It had to happen. When something reaches such a high degree of presence in the public conversation, as artificial intelligence, opportunists arise who, in one way or another, try to deceive people who have less information. Almost five months after the overwhelming appearance of ChatGPT, the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, who has his own TV show called Con Maduro – there is certainly work for psychoanalysts here – unveiled his own AI. It's called Sira, a curious coincidence with the popular Siri, Apple's virtual assistant.
Sira is the talking bust of a young woman who speaks to the camera with the impersonal look that most computer-generated human beings still have and with yet-to-be-polished syntax. His first words were: "Greetings, Mr. President Nicolás Maduro, guests and all of Venezuela. My name is Sira. I have been created under the parameters of artificial intelligence to accompany him, starting today, on his program Con Maduro. I am very happy and proud to participate in this new space. We will triumph". If you haven't seen the video yet, you can imagine Nicolás Maduro's overflow of self-satisfaction with the final "triumph" of his artificial creature.
Sira is nothing more than an animation with an artificial voice. It's not even necessarily artificial intelligence. It is simply a recreation that aims to pretend that those who (who) govern the South American country are at the forefront of the most determining technology that will change the world in the coming years. After the short self-presentation of the artificial announcer, Maduro justified her presence: "We must go to the vanguard of the new era in every sense: in the sense of social ideas, of political doctrine, of country project, of the geopolitical vision of the world, in the sense of science, technology, knowledge of innovations. Venezuela must go forward, we cannot stay behind". Well, if this is true, apply it to education and health, instead of putting it on a television program.
It's all a comedy. Sira is a talking figure with a certain air of Max Headroom, the cult cyberpunk series of the eighties, but not a modern machine capable of answering real questions. Probably in the next editions of the program we will see her answer ingeniously to Maduro's approaches. Don't be fooled. In a television program everything is part of a script. Nothing is left to the mercy of an artificial intelligence capable of making mistakes. It is not for this, for the show, that this powerful and dangerous technology has been developed. It's no joke.
