In France, we have Gaullism: the cultural heritage of the Général de Gaulle, hero of the resistance and father of the fifth republic. Fifty years after many of
the problems that made De Gaulle relevant stopped existing. We have so much Gaullism it hurts. The political discourse struggles to detach itself and enter the
21st century. People like to say ‘he would have agreed with me’, and people who disagree say ‘he would have agreed with me’. We like it when dead people talk.
The French have other heroes—Napoléon easily comes to mind. When we need a woman, it’s often Simone Veil, or Simone de Beauvoir for those on the left. We have
two Simones. You see where this is going: Simones de Gaulléon is an excuse to let four heroes of the nation tell the living that no, they might not have thought
quite like that. When you change the context, politics change too—they have to.
Simones de Gaulléon was a real candidate to the 2022 French presidential elections. They have been speaking publicly, and got to be featured extensively in the
French-speaking press as a thought-provoking take on French politics, along with a just as friction-seeking (fictional) origin story. This political figure was
presented as the product of several attempts to build AIs that can accurately replicate the minds of historical figures. In a vacuum they seem accurate, but
when exposed to information about the contemporary world they start adapting their discourse. Catching the eye of a group of political scientists, Simones
became a collaboration with the lab’s researchers toward ‘optimising politics.’
Simones de Gaulléon did nothing less than rethink the social contract and propose a collection of measures to update it. Every day, a new project would be
‘calculated’ and communicated on Simones’ social media, with an invitation to give one’s opinion on the candidate’s website—visitors were invited to express how
desirable and realistic they find each proposal. The press covered the project, either for its value as a political proposal or as a thought experiment, with
some news outlets going as far as to interview the algorithm and, in the week leading to the runoff election, asking its opinion on the debate that had just
taken place on national television. A final reveal of the fiction was done after the elections were over.