Pierre Lenfestey was voting at the Styx Centre at St Peter’s, and said he had used AI to help him come up with preferred candidates.
‘There are just too many candidates to choose from and too much information, so I used AI to whittle it down,’ he said.
Mr Lenfestey uploaded the PDF of the manifesto from the election website and then used a piece of software called Google notebook LM. This took the document and turned it into a conversation between two people he could then listen to.
‘So it was like a 45-minute radio programme, although unfortunately both the speakers had American accents,’ he said.
‘It helped me highlight candidates who had particular views which I supported.
‘I did it with a degree of scepticism, but it was enough to get me interested and allow me to check further.
‘You need to be cautious and back it up with hard research. But I felt confident using AI because its source material was the official booklet rather than information taken from social media.’
The combination of computer and personal analysis left him with 15 candidates he wanted to vote for.
Foreign states interfering in elections through AI manipulating social media has been in the news recently, but it was not something Mr Lenfestey was concerned about.
‘To be honest, I really don’t think Chat GPT cares enough to interfere in Guernsey’s election,’ he said.
Among the islanders at Styx casting their votes was director of Public Health Dr Nicola Brink, who will be working alongside a new president of Health & Social Care next month, with incumbent Al Brouard not standing for re-election.
She was one of a few people the Guernsey Press spoke to who had managed to use all 38 of her votes.
‘I do think it’s important we all have our say and get to decide the future of our island,’ she said.
The centre saw a slow but steady stream of voters during its first hour of opening.
Polling station officer Nikki Addlesee said she expected it to pick up after breakfast, as had been seen on previous days.
‘We do have a lot of retired residents,’ she said.
‘And then it picks up again in the evening and I expect we will be busy after five o’clock.'
She was keen to remind people that, unlike the UK, they did not need to bring ID after having one voter almost post their passport into the ballot box.
‘After a bit of a to-do, they discovered it was still in their back pocket,’ she said.
‘If it had gone in the box, they wouldn’t have been getting it back before Thursday.’
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