This is not completely new, most of the US presidential candidates have a my space account and you can leave your comments on their page, but what if you could ask a question and get a response. Well you can now, kind of. There is a pretty cool website out there called AskTheCandidates2008.com - Talk with AI presidential candidates. This site will allow you to ask a candidate a question and the computer will give you an answer based on quotes from the candidate themselves.

I know that sound weird and like it wouldn’t be accurate but the system uses artificial intelligence to answer the question, so it learns from you and from others.  The following is a question I asked and the response I got. It was interesting, but needs a little fine tuning I think. This can be done by suggesting a better quote for an answer.

Hillary Clinton’s Answer:

What do you plan to do about health care?

Well, let me start by saying that all of the ideas that you’re going to hear about in this campaign are very important to get out to the public so that people can actually think about them, examine how they would affect their lives because I do have the experience of having put forth a plan, with many of the features that John and Barack just mentioned. And people were enthusiastic about it initially, but then after the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies got finished working on it, everybody got nervous and so politically we were not successful. Well, I’m ready to try again, and there’s three things we’ve got to do. We’ve got to control and decrease costs for everyone. This is not just about the uninsured. Yes, we have nearly 47 million, but we’ve got many millions more who have an insurance policy that they can barely afford and that they can’t get the treatments they need under it. We have to cover everybody but we’ve got to improve quality. We can save money within the existing system. I am not ready to put new money into a system that doesn’t work until we’ve tried to figure out how to get the best outcomes from the money we already have.

South Carolina Democratic Debate, April 26, 2007

I was happy with the answer since I know they can’t actually talk to me, but I can find out what they have said about an issue and decide if I like it or if I don’t. That I think is the best part about this website. I still am not sure who to vote for, I know who I’m not going to be, so this site may help me to learn more about these candidates and their view on the issues that affect me.

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