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Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence?
- leereeves 10y ago> 40% of today's top 500 companies will have vanished in a decade. Does this have any grounding in facts or reason?
- hunterjrj 10y agoOr this? "Almost all companies and institutions have already been hacked, even the Pentagon, the White House, and the NSA."
- throwaway729 10y agoThat one is a lot more believable, and in fact verifying the first two are already true only requires a quick Google search.
- village-idiot 10y agoIt's an extrapolation of current trends. It appears that the lifespan of Fortune 500 companies is falling, and we've lost most of the ones from the past century or so.
- leereeves 10y agoSeems like an extreme extrapolation. I found this page listing Fortune 500 companies that failed from Dec 2000 to Jan 2012: http://traderhabits.com/86-of-the1955-fortune-500-have-failed/ http://traderhabits.com/86-of-the1955-fortune-500-have-faile... I don't know how accurate that is, but it lists 24 failures (about 5% of the Fortune 500), of which one company (Hostess) is listed twice, and at least two (American Airlines and GM) are still around.
- acd 10y agoOne could use wisdoms of crowds to build an artificial president with an human oversight watch. Ie we would not elect politicians we would elect an artificial intelligence that represent our political wills.
- M_Grey 10y agoShow me the democracy that's supposed to survive, and then we can talk. I'm looking around, and I see quite a few different systems, but no democracy.
- Filligree 10y agoYour standards may be too high. It's a sliding scale, not binary. But... Norway?
- algesten 10y agoIt's a monarchy with executive powers the king delegates. Although it's a "nice" monarchy like Holland and Sweden, I'm not convinced they are proper democracies.
- M_Grey 10y ago"Nice" is also highly situational... they're nice because they can literally afford to be.
- algesten 10y agoYes indeed. The swedish monarchy still doesn't need to account for how they spend their "appanage", i.e. tax payers' money. And they still get this money even though they are wealthy enough to not rely on state subsidies.
- Filligree 10y agoThe king has no powers, practically speaking. It's a monarchy in name only.
- hashmymustache 10y agoDoes the king work, rely on inherited wealth, or receive money through taxes?
- dukeluke 10y agoUS democracy has already been completely undermined by gerrymandering and brib- I mean "lobbying."
- algesten 10y agoOh you don't mean "lobbying", because that word is these days legally defined, and most actors in that sector prefer to see themselves as advisors, influencers and think tanks. Certainly not filthy lobbyists.
- dukeluke 10y agoI can't tell if you're serious. Large corporations wouldn't lobby if they didn't get a return on investment. If you've never looked into it, follow the link below. The return on investment for lobbying is _massive_, and a lot of that lobbying is at the detriment of society in general. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forget-stocks-or-bonds-invest-in-a-lobbyist http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forge...
- anovikov 10y agoDemocracy is meant to be executed by responsible voters, meaning: people who vote with their money. If technological unemployment will mean that most people will be unemployable and dependent on UBI or some other form of handout, there won't be a democracy anymore.
- ygaf 10y agoNot a downvoter; what do you mean people who vote with their money?
- coldtea 10y agoHe means people who have skin in the game.
- ygaf 10y agoThat being the case, he is implying there is only fiscal skin, and that people on UBI will have no fiscal matter to care about which sounds utopian.
- douche 10y agoNo one on UBI will ever vote to have their UBI reduced... Bread and circuses
- anovikov 10y agoThis is more or less what i meant. Why someone who is useless and knows it's irreversible, would vote for anything but more free stuff?
- coldtea 10y agoWell, receiving payment from the state doesn't make one "useless" except in the eyes of the protestant work ethic, and all the moralistic garbage that comes with it. In fact people creating much monetary worth could be many orders of magnitude more useless and destructive for society than a welfare recipient.
- Moshe_Silnorin 10y agoWill my straw shack survive a hurricane? There are far bigger risks with artificial intelligence.
- Filligree 10y agoIn the long run, yes, but we don't know the timeline. We need to survive long enough to have a long run...
- robg 10y agoThis is the topic I've been most worried about. My only solace is the brilliance of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. They planned for a wide variety of government failures, knowing full well of how democracies fail. The freedom of the press and the Judiciary would seem to be strong firewalls, even under AI run amok or distorted toward nefarious ends. We shall see...
- PaulKeeble 10y agoThe freedom of journalism likely makes AI informed press just as protected. But that press can be used to control what people know and trigger them into acting to undo democracy defenses. Its happening all over the world already, people are already crying for democracy to be reduced in their countries after AI based analytics companies have spread fake news and targeted advertising. Its already extremely effective even though people are fully aware of its existance.
- macawfish 10y agoI see you've just read the article on Robert Mercer :)
- PaulKeeble 10y agoI have been worried about how the press is generating fake news or at the very least using the main stream news to trigger people into becoming angry so they buy news papers/click on their articles for a while. The Mercer article was interesting for explaining the who of it but I knew it must be happening before and the mechanism is clearly based on wide data more than likely from facebook. Its been a common trend of the past few years, the impact of media is vast and its widely subverting democracy right now and I am convinced its a grave threat to our societies but not sure how to stop it without doing equally bad things.
- Torn 10y agoFreedom of the press is under attack by the Trump administration. From labelling critics as 'fake news' to banning journalists from news briefings[1] - it's a pretty alarming time for democracy. [1] http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/24/media/cnn-blocked-white-house-gaggle/ http://money.cnn.com/2017/02/24/media/cnn-blocked-white-hous...
- benevol 10y agoRecently, Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google, invited the military to take part in the China Brain Project. It involves running so-called deep learning algorithms over the search engine data collected about its users. Beyond this, a kind of social control is also planned. According to recent reports, every Chinese citizen will receive a so-called ”Citizen Score”, which will determine under what conditions they may get loans, jobs, or travel visa to other countries. I'd be surprised if that kind of concept will remain limited to China. Whenever there's massive amounts of money to be made, it will find its way to the US (Credit Score, for example, is already reality). It must be very tempting for the current administration.
- zouhair 10y agoWasn't this an episode of Black Mirror?
- lobo_tuerto 10y agoYes, indeed. And a pretty good at showing a path for liberation too.
- macawfish 10y agoYup, you just show up at your childhood friend's wedding drunk and make a speech about freedom!
- mtgx 10y agoChances are the NSA already employs such a system based on "increased danger", where danger would be defined as absolutely anything that would "change" the status quo. That's why they spy on activists (civil liberties, climate change, animal abuse, it doesn't matter), journalists, libertarians, OWS, BLM, Linux users, etc.
- username223 10y ago> Credit Score, for example, is already reality Credit scores are at least regulated, viewable, and disputable. The newer pseudo-credit-scores derived from social media are completely opaque. > It must be very tempting for the current administration. I'm much less concerned about government than about corporations. If GOOG/FB can make money by selling a "Citizen Score" to banks, employers, etc., they will do so.
- LoSboccacc 10y agowill news agency survive the sensationalistic headlines?
- TomMarius 10y agoI hope people will realize that more liberal systems are the way to go - no regulation can offset this, because no government will ever follow it. I just hope they'll realize soon enough.
- dkqwj 10y agoThe tech workers of today are building the future that we will all live in. None of this stuff is appearing out of thin air. Someone, an individual human with morals and values needs to sit down and say 'today I will program something that will benefit a corporation/government at the expense of a person' and then carry on. How many people here work for companies that threaten democracy in this way? How many people have a google or facebook tracker on their personal site? This kind of change is the sum of small individual responsibilities. The early dream of the internet was one of free expression, but people -not corporations or governments- have worked very hard to undermine that.
- Filligree 10y agoThis is what we call a multi-polar trap. It's a coordination problem. You're right, in a sense; at the end of the day it's people doing this, and if they all stopped then it wouldn't happen. Unfortunately, that's what it would take: They'd all need to stop, simultaneously. In the meantime our world is such that any company or person who refuses on ethical grounds will be outcompeted, and go out of business. It isn't something anyone decided to do. It's just implicit in the system, which itself wasn't really deliberately built. We'll break our backs lifting Moloch to heaven, and then... Well, there is no "and then". Humanity will have achieved its final purpose. Maybe it won't go that far, but I'm skeptical.
- dkqwj 10y agoThis is a very sad way to view the world. Everyone doesn't need to stop simultaneously. Some people need to stop and convince others that it's worthwhile to do so. People who refuse to stop should be shown the consequences of what they're doing and be forced to make a decision that they otherwise might not have been aware of. Some people will still make that decision and will be able to justify it completely, some people will change. Your part in all of this, even though you don't believe change is possible, could be to be less dismissive and condescending when it's brought up.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
- macawfish 10y agoIt will only survive if its lawmakers restore the robustness of the electoral process. Seriously, why is gerrymandering even a thing right now? How is that normal? Not to mention the highly manipulable first-past-the-post voting system. It's no wonder that primitive AI was so able to obliterate the last election. Our human collective decision making processes are thoroughly busted and nobody seems to care to fix them. Amazon and Netflix get score voting for their products, yet we can't even get measly, pathetic IRV? Imagine if Amazon had to use IRV or FPTP to determine "the best products"... It'd go out of business pretty quick!
- benevol 10y ago> How is that normal? Lately, normal seems to have become the exception.
- macawfish 10y agonormalized is the normal I was going for, like a fish in the water. I.e. the water is polluted with active levels of synthetic estrogens and the fish know nothing different.
- maxerickson 10y agoDon't they use sales numbers as one of their primary sorting factors? That's popularity, just like FPTP.
- macawfish 10y agoSales numbers are more like approval voting, because you can buy more than one thing in the same category, but you can't vote for two people for president. Say I'm a photographer, but due to Alt-Amazon's draconian policies, I can choose one and only one camera. And not only that, I can purchase one and only one lens! What do I pick? Compact or fullblown setup? That's FPTP. But most photographers have at least a couple options to shoot with, depending on the needs of the situation. And the star rating system is classic score voting.
- 10y ago
- tannhaeuser 10y ago(2015) [1]: http://www.spektrum.de/news/wie-algorithmen-und-big-data-unsere-zukunft-bestimmen/1375933 http://www.spektrum.de/news/wie-algorithmen-und-big-data-uns... (in German) Article is very broadly written, when the imminent threat might be manipulation of upcoming elections (France, Germany); "fake news" isn't even mentioned
- bmc7505 10y agoGoogle Translate does a surprisingly good job of translating that article. It's pretty funny how the publisher (Scientific American) added their own bias in translating the title and certain phrases, presumably to drive more traffic to their site. [1]: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spektrum.de%2Fnews%2Fwie-algorithmen-und-big-data-unsere-zukunft-bestimmen%2F1375933&edit-text= https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
- tannhaeuser 10y agoIndeed, the translation is scarily good (which is on topic enough I guess). Can't believe this was auto-translated. Where do you see clickbaity bias besides the title and lead (I haven't checked thoroughly)? Many phrases/stereotypes in German pop-science articles will only make sense in the context of the German media discourse/bubble (if they make sense at all).
- leadingthenet 10y agoStop conflating the term "democracy" with a (neoliberal) Constitutional Republic.
- umanwizard 10y ago"Republic" and "Democracy" are not mutually exclusive. Many republics are democracies (including the US); many are not. Republic just means not monarchy.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoI've said it before, but I'll repeat it here: This is our fault (the many of us who have worked on profiling tech, or for companies that do). But there are things to do about it. The problem is largely a coordination and logistics issue -- there are far more people and resources concerned by the problem than think things are going well. The problem is that they are spread out and have trouble focusing on issues such as this, and so end up being largely ineffective. Here we see our second fault: how many of us have taken the time to actually do something about it, rather than complain while we spend our work hours exacerbating the problem? Many of us have backgrounds in crowd sourcing, in logistics, in machine learning (especially things like auto-summarization) -- why are we applying those skills (only) to cab rides and not to making democracy more efficient and robust? We've spent too much time on offense -- against people, to build addiction, manipulation, and control -- and if we want a healthy society, one that isn't going to tear itself to shreds on behalf of a few wealthy radicals, we need to work on defense -- deprogramming psychological traps, tools that increase autonomy and self-control, media meta-analysis, etc. Politics only works if we engage with it, putting ourselves and our ideas out there, and technologists have been reluctant to, because many of us saw that it would devolve in to this mess. Well, the mess happened anyway -- can we at least get engaged about trying to fix it?
- rtx 10y agoYou are mistaken if you think these things are not being done. The only difference is that people with different ideology than yours are doing it.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y agoCould you point to some, of any ideology? I agree that people of multiple political camps are using technology, but my experience has been that all camps are exploiting rather than empowering people. You seem to be of the opinion that Im advancing a particular political agenda here. This is actually a policy neutral concern -- Im worried about how we're having the debate, not the outcome. (And there are some I know of, like CBT apps and productivity timers, but I don't think they're that effective as engineered. They also don't cover, eg, meta-analysis.)
- paradite 10y ago> Today, Singapore is seen as a perfect example of a data-controlled society. What started as a program to protect its citizens from terrorism has ended up influencing economic and immigration policy, the property market and school curricula. Well I know all the Smart Nation, Data.gov, Gov Tech and Data science initiatives but I think the influence is way over-exaggerated here.
- eric795 10y agoBig Data, no, AI, maybe.
- Entangled 10y agoNo it won't in the long run as we know it. The most important political aspect of individuals will be their cloaking abilities in order to avoid plunder from government. Once AI and technology allow individuals to produce and exchange with invisible currencies and without any political intervention or regulation then no matter how politicians morph they won't be able to "see" us. Of course democracy will morph too towards trust networks where privacy, anonymity and invisibility will be key factors in collective decision making. Market forces at their best. I am a big follower of Bruno Frey and his political theories for liberty, one of the modern panarchists.
- jkestelyn 10y ago"It can be expected that supercomputers will soon surpass human capabilities in almost all areas—somewhere between 2020 and 2060...Is this alarmism?" Short answer: Yes. What is the evidence for this claim, upon which the premise of this article rests? The existence of algorithms that simulate human game play today is hardly it. The authors have fallen into the trap of accepting the nomenclature of "artificial intelligence" without further questions. There is nothing "artificial" nor "intelligent" about it. Rather, machine-learning algorithms are trained on a diet of human-derived data that is simply a reflection of existing human biases. The danger is in their human programmers being non-introspective of those biases, not in the algorithms themselves. Thus I personally am much more fearful of human-made decisions than non-human ones. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
- hacker_9 10y agoGlad your reply is top. To be honest we could do with less of these fluff pieces on HN, leave them to Reddit and Facebook.
- j2kun 10y agoOr, as it stands today, human decision makers using the output of these algorithms as a signal, without understanding the potential flaws of that signal. "I just did what the computer recommended" Someone (can't remember who) said it better: "You don't want to be an edge case in this brave new world."
- andy_ppp 10y agoTo be honest I think actually direct meritocracy would be beneficial - you build up a page rank as a human being based on your contribution to society and that reflects your ability to vote in the system. It would essentially remove the career politician and allow people to actually understand things like what their politicians/highest value contributors did rather than now what we have. No-one would ever go for it, but I actually think it'd be great if nurses, doctors, social workers, environmentalists, and yes entrepreneurs who had done well, charity founders, bin men etc. all got more voting rights than me who types into a computer all day for no real societal improvements. The rich get a disproportionate amount of say anyway, it'd be more even than it is currently. All public good works would obviously have to be recorded through the system and you might eventually be able to do away with money based upon this. I think it could definitely be worth building and doing away with local government as a starter ;-)
- fenaer 10y ago"Contributing to society" is a very broad and ill-defined subject. What I may consider beneficial, others might not see it that way. It is very subjective.
- andy_ppp 10y agoPagerank solves this though right? Everyone can choose to rank certain professions/people every few years, better than we have now.
- thwarted 10y agoThat isn't an appropriate description of how PageRank works.
- andy_ppp 10y agoDo I have to provide a link for you? I'm genuinely serious about everyone ranking (linking = rating) each other for positive contribution to society and then allowing them to have more of a vote. Maybe rankings would be a bit more like chess than PageRank but I'm convinced we could come up with something fairer than it is now.
- mythrwy 10y agoMy belief is that AI eventually replaces at least some aspects of "democracy". People often conceive democracy is a pinnacle of development for society but nature doesn't care about democracy. It selects for efficiency. And on the average I guess people are really less interested in having their vote count as opposed to having a greater quality of life. But we aren't close to this point right now socially nor technologically. Might be different in 50 years though. Particularly when the end effects of "democracy" (used loosely because that's all we have ever seen) are seen played out. I'm not advocating either. Just predicting.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 10y ago> And on the average I guess people are really less interested in having their vote count as opposed to having a greater quality of life. That's only true up to the moment when their vote doesn't count, though, because if their vote doesn't count, quality of life is mere coincidence, or the side effect of someone else's goals at best. So, yeah, people don't care that much about the symbolic act of having their vote counted (and why should they?), but they do ultimately care if they lose control of their life, which, after all, nominally is the point of a democratic process.
- rtx 10y agoDemocracy is the most efficient arrangement. That's why nature chose it.
- gervase 10y agoI think the parent's argument is that while democracy may be the most efficient system so far, but that who knows how governmental systems might change or evolve in the presence of modern technological advancement.
- SlipperySlope 10y agoI, for one, welcome the advent of law-abiding AI politicians who ethically pursue the interests of their constituents.
- rodionos 10y agoI wouldn't go as far as declaring the democracy being under the existential threat just yet. The alleged malfunction in the US does not necessarily represent a trend. Maybe we can learn from governance systems that have survived over a long period of time? Say, Swiss direct referendums. What I also like in their system is that elected officials are rotated frequently. For instance the president is elected for a period of just 1 year.
- onewaystreet 10y agoThese AI pieces remind me of the FUD surrounding genetic engineering in the 80s and 90s. Which is ironic because with the advent of CRISPR and related discoveries genetic engineering might actually be the threat to worry about now. Edit: typo
- Pamar 10y agoI suppose you meant _genetic_ here. Still, now I am tempted to google for "generic engineering" and see how this could have been a threat (especially in the 80s/90s).
- nzjrs 10y agoThat's not Fud that's a moderately successful prediction on a 40 year timescale. Put 40 years into the linked article and let's talk.
- wcarss 10y agoI'd like to think that this headline is a clever rhetorical [ab]use of Betteridge's law, but that may broadly give the editorial staffs of the world too much credit. (for any who haven't heard of Betteridge's law, "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no")
- smdz 10y agoThere is a thin line between science and science fiction. Unfortunately, this article is more fiction. Let's, for a moment, assume that AI becomes highly capable in most human tasks. In that case, I've a pretty radical view on this topic: AI can create a heaven for humanity. It can get rid of capitalism. It can eradicate poverty, hunger, etc - But yes, it comes with "Terms and Conditions". Some people might rename such existence as being non-democratic, non-independent, etc. But don't we already live under an umbrella of rules imposed by a democratic system? Many would agree that the rules exist for a reason...right? If AI was ruling such a system - it would have such rules for a reason. Can a human live peacefully in heaven? We really don't know. An AI program today exists for a predefined purpose - or works towards a predefined goal. It does not define its own goals (same can be said about most humans). On the flip side, AI could wreak havoc - most likely when controlled by human. Lets say we have democratic-government controlled AI (assuming all governments have similar capabilities in AI). i.e purpose of the AI is defined by the government, but plans and actions are taken care of by the AI. Two countries with two different AIs now start to differentiate between humans - CountryA citizen, CountryB citizen. If some activities in CountryA are a strategic threat to CountryB. CountryB AI takes actions and CountryA takes actions and it goes on... Humans are slow, imperfect, but not stupid. They will stop at a certain loss. AI that has been ceded control won't stop - its fast and could do a lot more damage in a short span. May be intelligence is just randomly connected neurons where connections are evolved via feedback. Or may be we do not understand something fundamental about intelligence
- soneca 10y agoMaybe the Garden of Eden was a AI created heaven for humanity. And the forbidden fruit was adjusting the AI to exclusive self benefit. Someone did, then someone else, then everybody was tinkering and the AI predicted it would lead to complete destruction of humanity. So it shut itself definitely. As human knowledge was all in digital form registered in organic form and the code was in a language that no human understood anymore, we had to start from scratch.
- ams6110 10y ago> Can a human live peacefully in heaven? We really don't know. Since our attempts to date have been dismal failures, and every religion (the formalization of millenia of human experience about how to live) says man is flawed, I think it's very likely that humans cannot live peacefully absent any need to work for survival.
- intrasight 10y agoHaving read "Colossus" by DF Jones as a teen, I know how this will end. It doesn't end well for humans.
- pohl 10y agoThe most fascinating thing about this article, to me, is that it was published so recently but has no mention of Cambridge Analytica.
- mirimir 10y agoI gather that it was published in 2015 (noted above) so before Cambridge Analytica became public knowledge.
- anigbrowl 10y agoDemocracy will. Representative government will not, and will be replaced by [redacted].
- sologoub 10y agoThe original article title in German captures the issue better - "Digitale Demokratie statt Datendiktatur", roughly translating to "Digital Democracy instead of Data Dictatorship".
- astralship 10y agoThe claims about 'citizen score' in China are likely mostly bogus. https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizen-scores-credit-system-orwellian https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizen-scores-credit-syste...
- id122015 10y agoBig Data has big competitors: Big Governments. "All animals are equal" "All animals are equal. But some aninals are more equal than others"
- pjc50 10y agoSee e.g. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-merc...
- gydfi 10y agoA lot of people seem to conflate "a threat to democracy" and "people I dislike getting elected". I'd say those people are the real threat to democracy.
- T-A 10y agoIt's funny to see this German effort turn up in Scientific American, of all places. In 2014, FQXi held an essay contest, sponsored by Scientific American, called "How Should Humanity Steer the Future?". First prize [1] went to German physicist Sabine Hossenfelder of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies [2]. Her award-winning proposal [3] was to hook up everybody to a recommendation engine "to give the user an intuitive feeling for how well a decision matches with recorded priorities", so they would not have to think for themselves. Because, as she succinctly put it, "They don't like to think" ("they" being "most people": "It is time to wake up. We’ve tried long enough to educate them. It doesn’t work."). Granted, the technological contraption needed to make this work would currently be Google Glass-clunky, but fear not; the essay helpfully adds that "If such a feedback in the future can be given by a brain implant, it will be like an additional sense." No, I am not making this up. [1] http://fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2014.1 http://fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2014.1 [2] https://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/fellows/ https://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/fellows/ [3] http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Hossenfelder_fqxi_essay_hos.pdf http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Hossenfelder_fqxi_e...
- mathgenius 10y agoThe guidlines for the fqxi essay explicitly prioritize first of all "interesting" and secondly "relevant". No-where is it mentioned that these essays be based on reality or in any way practical. In my opinion, it's very typical of academia: they are in it for the buzz, not for actually coming to any practical conclusions about anything. (Not that they are actually averse to practical applications/reality.)
- mathgenius 10y agoIn all these discussions of AI-doom, no-where is it mentioned that we already run a global distributed AI, called the world financial system. It is a classic min-sum algorithm [1], running to devastating effect. I actually don't have any particular chip on my shoulder regarding the "evils" of money, and have even worked in the finance industry. But people should understand the limitations of min-sum: loops tend to derail it, and also it can't handle when there is more than one solution. Both of these limitations are causing serious problems in the world. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_propagation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_propagation
- cutler 10y agoSo we're all going to have smart homes yet half of us are going to be made jobless?! Doesn't quite add up.