Flemish Scrollers,” as Dries Depoorter calls his art installation, can be found on Twitter under @FlemishScroller or Instagram under @TheFlemishScrollers. Every time the software notices a distracted politician checking their social media (or possibly playing Flappy Bird), the system posts a short clip to the social media accounts.

In the real-time accountability for their elected representatives, the clips also tag the accused reps with their social handles and reminds them to “pls stay focused.”

Now, sure, there are many legit reasons why politicians would need to check their phones during a long meeting. But, without seeing the screen’s content, we can’t know if they’re playing a game or replying to some urgent email from a constituent.

When parliament isn’t in session, the AI is trained by watching old broadcasts of politicians to improve its detection rate. Will old clips of distracted lawmaking make it to social media? It’s certainly neat to see AI watching the people in charge instead of us lowly workers for a change.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Russian hackers have reportedly attacked some of the RNC’s servers
• Trump is suing Facebook, Twitter, and Google over claims of censorship
• Hackers infiltrated Apex Legends to warn against hackers in Titanfall
• Tesla, Waymo, and more must now report all self-driving accidents to the government

Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.