Aicracy – Governed by Algorithms • Hacker News Board

Re: Aicracy – Governed by Algorithms

#101

Post by paulryanrogers » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 2:48 AM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #94

paulryanrogers wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except large corporations hold more money than workers, even if divided per worker. So they can lobby more effectively and gain both the power over private algorithms and regulations.

Agreed, but I mean people (or groups of people) are doing it. To put it another way, there are two types of actor: - the state, who has the ability to pass laws, collect money on pain of being locked up, penalise/encourage businesses through tariffs and regulations, and change the value of money through inflation - people and corporations, who have to provide value to receive money You're right, any of those can do g…

Corps don't hold the most direct power. Rather governments so often defer to big companies or the same small club of rich and industry insiders that it's hard for workers to push back. Regulatory capture can also have the opposite of the desired result, yielding more power to companies instead of maintaining healthy societies.

Re: Aicracy – Governed by Algorithms

#102

Post by ermir » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 3:12 AM UTC

gampleman wrote: post #10

I get this was a design/art project and not necessarily meant to be sophisticated political philosophy, nonetheless there are a few distinctions here that would be useful: To be ruled by AI I think requires the AI to be in some sense conscious, to have some notion of I and be able to form its own values and goals. Otherwise the ruler is whoever imposes/creates the AI, just in a once removed sort of way. On the other…

Rule of law differs substantially from rule by algorithms since laws are created and interpreted by humans, and there's always the possibility of reasoning and making a deal with a human when the law is incorrect or there are specific circumstances. In rule by algorithm, you get a situation where "Computer says no", and there's no recourse, no deal to be made, nobody to reason with.

An entire society can be bootstrapped to be entirely run by thoughtless algorithms and it could end up in a situation where there's no way in to untangle the dependencies that these systems have with one another.

Re: Aicracy – Governed by Algorithms

#103

Post by loa_in_ » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 8:56 AM UTC

LMYahooTFY wrote: post #14

Does attempting to offload decision making to an "AI/Algo/ML tool/whatever" not simply suffer from the same problem models/scientific studies/corporations/governments/whatever suffer from already? Externalities?

We simplify or straight up forgo adding some laws to the lawbooks because they're about something hard to measure, too mentally taxing to determine, too much paperwork when executing it, all while we want them and they would be beneficial. In short the benefit is offloading the mental work as computers do.

Re: Aicracy – Governed by Algorithms

#104

Post by robertlagrant » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 9:16 AM UTC

paulryanrogers wrote: post #101

robertlagrant wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but I mean people (or groups of people) are doing it. To put it another way, there are two types of actor: - the state, who has the ability to pass laws, collect money on pain of being locked up, penalise/encourage businesses through tariffs and regulations, and change the value of money through inflation - people and corporations, who have to provide value to receive money You're right, any of those can do g…

Corps don't hold the most direct power. Rather governments so often defer to big companies or the same small club of rich and industry insiders that it's hard for workers to push back. Regulatory capture can also have the opposite of the desired result, yielding more power to companies instead of maintaining healthy societies.

For sure. But regulatory capture is:

1) Government's fault. Don't get bribed and cosy with the industry you're regulating. We don't call cops teaming up with criminals "police capture". We call it corruption.

2) Predicated on governments being the biggest power, that rich companies can buy a small piece of their power.

Re: Aicracy – Governed by Algorithms

#105

Post by gampleman » Tue, Jan 31, 2023, 7:51 PM UTC

ermir wrote: post #102

gampleman wrote: post #10

I get this was a design/art project and not necessarily meant to be sophisticated political philosophy, nonetheless there are a few distinctions here that would be useful: To be ruled by AI I think requires the AI to be in some sense conscious, to have some notion of I and be able to form its own values and goals. Otherwise the ruler is whoever imposes/creates the AI, just in a once removed sort of way. On the other…

Rule of law differs substantially from rule by algorithms since laws are created and interpreted by humans, and there's always the possibility of reasoning and making a deal with a human when the law is incorrect or there are specific circumstances. In rule by algorithm, you get a situation where "Computer says no", and there's no recourse, no deal to be made, nobody to reason with. An entire society can be bootstrap…

Whether and what recourse is available is pretty orthogonal to whether the thing is run by computers or humans. In practice it is likely to be a mixture of both these days, as we don’t really have sufficient technology to run a real society, and most countries today take heavy advantage of automation.