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I've often wondered whether the first super-intelligent AI that gets created, if it somehow manages to be both under government control and not put to strictly

I've often wondered whether the first super-intelligent AI that gets created, if it somehow manages to be both under government control and not put to strictly military uses, might be tasked with modelling the economy and deciding on the "correct" set of economic policies. Extending the scope of AI decision-making outside of the realm of economics seems much harder, though, as there's much less training data for questions like how to educate students in a pandemic, or whether to loosen planning rules for building wind turbines. I suspect that before AI becomes capable of providing good answers to those questions, it will already have changed the world beyond recognition, and probably not in a good way. The best we can hope for is mass unemployment and a UBI, which will also make all economic models obsolete too.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago
Isaac Asimov thought so too :-)
danuker 5y ago
> UBI, which will also make all economic models obsolete too But how would you decide how much to give through UBI next year? How inflation will change in response? How many people will still be needed in jobs? You still need a model, because the world is changing, and a model helps you understand how.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  Sure, you would want a model to aid decision-making, but if there is (initially) no data for how the economy will behave under a UBI and with 80% unemployment, for example, then all existing models might end up generating predictions or recommendations that don't help at all.
  - danuker 5y ago
    The model encodes some generalities that may still hold true, given that it was fit on a lot of scenarios, and a lot of brainpower went into it. But sure, it might completely miss some novel phenomenon. It is up to the humans running the model to be aware of its limitations and accuracy. In any case, the more heads thinking about the problem the better, and the model is an approximation of a lot of heads. And the equations can show why it thinks what it thinks.
beaconstudios 5y ago
That was actually likely to happen at one point - either in the Soviet Union through OGAS [1] which was rejected due to bureaucratic politics, or Chile's Project Cybersyn which was cancelled due to, uh, American interests. It would have been extremely interesting to see what a planned economy utilising cybernetics and rudimentary ML would've been capable of, especially as the technology improved. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

Isaac Asimov thought so too :-)

danuker 5y ago

> UBI, which will also make all economic models obsolete too But how would you decide how much to give through UBI next year? How inflation will change in response? How many people will still be needed in jobs? You still need a model, because the world is changing, and a model helps you understand how.

dane-pgp 5y ago
Sure, you would want a model to aid decision-making, but if there is (initially) no data for how the economy will behave under a UBI and with 80% unemployment, for example, then all existing models might end up generating predictions or recommendations that don't help at all.
- danuker 5y ago
  The model encodes some generalities that may still hold true, given that it was fit on a lot of scenarios, and a lot of brainpower went into it. But sure, it might completely miss some novel phenomenon. It is up to the humans running the model to be aware of its limitations and accuracy. In any case, the more heads thinking about the problem the better, and the model is an approximation of a lot of heads. And the equations can show why it thinks what it thinks.

beaconstudios 5y ago

That was actually likely to happen at one point - either in the Soviet Union through OGAS [1] which was rejected due to bureaucratic politics, or Chile's Project Cybersyn which was cancelled due to, uh, American interests. It would have been extremely interesting to see what a planned economy utilising cybernetics and rudimentary ML would've been capable of, especially as the technology improved. 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OGAS 2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn