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Many People Think AI Could Make Better Policy Decisions Than Politicians (qz.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: A new survey on Europeans' attitudes towards technology found that a quarter of people would prefer it if policy decisions were made by artificial intelligence instead of politicians. The Center for the Governance of Change at Spain's IE University polled 2,500 adults in the UK, Spain, Germany, France, Ireland, Italy, and the Netherlands in January. The results reflect an intense anxiety about the changes brought about by advances in tech, with more than half of respondents worried that jobs would be replaced by robots, and 70% saying that unchecked technological innovation could do more harm than good to society. Respondents also expressed concerns about the impact of digital relationships replacing human contact as more people spend time online. Perhaps most interestingly, a quarter of the respondents said they would prefer AI to guide decisions about governance of their country over politicians.

Around the world, citizens have expressed a growing disillusionment with democracy, and an increased skepticism that their voice has an impact on political decisions. But algorithmic decisions aren't a problem-free solution: they can be embedded with the prejudice and bias of their programmers or manipulated to achieve specific outcomes, making the results as potentially problematic as the ones made by humans. The study also found that respondents expected governments to reduce the disruption that technology might have on their lives with regulation, limits on automation, and support for people affected by job losses. This "highlights the paradox in which we live," the authors wrote. "People are disillusioned with governments, yet at the same time ask them to tackle the societal and economic negative effects that emerging technologies might have."

4 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Bribing programmers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ive been saying this for years! Everybody chosen MUST serve. they get paid appropriately and do something such as making their employer maintain a position for them upon return. Just like an extended jury duty

  2. Re:Bribing programmers by fafalone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Should be like jury duty beyond just random selection too... there should be qualifications.
    When I read stories about how shockingly high percentages of natural born Americans couldn't pass the civics test we make immigrants pass for citizenship, at first I thought well ok, maybe they're just doing things like 'name the year the 12th Amendment was ratified' or other such specific trivia. So I looked up what questions were actually on it, and no, that wasn't the case at all, it was all basic information about how government is structured and functions. It should be an embarassment for any natural born American to miss a single question anywhere on the full set, nevermind miss so many they fail.
    So to be in the pool, you should have to have passed a civics exam, and even more importantly, pass an exam in basic US history and Supreme Court cases, and most importantly, a test on logic.
    Sure, all that would eliminate 99% of the population, but if you took the 1% that could pass, and they served like jurors randomly selected for a limited period, maybe we could actually get some competent leadership for once.
    Of course none of that would ever happen, people would get up in arms over the idea of being so biased towards facts and reason.

  3. Re:Bribing programmers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If you think *regular* politicians are easy to buy off, just wait until you see how much bribe money Joe Blow will amass selling votes on issues he doesn't give a shit about (read: basically all of them). Normal politicians are at least restrained by a (theoretical) fear of public exposure and losing their jobs, while randos with no significant public reputation to risk and who don't actually want to be there in the first place will simply go ham. The general public won't give a shit, because once stripped of even the illusion of participation they'll stop caring about government completely (or, at least, become disillusioned with it to the point of apathy). Lobbyists and/or deep state types will almost instantly seize complete effective control and the "politicians" will spend their days cashing bribe checks and banging their complimentary hookers.

  4. It won't matter by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Interesting

    as long as they don't apologize. If Trump's taught us anything its this: Never say your sorry. Ever. It's a sign of weakness, and your opponents will pounce.

    Warren should have just said, "Who gives a fuck what I did in college. So I wanted to be an Indian fucking Princess. So the fuck what". And yes, she should have swore. Everybody would be so busy talking about a granny swearing they'd have forgotten everything else. Trump did the same thing but with racism and dog whistling. Nobody talks about the substantive effect of his policy because he's just so garsh darn mean

    Never apologize. Own it and own your opponents.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/