Automating politics Flashcards
The Algocrat
superintelligent AI system
trained on all recorded human knowledge
reasons about how to promote justice and the common good
evaluates and selects optimal policies
achieves dramatically better outcomes than any democracy
New challenges to democracy
distortion of democratic deliberation via social media
resilience/return of authoritarianism
possibility of delegating political power to AI
Instrumental arguments justifying democracy
promotes good results, eg; peace, prosperity, human rights
How might democracy promote good results
participation maximises the satisfaction of individual preferences/interests
aggregation of knowledge
successful identification/monitoring of experts
uncovering truth through liberation
Non-instrumental arguments justifying democracy
features inherent to democratic processes
Features necessary for a process to be democratic
- Universal membership. all subjected to a decision are entitled to participate in that decision
- equal participation. all participants should enjoy fair or equal opportunities for influencing decision
- public deliberation. decision making should involve the public exchange of reasons
- substantive reliability. decision should reliably achieve good outcomes
Why might democratic societies fail to live up to democratic ideals?
- cognitive limitations
- inequalities & corruption
How can tech improve democracy?
- liquid democracy
- avatar democracy
- wiki democracy
- automated deliberation
- data democracy
Liquid democracy
instead of voting for a single representative, citizens delegate votes to other citizens and withdraw at any time
avatar democracy
an AI bot emulates your political judgements and makes laws by negotiating with others’ bots
wiki democracy
writing of laws is undertaken directly by citizens through an open-source platform
automated deliberation
AI used to summarise and group ideas
data democracy
big data is used to supplement or replace voting
