6 ms·

I'm all for replacing our elected officials with small shell scripts. We're automating everything else, why not government? I could fill out a questionnaire a

by snarfy 9y ago

I'm all for replacing our elected officials with small shell scripts. We're automating everything else, why not government? I could fill out a questionnaire answering hundreds of questions to use as a reference on how I might vote. That data could then be used for voting on subsequent laws. Why have a representative government when the human doesn't actually represent you. A small algorithm would be a much better representation of you.

adrianN 9y ago
Do you really trust feature extraction from legalese enough to hand your voting power to some AI? Do you have the time to read hundreds of real laws in order to provide it with real training data? Do you trust that your fellow citizens will do the same?
- CrystalLangUser 9y ago
  It’d still likely represent you better than a regular politician.
  - noir_lord 9y ago
    Or misrepresent everyone more equally. Currently they just misrepresent people without checkbooks.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    No, it represents the people who know how to write laws to mean one thing to a lawyer and another thing to the AI.
    - ben_w 9y ago
      The staus quo appears to be getting laws passed because they have positive sounding names such as “The PATRIOT Act” and that the people suggesting the laws made the correct choice of teams red or blue. I didn’t want to learn psychology because I didn’t want to lose the magic of not knowing how my mind works. Now I’m learning it to stop people — myself and others — from deluding me. I’m a neural network too, just an organic one rather than a silicon one.
      - fjsolwmv 9y ago
        PATRIOT ACT passed because the authoritarians in government liked it giving them power. The name was just butter to make it easier to force down Americans' throats.
        ben_w 9y ago
        That’s who wrote it. The people who passed it could neither like nor dislike it, because they are on record saying they don’t read bills as that would “slow down the legislative process”.
jasonmaydie 9y ago
But is the real official the script or is it the person/persons running the script?
- amptorn 9y ago
  Neither: it's the person who implemented the script. That's why this is such an attractive prospect to the programming/tech crowd.
pc86 9y ago
Tyranny of the majority much? Elected officials don't exist to simply determine what 50%+1 of the voting population wants. They're not supposed to act as a popularity sieve. You should be voting for people because they generally share your views, yes, but more importantly because they're willing and able to become experts in the things you need to be an expert in in order to be an effective lawmaker.
- 076ae80a-3c97-4 9y ago
  As someone who lives in the UK, this is funny and also makes me cry a little.
  - fredley 9y ago
    Could be worse, could be in the US.
- OtterCoder 9y ago
  Having watched even a little C-SPAN, I really, really don't understand the 'expert' argument that always gets trotted out. Senators range from well meaning but unable to keep up, to complete blathering idiots. They don't have time to be experts in anything.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
  > You should be voting for people because they generally share your views I have actually come to disagree with this sentiment. Look at what we have right now in the US: pretty much complete gridlock when it isn't just partisan curb-stomping. No one is willing to compromise, no one wants to discuss things rationally. Everyone goes in with their answer and attempts to beat others into accepting it and it's our fault, as voters, because it's what we ask of them, because we keep being told that we should vote for people who share our opinions. I think we should vote for people not because they share our views, which are likely based in ignorance, but because they demonstrate the ability to make informed decisions and come to reasonable compromises. Look for the ones who think things through, who are willing to admit they made a mistake, and who will change their opinion in light of new information.
kalleboo 9y ago
If only we got to replace them with small shell scripts. Instead we're going to get blockchains.
mtgx 9y ago
It's a terrible idea in more ways than one. The biggest being the fact that AI = software = will be hacked. And that excludes scenarios where country elites will control it from behind the scenes with algorithm changes that favor them, while pretending to improve it. Maybe all of these issues will be solved in 100 years. But I think it's far too premature to actually hope for this happening soon. It's going to end in disaster if it somehow does happen, because people are tricked into thinking it's a great idea (just like Pentagon officials and politicians are not being tricked by war contractors that autonomous weapons is a good idea with the AI capabilities and software security we have today). Because of this trickery we're going to see increasingly more bad decisions by governments who allow AI to take their place. Such as this recent one: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180409/09125639594/uk-police-use-zipcode-profiles-garden-size-first-names-ai-based-custody-decision-system.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180409/09125639594/uk-po...
- amptorn 9y ago
  Not so much "hacked" as "written from the ground up by people with nobody's interests but their own at heart". AI isn't naturally occurring. Humans write the code, humans select the training strategies, humans choose the data to train it with and most importantly humans choose what constitutes a "good, well-trained" AI over a "bad" one which needs more training. Humans pick when to stop. In this hypothetical, those humans are now the gatekeepers on all governance. They have no motivation to do anything but serve their own bias. And we know how much ethical training programmers receive. We can't build a perfect AI because we don't have a perfect AI which could build it for us.
amptorn 9y ago
> A small algorithm would be a much better representation of you. Nice, nice: and the de facto elected official becomes whoever implemented the algorithm. You've described a rare opportunity for us to become the Engineers Who Installed The Red Button. I'm in.

by snarfy 9y ago

adrianN 9y ago

Do you really trust feature extraction from legalese enough to hand your voting power to some AI? Do you have the time to read hundreds of real laws in order to provide it with real training data? Do you trust that your fellow citizens will do the same?

CrystalLangUser 9y ago
It’d still likely represent you better than a regular politician.
- noir_lord 9y ago
  Or misrepresent everyone more equally. Currently they just misrepresent people without checkbooks.
- adrianN 9y ago
  No, it represents the people who know how to write laws to mean one thing to a lawyer and another thing to the AI.
  - ben_w 9y ago
    The staus quo appears to be getting laws passed because they have positive sounding names such as “The PATRIOT Act” and that the people suggesting the laws made the correct choice of teams red or blue. I didn’t want to learn psychology because I didn’t want to lose the magic of not knowing how my mind works. Now I’m learning it to stop people — myself and others — from deluding me. I’m a neural network too, just an organic one rather than a silicon one.
    - fjsolwmv 9y ago
      PATRIOT ACT passed because the authoritarians in government liked it giving them power. The name was just butter to make it easier to force down Americans' throats.
      - ben_w 9y ago
        That’s who wrote it. The people who passed it could neither like nor dislike it, because they are on record saying they don’t read bills as that would “slow down the legislative process”.

jasonmaydie 9y ago

But is the real official the script or is it the person/persons running the script?

amptorn 9y ago
Neither: it's the person who implemented the script. That's why this is such an attractive prospect to the programming/tech crowd.

pc86 9y ago

Tyranny of the majority much? Elected officials don't exist to simply determine what 50%+1 of the voting population wants. They're not supposed to act as a popularity sieve. You should be voting for people because they generally share your views, yes, but more importantly because they're willing and able to become experts in the things you need to be an expert in in order to be an effective lawmaker.

076ae80a-3c97-4 9y ago
As someone who lives in the UK, this is funny and also makes me cry a little.
- fredley 9y ago
  Could be worse, could be in the US.
OtterCoder 9y ago
Having watched even a little C-SPAN, I really, really don't understand the 'expert' argument that always gets trotted out. Senators range from well meaning but unable to keep up, to complete blathering idiots. They don't have time to be experts in anything.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 9y ago
> You should be voting for people because they generally share your views I have actually come to disagree with this sentiment. Look at what we have right now in the US: pretty much complete gridlock when it isn't just partisan curb-stomping. No one is willing to compromise, no one wants to discuss things rationally. Everyone goes in with their answer and attempts to beat others into accepting it and it's our fault, as voters, because it's what we ask of them, because we keep being told that we should vote for people who share our opinions. I think we should vote for people not because they share our views, which are likely based in ignorance, but because they demonstrate the ability to make informed decisions and come to reasonable compromises. Look for the ones who think things through, who are willing to admit they made a mistake, and who will change their opinion in light of new information.

kalleboo 9y ago

If only we got to replace them with small shell scripts. Instead we're going to get blockchains.

mtgx 9y ago

It's a terrible idea in more ways than one. The biggest being the fact that AI = software = will be hacked. And that excludes scenarios where country elites will control it from behind the scenes with algorithm changes that favor them, while pretending to improve it. Maybe all of these issues will be solved in 100 years. But I think it's far too premature to actually hope for this happening soon. It's going to end in disaster if it somehow does happen, because people are tricked into thinking it's a great idea (just like Pentagon officials and politicians are not being tricked by war contractors that autonomous weapons is a good idea with the AI capabilities and software security we have today). Because of this trickery we're going to see increasingly more bad decisions by governments who allow AI to take their place. Such as this recent one: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180409/09125639594/uk-police-use-zipcode-profiles-garden-size-first-names-ai-based-custody-decision-system.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180409/09125639594/uk-po...

amptorn 9y ago
Not so much "hacked" as "written from the ground up by people with nobody's interests but their own at heart". AI isn't naturally occurring. Humans write the code, humans select the training strategies, humans choose the data to train it with and most importantly humans choose what constitutes a "good, well-trained" AI over a "bad" one which needs more training. Humans pick when to stop. In this hypothetical, those humans are now the gatekeepers on all governance. They have no motivation to do anything but serve their own bias. And we know how much ethical training programmers receive. We can't build a perfect AI because we don't have a perfect AI which could build it for us.

amptorn 9y ago

> A small algorithm would be a much better representation of you. Nice, nice: and the de facto elected official becomes whoever implemented the algorithm. You've described a rare opportunity for us to become the Engineers Who Installed The Red Button. I'm in.