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To me, algorithmic trading and investing is already a pretty big scary AI proposition. And it's happening all over, for real profit. Privatization and algorith
by mbrock 12y ago
To me, algorithmic trading and investing is already a pretty big scary AI proposition. And it's happening all over, for real profit.
Privatization and algorithmification (or whatever) of large scale human decision making seems like an enormous change. And the computers don't have to "think" in order to do this.
The next step in this scenario would be policy decision making based on AI techniques. Statistical measuring, machine learning, etc in order to decide on political details, gerrymandering, etc.
In other words, computers don't need to grow sentient and godlike. We could just delegate power to them anyway. Maybe they'll be a bit stupid; so are we, just in different ways. And they won't understand human concerns in any deep way. But they'll be efficient and profitable.
You could already look at the international market as a kind of machine or distributed algorithm. With human "computers." Replace these computers with robots, per standard capitalist efficiency procedures, and voila, the world is run by machines.
- fiatmoney 12y ago"policy decision making based on ... statistical measuring" is > 2000 years old. The modern version based on a mathematical understanding of statistics & sampling, as opposed to collecting aggregates large enough that you can just treat the error as 0, is ~80 years old.
- mbrock 12y agoYeah, it's quite fascinating. Like the "Cybersyn Project" in Chile. [0] Project Cybersyn was a Chilean project from 1971–1973 (during the government of President Salvador Allende) aimed at constructing a distributed decision support system to aid in the management of the national economy. The project consisted of four modules: an economic simulator, custom software to check factory performance, an operations room, and a national network of telex machines that were linked to one mainframe computer. [0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn
- fiatmoney 12y agoCybersyn was kind of a joke; it was a Star Trek set hooked up to telexes where aides manually aggregated information in the same way leaders get their briefings the world over.
- natch 12y agoIt's old, but that doesn't invalidate the comment, which I found insightful... odd that it's getting downvoted. Machines get greater and greater amounts of control, and humans correspondingly less, over time. Even if the trend has been happening for thousands of years, it's still worthwhile to think about the end game that could come when things go to an extreme.