Slashdot Mirror
'Technology Will Replace the Need For Big Government' (vice.com)
New submitter axlash writes: There's a lot of dissatisfaction with governments today, as can be seen by the rise of left-wing parties in Europe, to the rise of non-mainstream political candidates in America. Well, here's a thought -- with all the talk of technology replacing jobs, why not have it replace governments, too? The speculates about how "in the near future, the government might dramatically shrink -- not because of demands by fiscally astute Americans, but because of radical technology." It goes on: "Even the US President could one day be replaced, which -- strangely enough -- might bring sanity to our election process." The main thrust of the article is essentially about how government jobs will be replaced with technology, although it doesn't say much about whether there'll be technology administering this technology.
... That's seriously the only reason I can think of why someone would think that putting technology into an oversight role over humanity is a good thing.
A generation raised on YouTube and Google algorithms and that doesn't seem to value freedom of expression or thought also doesn't understand why humans, process, and procedural protections are necessary. In turn, that makes things less efficient than they theoretically could be, but a technocratic Orwellian state as envisioned by dipshit solutionists will eventually come to the conclusion that life would be a lot more efficient if you just get rid of humans altogether.
I'm honestly a bit confused how people don't see this. Did they not see T2 growing up? Did they not watch any dystopian 70's sci-fi? Have they never heard of The Twilight Zone and its continual reminders about how hubris catches up with people? What is it?
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
Also Stephenson: 'Snow Crash' and 'Diamond Age'
[Insert pithy quote here]
Big government spends so much time fighting with itself that not much gets done. A smaller more efficient government will screw the people a lot faster.
Do you really think the Government will permit this?
No, they won't.
In the USA, the Federal Government is too big to permit any competition.
In the USA, many State Governments are too big to permit any competition.
Every thing that competes with the Government loses. Look at Microsoft's surrender to the USA Federal Government when M$ reached its zenith and became a threat to the Feds. Zap! M$ lost the battles and now pay homage to the USA Government.
Show of hands: Anyone want to actually live in the worlds depicted in those two books? I sure don't.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Can I write the software? Oh you forgot about that little detail, eh? I guess you'll insist on it being open course, of course. Sure, nobody could every fool you if you could see the source code.
There is no way for this to be trustworthy. The system must be both comprehensible *and verifiable* by the vast majority of citizens. That means less technology. The future lies in simpler laws and rules. That's supposed to be the big draw of a minimum income - significantly reduce the complexity of government by making the rules extremely simple: everyone gets $X stipend. No welfare, old age pension, foodstamps, etc.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
There's a lot of dissatisfaction with governments today, as can be seen by the rise of left-wing parties in Europe,
Did you mean "as can be seen by the rise of right-wing parties in Europe"? Computerization of the government was a goal in the Soviet Union at one point. SAP consultants are surely already gleaming of the though of selling national ERP systems to centrally manage whole countries at a time in really big computer systems. Really Big Systems.
This implies, there ever was a real need for Big Government in the first place...
There sure were problems, which the government solved, however, (quite) arguably, these solutions introduced worse problems of their own...
Libertarians continue to argue — with show of reason — that government's role ought to be confined to keeping the enemies away without and crime at bay within the borders...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It is my belief that technology improves the capability to centralize government operations. That's one reason you have states tending towards top down centralization today. It is now possible to run more things from the national capital than ever before.
Centralization has benefits that are quite considerable... if they are used for good. The problem with big government is that the characteristics of a large bureaucracy make the government itself into its own constituency. Look at US legislators. They're completely out of step with a lot of their voters, on both sides. How could that happen? It's way too easy to manage things from the capital.
Will direct democracy and other things become more prevalent with more technology? Quite possibly. However, while I've always stated that democracy is a very good method of generating legitimacy for a particular government, it's really shitty at determining the truth for questions that have anything but the simplest answers.
A lot of progressive types today take great comfort in the belief that they have the majority opinion on their side. However, would they still consider themselves correct if they were a minority? They certainly would. Therefore, having everyone on your side is convenient, but doesn't necessarily improve the value of your proposition. A direct democracy without experts mediating the effects could generate some very popular, and very disastrous policies.
As for technology in general managing things. Garbage in, garbage out. If you start with a flawed premise, your technology will find the best possible means of achieving your flawed goals and screwing you over. I am interested in how technology can help us in the future, but in the end, I think the real determination of whether a future is utopia or dystopia will be determined by the moral and ethical decisions that we generate the starting goals and premises from which the technology will implement a solution.
There seems to be a fundamental misconception behind this story: namely that 'big' refers to number of employees; rather than size of role.
It's obvious to the point of trivial that certain technological advances will reduce the number of people required to do a given job; but that doesn't change whether or not the job is considered to be within the state's mandate or whether it is a private sector matter.
That's what size-of-government fights are really about(sure, there's some skirmishing about shrinking or expanding specific workforces to either save money or address a perceived deficiency in service): "What should the government do? What should it not do? What is acceptable to contract out? What is best handled internally?"
Given that technology has tended to result in labor savings, I'd certainly expect a lower headcount in government in the future; but that's irrelevant to whether it is 'big' or not. Running a welfare state, say, would probably be more efficient if you could just have a single AI do it; but it'd be just as much a 'big government' proposal, just one with fewer people pushing paper around.
Government is not mainly technology and will not be replaced by technology.
There's never been a need for "Big Government",
and we all know that technology has outpaced our obese overlords.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Someone hasn't been paying attention. The *right wing* is on the rise in Europe, and it has nothing to do with the size of the government and everything to do with nationalism and cultural fears (thats a nice way of saying racism).
Living in Belgium, I don't know anyone who complains about the size of the government. In fact, I think the common idea between the young I work with and the old in my family is that the government isn't doing enough about [roads|infrastructure|global warming|etc]. Doing more means a larger government.
The author has a terminal case of Star Trekitis. He assumes since we can make a fireproof building, we don't need firefighters. We won't need police because the Internet of Things can monitor everything.
He's never met Murphy. It isn't at all clear that he even understands how to turn his TV off.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Classic old Gordon Dickson story... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Also, Person of Interest.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Probably not, but let's be honest, very few of us want to live in this one either.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The Founding Fathers crafted the Constitution specifically to make sure Americans do NOT actually get what they vote for.
If you think about who makes up the voting public, I can understand why they'd do that. Democracy is mob rule, and mobs are very stupid, easily manipulated things.
You are welcome on my lawn.
translation: Our new feudalism corporate overlords would like us to dismantle what's left of our governments, the only thing left that could reign in their power. What is this pro corporate propaganda waffle doing on a tech site?
Rather than look to SciFi for what it might look like, why not look at history? Oxford historian Adam Curtis did a series of documentaries looking at the promises of self-organising systems in general and computer/data driven systems in particular: "All watched over by machines of loving grace" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_%28TV_series%29) Well worth a watch if you can get it. Here's a preview on the Guardian's website: http://www.theguardian.com/cul...
The whole problem is the notion that people need an "oversight role", which in fact they do not.
What technology enables is the ability for local regions to function in a decentralized manner without need for "oversight" or "central planning".
It's not about REPLACING human oversight, but dismantling it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, its the internet.
I had this realization a while back from mention of a very old economic theory, one truely beyond its time since it comes from before the real advent of general purpose computing. Its a very simple concept.... decentralization is more efficient as information flows.
You need big central orgs when information is bottlenecked and can't move to where it needs fast enough. The Internet turns this concept on its ear. We need the government we have because it used to be reasonable that it takes 6 weeks for someone to get to Washington in an "emergency".
Its time to break this shit up, its too big and centralizes way too much power into way too few hands.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
"The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms."
"Extreme surveillance hardly inspires reverence. Perhaps fear and obedience, but not reverence."
"God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgement, and punishment. Other sentiments toward them were secondary."
"No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a camera."
"The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgement of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgement."
"You underestimate humankind's love of freedom."
"The individual desires judgement. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization. The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning. God was a dream of good government. You will soon have your god, and you will make it with your own hands."
And to provide the counterpoint, a very brief warning from Twitter as to how quickly it can all go wrong.
Government and the technical augmentation or automation thereof is a fascinating source of ideas and issues, philosophical and economic. But the OP's choice of a term like "Big Government" seeks to attract only lightweight libertarians and nattering neocons who are blissfully transfixed by antiseptic fantasies like meritocracy and Big Bad Bureaucracy.
Why discuss flamebait? Let's ask a better question.
Can AI/tech improve or replace government? Can it help us to focus better on issues rather than politics? Might tech help us to make concrete measurable progress toward achieving specific goals, improve administative efficiency, and minimize the role of gov't in our lives? Yes, I'm convinced that it can, and I'd love to discuss it. But the OP's simplistic article won't inspire that level of discourse here and now.
For a better start on this topic, I recommend:
"Automating Easy Government Solutions with Machine Learning"
https://18f.gsa.gov/2015/11/18...
"Why Government Managers Need to Know About Machine Learning"
http://datasmart.ash.harvard.e...
"How can government make the most of machine learning systems and avoid the pitfalls?"
http://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/h...
"White House to probe role of AI in government"
https://fcw.com/articles/2016/...
All you need to remember if the robots take over is "Klaatu barada nikto"
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.