Will A.I. Be a Creator or a Destroyer of Worlds?
Excerpt
In examining the effect of artificial intelligence on politics, especially politics in this country, Bruce Schneier, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and a lecturer at the Kennedy School, takes speculation to a new level.
In an essay that was published last week, “How AI Will Change Democracy,” Schneier wrote:
AI can engage with voters, conduct polls and fund-raise at a scale that humans cannot—for all sizes of elections. More interestingly, future politicians will largely be AI-driven. I don’t mean that AI will replace humans as politicians. But as AI starts to look and feel more human, our human politicians will start to look and feel more like AI
Artificial intelligence, Schneier believes, will shift power from executives—presidents and governors—to Congress and to state legislators:
Right now, laws tend to be general, with details to be worked out by a government agency. AI can allow legislators to propose, and then vote on, all of those details. That will change the balance of power between the legislative and the executive branches of government.
And finally, Schneier wrote, taking his case a step further, “AI can eliminate the need for politicians.”
The system of representative democracy, he continued, “empowers elected officials to stand in for our collective preferences.” When the issues involved complex trade-offs, “we can only choose one of two—or maybe a few more—candidates to do that for us.”
Artificial intelligence, Schneier asserted, “can change this. We can imagine a personal AI directly participating in policy debates on our behalf, along with millions of other personal AIs, and coming to a consensus on policy.”
This consensus will be reached, Schneier maintained, by combining the data contained in devices he calls “personal AI assistants.”
These “assistants,” according to Schneier, serve
as your advocate with others, and as a butler with you. This requires an intimacy greater than your search engine, email provider, cloud storage system or phone. You’re going to want it with you 24/7, constantly training on everything you do. You will want it to know everything about you, so it can most effectively work on your behalf.
AI has revealed unfathomable vistas, as well as ungraspable, unrecognizable vulnerabilities—and the process has only just begun.