Phoning It InThe travesty of political robo-calls.

Say hello to the latest wave in political campaign technology: "personalized educational artificial intelligence."

PRINTDISCUSSE-MAILRSSRECOMMEND...SINGLE PAGE

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

Better yet, say goodbye.

The new technology, better known as robo-calling, starts with something familiar: picking up your phone and hearing a recorded message. It's causing a stir in Iowa, where software-generated calls are bad-mouthing rivals of Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. Since the calls ask questions and adjust to the respondent's answers, the operative behind the scheme touts them as personalized AI. And he's not alone. Groups across the political spectrum have used robo-calls in scores of congressional districts. Mitt Romney, who's demanding an investigation of the Huckabee calls, hired the same robo-firm less than four months ago.

I'm a big fan of computers. In fact, I think the folks behind the Huckabee calls could use a bit more computer help, particularly in spell-checking words such as Islamo-Facism and Immigartion. (You know how it is these days—nobody speaks English.) But robo-calls aren't personal, educational, or intelligent. Nor are they meant to be.

Education is the euphemism political consultants traditionally apply to nasty and misleading TV ads. Personalization adds a second layer of spin. Through "interactive voice response," the computer that phones your home supposedly tailors its script to your needs. It's a "sophisticated interactive phone technique" that gives voters "information … based on the things they think are important," according to the president of the outfit behind the Huckabee calls. The company that made the calls boasts that respondents "get the chance to express their views and have them counted and relayed … to those that represent them at every level of government."

Visit the Web site recommended by the Huckabee calls, and you'll get more blather about "involvement," "activities," "grassroots," and "volunteering." It's this kind of human touch that ostensibly inspires the love for Huckabee. "He is authentic and genuine," the site promises. "When you talk to him you know he is the real deal."

Well, good luck talking to him. In fact, good luck talking to anyone. The reason you're sitting there listening to a robot instead of a human being is that the people who write all this drivel about interaction, involvement, and personalization don't believe a word of it.

The ultimate in personalization is a candidate showing up at your door. The next best thing is a visit from a volunteer. If that's too much trouble, volunteers can ring you up from a phone bank. Or the campaign can hire people to phone you and pretend they care. But if you aren't worth even that much time or expense, the campaign can resort to something still easier: hiring a computer.

Robo-calling is dirt cheap: 5 to 15 cents per call. It's more efficient than TV ads, because operatives can directly select the households they want to target: independents, married women, Catholics, whatever. And it's incredibly fast. A Democratic firm offers 200,000 calls per hour; a Republican firm offers 3.5 million per day. To speak to that many people, volunteers would need weeks. Through the miracle of parallel processing, a massive order for robo-calls, like an order to sell stock, can be "executed," in industry parlance, during a precise time window. Want to start at 6:49 p.m. and finish by 7:17 p.m.? Done.

Remember Conrad Burns? He's the former Montana senator whose defeat last fall handed the Senate to the Democrats. One factor in his demise was a robo-call campaign by a firefighters' PAC. "Senator Burns thinks firefighters are lazy and incompetent,'' a spokesman for Burns' challenger crowed, recalling Burns' criticism of a recent firefighting operation. "It sounds like firefighters have decided to let folks know how they feel about Senator Burns."

PRINTE-MAILRECOMMEND...RSS

FacebookMySpace Mixx Digg Reddit del.icio.us Furl Ma.gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSE

William Saletan is Slate's national correspondent and author of Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War.

Illustration by Rob Donnelly.

SPONSORED CONTENT

• Textual Infidelity
  E-mail, adultery, and Mark Sanford.
  William Saletan | July 2, 2009
• Broken Is Beautiful
  Breaking your legs to make yourself taller.
  William Saletan | June 30, 2009
• Butt Piracy
  Why ban the tobacco industry when you can hijack it instead?
  William Saletan | June 23, 2009
• Search for more Human Nature articles
• Subscribe to the Human Nature RSS feed
• View our complete Human Nature archive