great article on AI from

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

The author raises an interesting point:

 

To understand just how complicated the issue really is, let's consider a huge, immensely powerful machine we've already built, and see if the terms being applied here work in its context. The machine is the U.S. government and legal system. It is a lot more like a giant computer system than people realize. Highly complex computer programs are not sequences of instructions; they are sets of rules. This is explicit in the case of "expert systems" and implicit in the case of distributed, object-oriented, interrupt-driven, networked software systems. More to the point, sets of rules are programs.

 

Therefore, the government is a giant computer program—with guns. The history of the twentieth century is a story of such giant programs going bad and turning on their creators (the Soviet Union) or their neighbors (Nazi Germany) in very much the same way that Kaczynski imagines computers doing.

 

Of course, you will say that the government isn't just a program; it's under human control, after all, and it's composed of people. However, it is both the pride and the shame of the human race that we will do things as part of a group that we never would do on our own—think of Auschwitz. Yes, the government is composed of people, but the whole point of the rules is to make them do different things—or do things differently—than they would otherwise. Bureaucracies famously exhibit the same lack of common sense as do computer programs, and are just as famous for a lack of human empathy.

 

But, virtual cyborg though the government may be, isn't it still under human control? In the case of the two horror stories cited above, the answer is: yes, under the control of Stalin and Hitler respectively. The U.S. government is much more decentralized in power; it was designed that way. Individual politicians are very strongly tied to the wishes of the voters; listen to one talk and you'll see just how carefully they have to tread when they speak. The government is very strongly under the control of the voters, but no individual voter has any significant power. Is this "under human control"?

 

linkie:

article