Olof Palme's voice is heard from the room being prepared for the election vigil on Sunday. On the wall hang red flags and framed portraits of Hjalmar Branting and Tage Erlander. On the floor are boxes with flyers and ballots. At a quick glance, it could have been a time travel to the golden age of social democracy here in the old working-class quarters at Möllevångstorget in Malmö.
But if you listen to what the former prime minister says, it becomes clear that it is something completely different.
- We will build a technosocialism where technology serves the people and not a few billionaires in Silicon Valley, says Palme from a computer screen.
It is a synthetic Olof Palme who talks through artificial intelligence. It is elected party leader of the AI Party and just answered a question about the party's goals.
- His voice is needed today, says Emma Bexell.
She is an artist based in Malmö, just like another of the party's three parliamentary candidates, Filip Rahim Hansson.
- We want to raise these issues that we think are missing from the debate and democratize AI, he says.
Filip Rahim Hansson has previously been elected in the Social Democrats but left the party several years ago. When he now ventures into politics again, it is in something that is equal parts party politics and art project as a way to attract thought.
Emma Bexell co-founded the Finnish AI Party in 2017. Even then, when AI technology was not as accessible as it is today, she asked herself how it could be used as a political tool.
- We started the party with the goal of using AI as a way to make the world fairer, she says.
Since then, she has followed the development of her creation and has, among other things, written the play "AI Party" for Malmö City Theatre. The exploration led to Olof Palme and thoughts about a left-wing ideological analysis of technology.
- What could a socialist AI be? A counterweight to the tech-fascist driven companies that now control development. Then Olof Palme came as an answer to that question, she says and compares it to the rise of the labor movement during industrialization.
- We already had these discussions a hundred years ago: Who should own the technology that controls our lives?
She trained a language model on Palme's speech from the Riksdag and created a website where anyone can call and talk to the synthetic Olof Palme, who has now been given the role of party leader.
- Many people ask "can you do that?" And you get that. Otherwise, I have been surprised by how positive the reactions are. People think he is needed and that it is wonderful to hear his voice again, she says.
Despite the fact that artificial intelligence is one of our major social issues, nothing is mentioned about that issue in the election manifestos of half of the Riksdag parties. This shows a review that SVT has done.
Can an AI clone preside and make decisions in an association? Is it possible to have AI in a parliament? Filip Rahim Hansson sees many unanswered, big questions that no one decides on today. The AI party wants to challenge the social structures with those questions, he says.
- We are raising an issue that is very telling of what you can actually do with AI and where there are moral boundaries.
One such limit might be recreating someone who has been dead for 40 years. Emma Bexell says that she has tried to get in touch with Olof Palme's relatives.
- I have thought quite a lot about what his family must think and hope they understand that this is done with heart, she says.
When Dagens Nyheter asks Mårten Palme, one of Olof Palme's three sons, how he views the AI clone, he answers in an email.
"I don't know if we have any legal right to stop this, or even if there would be any point in it. The important thing is that it is clear that the answers depend on how the model was trained and that it is therefore not my father's authentic opinions that come out," he writes.
Filip Rahim Hansson raises a large red flag borrowed from Folkets hus in Östra Sönnarslöv. During the election week, the party arranges several panel discussions, including with Håkan Juholt, Peter Sunde and the Danish AI party. The week ends with a classic election vigil, with the dispute that the television broadcast is of course commented live by AI-Palme.
The rise of industrialization brought backlash in the form of the labor movement. That is missing today, says Emma Bexell.
- The power over the tools is further away. It is not the factory owner in the locality, but it is one of the world's richest people, for example. Then it feels more difficult to challenge power.
There are strong elements of nostalgia in the red flags and quotes on the election posters. For Emma Bexell, it is important not to get caught up in thinking that it was better before.
- I don't think we should just be nostalgic about what was said, but think about what we can learn from it. You can use nostalgia as an entry point to get people to remember what it was like.
