With a ponytail, an indigo suit and a black T-shirt covered in lines of computer code, Takahiro Anno stands out in the button-down halls of Japan\u2019s government.<\/p>\n
Mr. Anno, 35, a software engineer and lawmaker, leads Team Mirai, a political party founded by techies that showed surprising strength this month in national elections<\/a>. The party came from nowhere to win an eye-popping 11 seats in the lower house of Japan\u2019s Parliament by promoting government chatbots, self-driving buses and other Promethean new technologies.<\/p>\n \u201cA.I. is like fire,\u201d Mr. Anno, a member of Japan\u2019s upper chamber, the House of Councilors, since last year, said in an interview last week at his office in Tokyo. \u201cEverything will be changed.\u201d<\/p>\n Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping politics around the world, with officials turning to chatbots to help draft policies, and A.I.-generated misinformation spreading on a wide scale. In Britain<\/a>, Denmark<\/a> and elsewhere, A.I.-focused candidates and parties have started to appear on the ballot.<\/p>\n But few groups have had the success of Team Mirai (Team Future). Its leaders aim to use technology to make government more responsive and efficient \u2014 and to address issues like corruption and Japan\u2019s acute labor shortage. They have said savings achieved through A.I. could be used to lower contributions to pension and health care plans for working-class families.<\/p>\n \u201cMake slow politics fast,\u201d said a campaign brochure. \u201cTechnology makes your life easier.\u201d<\/p>\n Team Mirai is still a small presence in the 465-seat lower house, the House of Representatives. But the rise was sudden, especially for a new group with only about 2,600 registered members.<\/p>\n The party, which had aimed to win five seats, ended up securing more than twice that number through Japan\u2019s system of proportional representation. It garnered more than three million votes, almost 7 percent of all votes cast, and performed particularly well among urban people in their 40s and 50s, according to exit polls. The victory was so surprising that conspiracy theories circulated online suggesting that the engineers were part of a Chinese influence operation.<\/p>\n A critical reason for Team Mirai\u2019s success, analysts say, is its contrarian stance on some hot-button issues. It argued that the consumption tax on food should be maintained, not suspended, going against a populist idea that was embraced by other parties.<\/p>\n \u201cVoters may well have been attracted to its problem-solving, \u2018neither left nor right\u2019 approach,\u201d said Tobias Harris, the founder of the advisory firm Japan Foresight.<\/p>\n Now Team Mirai\u2019s newly elected representatives, with an average age of 40 and degrees from top universities, face an arduous task. They must work with established groups like the Liberal Democratic Party, led by Japan\u2019s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi<\/a>, to pursue their policies.<\/p>\n The engineers have ambitions to build state-of-the-art databases that shine light on political donations and explain arcane bills. But they must deal with Japan\u2019s bureaucracy, famous for its fealty to fax machines, floppy disks and paper. They are already running up against rules that ban laptops and tablets in some parliamentary rooms.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much paperwork,\u201d said Aoi Furukawa, 34, a newly elected lawmaker, as he worked inside Mr. Anno\u2019s office on a recent day. A whiteboard was covered with buzzwords like \u201cinternet of things\u201d and \u201cplurality is here.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Furukawa, who previously worked as an engineer in Silicon Valley, said he saw parallels between coding and writing legislation.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people believe in our view of the future,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The party has tapped into sentiment among some voters that Japan needs to move more swiftly to develop and deploy artificial intelligence. While robots have long been part of the culture, Japan lags countries like the United States and China in adopting A.I.<\/p>\n Team Mirai gained momentum in July, when Mr. Anno won the party\u2019s first seat in Parliament.<\/p>\n In the Feb. 8 lower house elections, Team Mirai fielded 14 candidates \u2014 11 men, three women \u2014 with degrees from institutions like the University of Tokyo, the University of California, Berkeley and London Business School, and experience at companies like IBM and Sony.<\/p>\n