[nickodell]

There's a simple solution to this: give Watson two platforms, one Republican, and one Democrat. Have Watson run in both primary elections. If he wins both primaries, on election day, voters will be able to choose between Watson running in Democrat mode, and Watson running in Republican mode.

[joesmo]

So we have a supercomputer capable of running the country and you basically want to put the stupid hats on and limit its thinking to bipartisan bickering and two semi-opposing points of view that virtually no one holds but is currently forced to agree with for lack of an actual democratic process? Why not just use an 8086 processor or other 8-bit CPU then, instead of wasting all that power, because I'm sure you can get the same answers with both at this point. Every 8-bit CPU I know of can be programmed to look up values in a hash table and spit out the expected results, just like human politicians program their brains to do.

[nickodell]

You may be taking this a bit too seriously. I don't think that Watson would make a particularly good president - I'm not convinced that it can adapt to unexpected situations, or make calls on when to hire or fire people. For example, if the White House Chief of Staff tells Watson that he should fire his Press Secretary, should Watson follow that advice?

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I'm going to respond to your counterpoint in character.

----

If Republican Watson ran against Democrat Watson, for the first time, we would have a debate purely about issues and policies, and not about personal character. As for the platforms themselves, you might view those political platforms as wrong, but millions of Americans agree with them. This is just the ultimate expression of democracy: a statesman whose views conform to those of the people.

>Every 8-bit CPU I know of can be programmed to look up values in a hash table and spit out the expected results, just like human politicians program their brains to do.

That's true. But if Watson is 1% better than an 8-bit CPU, then that justifies spending millions on the upgrade, since the role of President has such a large effect on how well the government runs.

[saeranv]

I love this idea. One question is how will we accommodate the large spectrum of ideologies within the parties: Ron Paul libertarians vs neo-conservatives like Marco Rubio for example. Or the nuanced distinction between Bernie Sanders' notion of 'progressive' and Hillary Clinton's.

Pragmatically speaking, I think we could capture the political spectrum in 4 to 5 parties. Watson-left-liberalist mode (for the Sanders crowd), Watson-authoritarian-right (for Trump supporters) etc.

Edit: Sanders correction based on comment below.

[thevibesman]

Sorry to be the language police (but word choice is important when labeling politicians): I don't think any Sander's supporters would vote for a left-libertarian mode; I think you meant left-liberalist or something like that. Libertarianism would be opposed to the role of government in Sander's democratic-socialist platforms.

[saeranv]

No need to apologize, you are definitely correct. I will change it to left-liberalist, that's a lot more accurate.

[seabass]

It's interesting you'd put Trump on the far right. I find Trump to be one of the more moderate republican candidates when compared to Cruz, Carson, and Paul, for example. Trump wants universal healthcare and a progressive tax where the lowest bracket remains 0%. I think most liberals have this caricatured image of him that lead them to these exaggerated conclusions, and while I don't like the guy I really think you've misrepresented his position on the political spectrum.

[saeranv]

Check out the political compass, he is classified as strongly authoritarian right: http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2016

[hammock]

Whether Republican Watson or Democrat Watson wins, it's already an improvement in that Watson, being a computer, will actually execute policy the same way he said he would during his campaign.

[chillacy]

Or Watson learns (through gradient descent of course) that you can make wild campaign promises to win the election and not actually execute on that policy because it's more beneficial to make grand promises while running and not rock the boat while in office.

[akshatpradhan]

So try it out and put Watson in both modes. Ask him some questions, and do a voting poll to see what the sample size likes about both of them. It might be a good way to see how far Watson can be pushed.

[partiallypro]

I mean, if the Presidency was a dictatorship, then maybe. Otherwise Watson still has to go through Congress.

[alttab]

Democratic super-robot programming voting. I'ma go contact a screen writer now.