Fox News  Greg Gutfeld isn t happy with our presidential candidates. He sees Hillary Clinton as a criminal, and Donald Trump as a liberal in conservatives  clothing. To him, if there was ever an election where the choice was between two true evils, this is it. He s got a solution to the problem though: Elect a robot to be president this year.No, really, he did say that. Gutfeld would nominate IBM s Watson supercomputer for president if he could. He said: The fact is, every single bad decision in life is an emotional one, in which feelings, insecurity and ego overcome our rational brain. So is every single good decision. That s the first spot where he shows off how little he understands this. Another spot is where he talked about how robots won t engage in discrimination: Another plus that eliminates the hazards of sex differences: no disputes over temperature. Studies have shown that women prefer a room warmer than men   roughly 77 degrees to 72. The difference in preference may be due to the lower average skin temperature for women, so they start out already feeling chilly. By eliminating the male/female conflict over the thermostat, we cut down on workplace animosity and  gender-discriminating bias in thermal-comfort predictions.' What? Just what? So people wouldn t work in the White House at all anymore. Sure.His whole line of thought is that, instead of electing a third-party candidate, who would be just as shady as he sees our two main candidates, we should put a cold, emotionless, runs-only-on-algorithms robot in the White House, and lead the free world. Here are some of the other benefits Gutfeld sees with having a robot in the White House:A robot can work nonstop, without the need for a feeding break, and its mental capacities don t diminish at all from a lack of nutrients or sleep.The second item   that there s no sexual harassment or sexism (which could also be parlayed into no more racism, ageism, etc.), is a little more tricky because that algorithm would be programmed by man. Therefore, it could still contain biases against certain demographics.The third point   that robots stick to the algorithm, depends heavily on just how sophisticated as AI beings they are. If all they do is stick to their programming, they d fail miserably as leaders. Leaders have to be able to think creatively, innovatively, and even with emotion and empathy. A robot that just sticks to its algorithms can t do that.Sure, it sounds interesting enough, but for this year (at least), that story should be marked as satire, or otherwise as a joke, because that s what this idea is right now. A joke. Watson isn t sophisticated enough to actually lead the country. It s odd that Gutfeld doesn t know that. Either that or this story is a really stupid joke put forth by a really dense Fox News contributor.Believe it or not, this idea has been floating around for some time as we work towards actually creating artificial intelligence. Zoltan Istvan, a near-totally unknown presidential candidate from a near-totally unknown party, believes that, as soon as 2020, we could see artificially intelligent robots running for president. By 2028, they ll be sophisticated enough to actually do the job.Istvan says: The reality is that AI will likely make far less errors than humans in politics. An AI president would be designed to fully represent the greater good for the people and the country as a whole. Whose influence would be heaviest, though? Republican or Democrat? Conservative or liberal? Istvan believes that we could solve some of the limits of programing, like faulty human bias and the threat of turning the world into some mix of the Terminator films and The Matrix films, by creating empathy in these robots. Empathy is needed when leading a nation, so a robot would have to have it.However, Istvan also says: There are large risks for letting AI take office. Yes, there are, especially right now, because AI is still in a fetal stage of development.Gutfeld, though, doesn t see drawbacks to this at all, because he hates both our candidates equally and very likely doesn t understand what all is involved with putting a robot in a leadership position. He doesn t get that, while yes, Watson is an amazing achievement, it s just not fit to be a leader in any capacity because it lacks the emotion and empathy needed to be a leader.Image by David R. Tribble. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons