"You're electing me to not do my job, but to hand it over to something else" is... probably not illegal for someone to say. It might be illegal for them to do, though - dereliction or some such.
Existing laws should prevent the mayor from delegating authority that they don’t have the authority to delegate.
They may choose to base their decisions upon the AI, but they will (should) still be ultimately accountable for choosing to implement the AI’s “guidance”.
AI can’t be elected mayor, so the person elected will be the one accountable for their actions regardless of who or how they are suggested.
I feel like "I'll tell an AI the decisions I have to make and do whatever it tells me" doesn't meaningfully change the outcome but bypasses the legality question.
My point is that it shouldn’t matter how the mayor (or whomever) makes their decisions. The accountability for implementing those choices rests with them and “AI told me to” is no more a defense than “a crazy guy on the street told me to”.
There’s no need for any law about letting AI run the show because legally the AI is never running the show, the mayor is, regardless of whether they use AI, chicken bones, or a team of competent advisors to help them make decisions.
It’s no different than an elected official using their faith to guide decisions, they’re still accountable, not god.
Also, many (most?) of today's politicians govern deterministically already. You can safely predict their positions on 90+% of issues by simply looking at their political party. We're already governed by algorithm--just with a human mouth speaking the words and a human hand signing with the pen.
How is this so different from committing to making decisions based on metrics? Or delegating policy to subordinates? Dereliction is defined as a failure to fulfill an obligation. This candidate, if elected, would still be fulfilling obligations...just through unusual means.
The more you try to work backwards from "I want to figure out how to make this illegal" you realize you get a lot of valid means of governing in the crossfire.
There was a guy in San Antonio that ran for an office he felt should be eliminated. He was successful won the election and eliminated the office (had the city counsel vote to eliminate it). AI might not, at this point (and likely never) be a good thing to turn over city government to. This might be an interesting project to watch.
They may choose to base their decisions upon the AI, but they will (should) still be ultimately accountable for choosing to implement the AI’s “guidance”.
AI can’t be elected mayor, so the person elected will be the one accountable for their actions regardless of who or how they are suggested.