Can AI solve the "Ideology" problem?
Everyone has an idea about how a country and an economy should be run. But can we know ever who's right?
Is it the Marxists who are right? I mean, capitalism does seem to always produce inequality?
Or maybe, it’s the libertarians who are right. Perhaps, giving into social policy and central planning always leaves us at the mercy of authoritarian regimes.
Truth be told, it all depends and we never really know on what. That was probably until now.
We produce a LOT of data. Heck, our entire world runs on the thing.
The nature of ideologies is such that they tend to be right in a particular context but wrong when applied more generally. To solve this issue, we need to be able to tell what the “right” decision is in any given situation.
When we look at the biggest issues that face us today: Climate Change, the covid19 pandemic, wealth inequality, and the technological revolution itself, it’s becoming obvious that we are not seeing these “right” solutions, but rather, solutions that fall on ideological lines.
How then can we be less wrong? I truly believe AI could help us in this regard.
We are already seeing AI being employed in fields like tax policy, to simulate a more equitable society. Perhaps, we may see AI employed in direct decision making soon enough.
As human beings, our personal experiences tend to cloud our judgments. This means that we let our emotions hamper good decision making.
We are all conscious of this sense of bias in ourselves and as such distrust others in making decisions for us.
But here lies the issue, those in charge of leading us towards much better futures, themselves show this affinity towards bias. In many cases, they show themselves to be lacking the sort of breadth of knowledge needed.
People who had/have a love for market-based systems did/do so primarily because they allowed us some conscious control over our lives. We were dealing with other people more directly; we were solving many of our own problems—and those of others.
But if this pandemic has taught you anything yet, it should be the fact that the markets have long ceased to be an effective tool for decentralization.
Decentralization has in many cases been our response post-WWII to avoid giving into authoritarian tendencies. But this quasi-decentralization has lead to severe inequality.
In search of the perfect expert and middle man— in short none at all— we might as well employ AI to help deal with the numerous complexities that exist in our lives.
But there are some issues.
AI doesn’t handle exceptional cases too well. Many AI models started going crazy after many of our habits changed during this pandemic.
There’s also the age-old tale of AI becoming our overlords. But would this truly be a problem if the AI only governs and is never truly capable of evil? Will humanity subscribe to the authority of mere code? Isn’t that the case already? The Rule Of Law, which in its essence is mere words, is followed by a large part of the population.
What about the possibility of centralization? Perhaps, AI may lead us in the opposite direction. China is an example of this.
All these are philosophical questions we will need to explore in detail. But as we progress, it is becoming more clear that if we are to maintain global peace we will need to solve the “ideology” problem.
So far, AI seems to be our best hope in doing so.
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