175th Edition
Will AI make government and businesses better?
As the influence and presence of AI expands, so too do our expectations as to what it can accomplish. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal – “Can AI Repair the Broken Modern State?” – people expect AI to make government much more efficient and effective. The author, Tom Tugendhat, believes that government should use AI to determine principles for how society is governed and controlled. Let’s dig into that a bit.
To begin, I posed this question to AI – What are the most important principles? AI produced three: Integrity, Responsibility, and Compassion. Wow. Who knew? Would we have ever discovered these principles without AI?
AI utilizes “experts” and “philosophical consensus” to conclude that these three principles are the most important. It’s hard to argue with the results. Perhaps incorporating AI into government decision making will help offset other conflicting forces like partisanship, an unbridled thirst for power, closedmindedness, and human idiocy. I’m reminded of Einstein’s famous quote – “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.” Should there be an AI check on every decision politicians make? How many of our current leaders utilize AI to balance their own beliefs and biases? Would an AI-assisted government be more efficient or would the system eventually be gamed to produce partisan results?
Here is an AI response to the opposite question – What are the most destructive or evil principles?
Answer: Dehumanization, Totalitarianism, Moral Disengagement and Displacement of Responsibility, the Privatization of Truth, and Malice and Wanton Cruelty. With AI, how the question is phrased matters, but it is an interesting list to contemplate, isn’t it?
Where does that leave us? It makes sense to focus on, or at least revisit, each question occasionally. When concentrating on the first question and the three principles, (Integrity, Responsibility, and Compassion) it might behoove us to keep in mind that there will certainly be circumstances in which we fall short. What happens then? Or when others fall short, do we suddenly abandon the positive principles and start acting in destructive or evil ways?
This is man’s eternal struggle, isn’t it? With free will, we all have moments of virtue as well as moments of sinfulness. How can we utilize AI to tilt the scales in a positive direction? Is that asking too much of AI?
The last question I posed to AI was the following – Can AI produce virtue?
Answer: AI itself cannot possess or genuinely produce virtue. Philosophers and ethicists agree that virtue requires consciousness, emotional awareness, deliberate moral reasoning, and free will. Because AI only simulates behavior based on statistical patterns, it lacks the moral agency required to be genuinely virtuous. Again, rephrase the question and you will get a different answer.
In the meantime, it appears that we are stuck striving to be virtuous the old-fashioned way. By hanging around people who demonstrate it. By acknowledging our fallibility and most importantly, surrendering our will to that of our Heavenly Father. Perhaps AI can help us, but that is uncertain at this point.
From an economic perspective, one concept seems to drive just about everything else. It isn’t profit or scarcity (the AI answer). It is productivity. Individuals as well as major corporations are always striving to find ways to produce more with less. Currently, driven by AI and a growing mismatch between skills and job requirements, corporate America is uber-focused on improving productivity. Will this unrelenting focus on productivity steer us toward virtue? Or will it lead us down the path of destruction and evil? We do live in interesting times, don’t we?
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Michael Kayes
*These views are my personal opinions and are not the viewpoints of any company or organization.