
Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence? - aburan28
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/will-democracy-survive-big-data-and-artificial-intelligence/
======
jkestelyn
"It can be expected that supercomputers will soon surpass human capabilities
in almost all areas—somewhere between 2020 and 2060...Is this alarmism?"

Short answer: Yes.

What is the evidence for this claim, upon which the premise of this article
rests? The existence of algorithms that simulate human game play today is
hardly it.

The authors have fallen into the trap of accepting the nomenclature of
"artificial intelligence" without further questions. There is nothing
"artificial" nor "intelligent" about it.

Rather, machine-learning algorithms are trained on a diet of human-derived
data that is simply a reflection of existing human biases. The danger is in
their human programmers being non-introspective of those biases, not in the
algorithms themselves. Thus I personally am much more fearful of human-made
decisions than non-human ones.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

~~~
Houshalter
There's this:
[http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/survey.pdf](http://www.nickbostrom.com/papers/survey.pdf)

>We thus designed a brief questionnaire and distributed it to four groups of
experts in 2012/2013\. The median estimate of respondents was for a one in two
chance that high-level machine intelligence will be developed around
2040-2050, rising to a nine in ten chance by 2075. Experts expect that systems
will move on to superintelligence in less than 30 years thereafter. They
estimate the chance is about one in three that this development turns out to
be ‘bad’ or ‘extremely bad’ for humanity.

This survey is a few years old. Discussion and knowledge about AI risk has
increased considerably since then. And AI itself has made remarkable progress
in that time as well. It's amazing how much progress there has been in AI in
just the last 5 years. Who knows where it will be in 40 years. Look where
computer technology was 40 years ago.

~~~
j2kun
Is there an established, rigorous definition of "high level machine
intelligence"? Or even a concrete list of sufficient criteria? Every single
discussion I've encountered leaves the notion undefined, or just "I'll know it
when I see it"

~~~
Houshalter
Artificial General Intelligence is _roughly_ defined as a machine that can do
all the things a human can do. For example, an AI capable of doing AI research
and programming computers, would be AGI. The Turing test (as Turing originally
described it, not garbage like chatbot competitions) is the most widely
accepted standard of AGI.

Superintelligence goes well beyond that. A machine with cognitive abilities
far beyond humans. I don't think such a machine is very unlikely even in the
near future. It's unreasonable to believe that humans are the pinnacle of
intelligence. We are just the very first intelligent creature to evolve. Our
brains are heavily resource constrained by size and energy. And neurons are
many orders of magnitude slower than transistors. And also far larger and less
compact.

~~~
philipov
The problem is this conception of superintelligence as something that comes
after general artificial intelligence. Superintelligence is irrelevant. We'll
have superaptitude before general AI, and that will be enough. One of the
important principles of design is that specialized solutions are better than
general ones.

The tasks humans are hired to perform by employers, and the processes which
can be used to break democracy by exploiting big data, are far more
constrained than the scope of cognition required to pass the Turing test.

~~~
RogtamBar
You forget that democracy has always been broken, by design.

>>The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and
opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those
who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible
government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed,
our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men
we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our
democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate
in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics
or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated
by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental
processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires
which control the public mind.<<

The current fit on part of the intellectuals and media is due to them having
lost this power to control the narrative and ideas because they failed to
adapt to the new media which have replaced the old.

~~~
philipov
citation for the quote?

------
macawfish
It will only survive if its lawmakers restore the robustness of the electoral
process. Seriously, why is gerrymandering even a thing right now? How is that
normal? Not to mention the highly manipulable first-past-the-post voting
system. It's no wonder that primitive AI was so able to obliterate the last
election. Our human collective decision making processes are thoroughly busted
and nobody seems to care to fix them.

Amazon and Netflix get score voting for their products, yet we can't even get
measly, pathetic IRV?

Imagine if Amazon had to use IRV or FPTP to determine "the best products"...
It'd go out of business pretty quick!

~~~
bhauer
I would _love_ score voting.

But given the potentially higher cost of implementation, I would be very happy
with approval voting (score of 0 or 1), which would be compatible with most
existing ballots. "You may vote for zero or more of the following candidates."

Approval voting, as with score, breaks the stranglehold of two-party rule,
allows for rather than discourages policy overlap among parties (breaking down
polarization), and increases voter satisfaction.

~~~
redahs
The problem with approval voting is that it does not give voters a mechanism
by which to indicate partial approval. If there is a centrist candidate which
many voters only slightly support, there would still be a media horse race
over whether or not voters will interpret partial approval to mean 'do not
approve' or 'approve' on election day, with a final result that may be
unnecessarily surprising to participants. There are also examples on the
wikipedia page of some organizations trying range-2 approval voting and
abandoning it.

Range-3 seems like the minimum range desirable. It would allow voters to
indicate whether they disapprove, were neutral toward, or approve of a
candidate. The only historical adoption of range-3 I am aware of is the
electoral council of the Republic of Venice, and I believed they used it as a
constant component in their electoral process for selecting the Doge without
abandoning it.

The costs of switching to something even better like range-5 may also be over-
estimated. Range-5 seems like it would work with existing optical scan
ballots. The cost of acquisition for range voting tabulatation code on the
state level would also ideally be fairly low due to the simplicity of the
preference aggregation method in range voting in comparison to IRV, and Maine
is already undertaking a switch to the later.

~~~
Houshalter
It doesn't really matter, it still does vastly better than plurality voting. I
tried simulations where every individual automatically approved of the top 50%
of candidates. It still got good results. Similar if everyone voted for the
top 30% of candidates they liked, or any other arbitrary percentage.

Using more ranges is silly. There's no reason to ever give a candidate less
than maximum vote, if you want to give them a chance at winning. If you don't,
then there's no reason to give them anything above 0.

~~~
dvorak365
More range -> greater expressivity -> better voting system

There is no reason to give your favorite candidate less than max score, and no
reason to give your least favorite candidate more than 0 score, but the middle
does serve a purpose. Scoring other candidates in the middle is to boost their
chances of winning against your less-favored candidates at the cost of
boosting their chances of winning against your more-favored candidates.

There are some variants, such as Range2Runoff, which beats Range often in
simulations. I hear that it is much better than pure Range when there are many
strategic voters.

~~~
Houshalter
Have you ever noticed how star rating systems are completely useless? People
either rate 5 stars or 1 star, and very rarely in between. Most places have
switched to simple like/dislike based systems. E.g. reddit or youtube.

And that's when people have no incentive to lie...

~~~
dvorak365
Score ratings are not as useful when the scales are poorly defined, as many
internet scoring systems are. Many internet scoring systems want you to
measure quality to some universal standard that should apply to all things
past and present in the same way. A range voting election asks you to measure
quality relative only to the options you are presented with.

Here's a hypothetical example involving 3 different shampoos. All 3 work. One
smells bad. One smells decent. One smells great.

If I were to review these on Amazon, I would likely give them 3, 4, 5 stars
respectively. All 3 of them worked, but I have a preference. I could imagine a
theoretically worse shampoo that didn't work, or even worse, made all my hair
fall out. Such a shampoo would be worth a rating of 0 stars. I don't give my
least favorite shampoo I actually used 0 stars because I can imagine that in
the future I may come across something worse, and it doesn't seem correct to
put a functional product on the same level as a harmful one.

If I were to vote (using a score system) for which one of these 3 shampoos I
would like my workplace to stock, then it is much simpler. 0, 2, 5 stars for
each option, respectively. I don't have to worry about a hypothetical worse
4th option in the future skewing my results now. If a future election is held
with that worse, 4th option, then I can give it a 0 and adjust my previous 0
and 2 star ratings accordingly.

------
dkqwj
The tech workers of today are building the future that we will all live in.
None of this stuff is appearing out of thin air. Someone, an individual human
with morals and values needs to sit down and say 'today I will program
something that will benefit a corporation/government at the expense of a
person' and then carry on.

How many people here work for companies that threaten democracy in this way?
How many people have a google or facebook tracker on their personal site? This
kind of change is the sum of small individual responsibilities.

The early dream of the internet was one of free expression, but people -not
corporations or governments- have worked very hard to undermine that.

~~~
Filligree
This is what we call a multi-polar trap.

It's a coordination problem. You're right, in a sense; at the end of the day
it's people doing this, and if they all stopped then it wouldn't happen.
Unfortunately, that's what it would take: They'd all need to stop,
simultaneously.

In the meantime our world is such that any company or person who refuses on
ethical grounds will be outcompeted, and go out of business.

It isn't something anyone decided to do. It's just implicit in the system,
which itself wasn't really deliberately built. We'll break our backs lifting
Moloch to heaven, and then...

Well, there is no "and then". Humanity will have achieved its final purpose.
Maybe it won't go that far, but I'm skeptical.

~~~
dkqwj
This is a very sad way to view the world.

Everyone doesn't need to stop simultaneously. Some people need to stop and
convince others that it's worthwhile to do so. People who refuse to stop
should be shown the consequences of what they're doing and be forced to make a
decision that they otherwise might not have been aware of. Some people will
still make that decision and will be able to justify it completely, some
people will change.

Your part in all of this, even though you don't believe change is possible,
could be to be less dismissive and condescending when it's brought up.

~~~
ajmurmann
As the parent says, if you stop doing this and somebody else does not, you are
out of business. You might not have time to convince people after the fact if
you care about your business. You also are very unlikely to convince all the
powers in your organization to put all your eggs in the social good basket
given the very likely outcome that you won't be able to convince everyone
outside your organization in time to put common, social good over company
profits. Sometimes we need to make decisions as a society. That's why we don't
have anarchy.

~~~
dkqwj
Horrendous abuses at companies like Uber and the lackadaisical approach to
protecting user data demonstrated in the seemingly weekly security breaches
show that there is plenty of low-hanging fruit.

~~~
passthefist
That's if you care about those things, seems like most people don't. Most
people seem to just want an affordable service that solves their immediate
problem.

PHP has like a 70% market share for web backends, Haskell/Rust/etc. basically
none.

VHS beat Betamax.

------
tannhaeuser
(2015)

[1]: [http://www.spektrum.de/news/wie-algorithmen-und-big-data-
uns...](http://www.spektrum.de/news/wie-algorithmen-und-big-data-unsere-
zukunft-bestimmen/1375933) (in German)

Article is very broadly written, when the imminent threat might be
manipulation of upcoming elections (France, Germany); "fake news" isn't even
mentioned

~~~
bmc7505
Google Translate does a surprisingly good job of translating that article.
It's pretty funny how the publisher (Scientific American) added their own bias
in translating the title and certain phrases, presumably to drive more traffic
to their site.

[1]:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spektrum.de%2Fnews%2Fwie-
algorithmen-und-big-data-unsere-zukunft-bestimmen%2F1375933&edit-text=)

~~~
tannhaeuser
Indeed, the translation is scarily good (which is on topic enough I guess).
Can't believe this was auto-translated.

Where do you see clickbaity bias besides the title and lead (I haven't checked
thoroughly)? Many phrases/stereotypes in German pop-science articles will only
make sense in the context of the German media discourse/bubble (if they make
sense at all).

------
mathgenius
In all these discussions of AI-doom, no-where is it mentioned that we already
run a global distributed AI, called the world financial system. It is a
classic min-sum algorithm [1], running to devastating effect. I actually don't
have any particular chip on my shoulder regarding the "evils" of money, and
have even worked in the finance industry. But people should understand the
limitations of min-sum: loops tend to derail it, and also it can't handle when
there is more than one solution. Both of these limitations are causing serious
problems in the world.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_propagation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belief_propagation)

------
benevol
_Recently, Baidu, the Chinese equivalent of Google, invited the military to
take part in the China Brain Project. It involves running so-called deep
learning algorithms over the search engine data collected about its users.
Beyond this, a kind of social control is also planned. According to recent
reports, every Chinese citizen will receive a so-called ”Citizen Score”, which
will determine under what conditions they may get loans, jobs, or travel visa
to other countries._

I'd be surprised if that kind of concept will remain limited to China.
Whenever there's massive amounts of money to be made, it will find its way to
the US (Credit Score, for example, is already reality). It must be very
tempting for the current administration.

~~~
zouhair
Wasn't this an episode of Black Mirror?

~~~
lobo_tuerto
Yes, indeed. And a pretty good at showing a path for liberation too.

~~~
macawfish
Yup, you just show up at your childhood friend's wedding drunk and make a
speech about freedom!

------
robg
This is the topic I've been most worried about. My only solace is the
brilliance of the Framers of the U.S. Constitution. They planned for a wide
variety of government failures, knowing full well of how democracies fail. The
freedom of the press and the Judiciary would seem to be strong firewalls, even
under AI run amok or distorted toward nefarious ends. We shall see...

~~~
alphonsegaston
The history of American democracy is the rebellion of the marginalized against
the grotesque hypocrisy of our stated values, faced as they are with the
reality of their social conditions. The only reason we have any freedoms is
because the oppressed weaponized the noblesse oblige of a bunch of slave
owners to carve it out for themselves.

There is no reading of American history where the press or the judiciary
function as some conduit for the immortal "brilliance" or protection of the
framers. One needs to only look at recent history, the condition of minorities
in modern carceral state, being lied into war in Iraq, to recognize this.
Further back, the judiciary was used to justify segregation, eugenics, and
mass disenfranchisement. And the history of the press speaks quite bleakly for
itself.

This kind of mentality, where individual agency is sacrificed in favor of
"mythic" protections, is a big part of the reason things have become so
precarious.

~~~
jnbiche
Hippocracy: government by or of the horses?

It's actually spelled hypocrisy, but that's a fun misspelling for those who
know Greek roots.

Otherwise, I think a huge reason for our moral progress in the US, slow and
unsteady though it may be, is having a document like the condition to point to
when advocating for better conditions.

~~~
alphonsegaston
Pedantry about spelling on a message board will certainly save the republic.
Just like literacy tests protected voting rights.

The constitution enshrined the diminishment of blacks' humanity, had to be
ammended to extend the franchise to women, and still says that slavery is fine
under the right circumstances. It's as much a reflection of our failings as it
is our ambitions, and has been wielded violently to uphold or change the
status quo. It has no inherent trajectory towards progress other than the one
we actively embody.

~~~
rtx
Constitutions come and go. Republics are saved by interests.

------
M_Grey
Show me the democracy that's supposed to survive, and then we can talk. I'm
looking around, and I see quite a few different systems, but no democracy.

~~~
turblety
The problem is, there are loads of democracies. And they are democratic. Their
people get to vote. But when the vast majority of the population of these
democracies don't understand basic politics, economy and philosophy how can
they vote for a fair and moral society. To quote Churchill:

"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
"The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the
average voter." Churchill

Like, the vast majority of the population confusing a Constitutional
Representative Republic; where voters vote for their representative who then
vote on behalf of their constituents, with a Democracy where citizens vote
directly.

~~~
sgift
Two different variants of democracy. Direct democracy, representative
democracy. Both have inherit advantages and disadvantages. So, what's your
point?

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
I suppose my point is the co-opting of the word "Democracy" by certain groups,
to present a different idea of government than those they govern live under.

Which leads to the general population not understanding:

-Why there is an electoral college instead of a direct vote for the president.

-Why there are two divisions of the legislative branch, the House which is proportionally represented, and the Senate which originally was appointed by the State-Legislatures.

Companies like Facebook are pushing for more direct voting. Which should give
you pause as the tyranny of the Majority is a very real thing, if you don't
believe so look at California which voted down gay marriage despite being a
liberal bastion. The average voter is not informed enough to vote on specific
legislation, and find themselves easily manipulated by the mass media.

Removing another safeguard to prevent the tyranny of the Majority is never a
good idea.

PS There is good reason when searching through the Constitution you will not
see the Country defined as a Democracy, or even the word democracy used.
Rather it is explicit in the fact that we live in a Republic

~~~
umanwizard
Republic means "not a monarchy". It is totally orthogonal to whether a country
is a democracy or not.

Norway is a democracy and not a republic; Zimbabwe is a republic and a
dictatorship; France is a republic and a democracy.

~~~
ZoeZoeBee
Article 4, Section 4

>The United States shall guarantee to every state in this union a republican
form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on
application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature
cannot be convened) against domestic violence.

Also, explain Napoleon who was Monarch over the Republic of France

~~~
umanwizard
> Article 4, Section 4

Yes, our constitution guarantees that each state will be a republic, not a
monarchy.

> Also, explain Napoleon who was Monarch over the Republic of France

The French state while Napoleon was emperor is known as the "First French
Empire", which replaced the "First French Republic". Eventually, after both
the Empire and the Old Regime were re-abolished in 1848, the resulting non-
monarchical state was called the "Second French Republic". So your example
actually supports my point.

------
T-A
It's funny to see this German effort turn up in Scientific American, of all
places.

In 2014, FQXi held an essay contest, sponsored by Scientific American, called
"How Should Humanity Steer the Future?". First prize [1] went to German
physicist Sabine Hossenfelder of the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies
[2].

Her award-winning proposal [3] was to hook up everybody to a recommendation
engine "to give the user an intuitive feeling for how well a decision matches
with recorded priorities", so they would not have to think for themselves.
Because, as she succinctly put it, "They don't like to think" ("they" being
"most people": "It is time to wake up. We’ve tried long enough to educate
them. It doesn’t work.").

Granted, the technological contraption needed to make this work would
currently be Google Glass-clunky, but fear not; the essay helpfully adds that
"If such a feedback in the future can be given by a brain implant, it will be
like an additional sense."

No, I am not making this up.

[1]
[http://fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2014.1](http://fqxi.org/community/essay/winners/2014.1)

[2] [https://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/fellows/](https://fias.uni-
frankfurt.de/fellows/)

[3] [http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-
files/Hossenfelder_fqxi_e...](http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-
files/Hossenfelder_fqxi_essay_hos.pdf)

~~~
mathgenius
The guidlines for the fqxi essay explicitly prioritize first of all
"interesting" and secondly "relevant". No-where is it mentioned that these
essays be based on reality or in any way practical. In my opinion, it's very
typical of academia: they are in it for the buzz, not for actually coming to
any practical conclusions about anything. (Not that they are actually averse
to practical applications/reality.)

------
smdz
There is a thin line between science and science fiction. Unfortunately, this
article is more fiction.

Let's, for a moment, assume that AI becomes highly capable in most human
tasks. In that case, I've a pretty radical view on this topic:

AI can create a heaven for humanity. It can get rid of capitalism. It can
eradicate poverty, hunger, etc - But yes, it comes with "Terms and
Conditions".

Some people might rename such existence as being non-democratic, non-
independent, etc. But don't we already live under an umbrella of rules imposed
by a democratic system? Many would agree that the rules exist for a
reason...right? If AI was ruling such a system - it would have such rules for
a reason.

Can a human live peacefully in heaven? We really don't know.

An AI program today exists for a predefined purpose - or works towards a
predefined goal. It does not define its own goals (same can be said about most
humans).

On the flip side, AI could wreak havoc - most likely when controlled by human.
Lets say we have democratic-government controlled AI (assuming all governments
have similar capabilities in AI). i.e purpose of the AI is defined by the
government, but plans and actions are taken care of by the AI. Two countries
with two different AIs now start to differentiate between humans - CountryA
citizen, CountryB citizen. If some activities in CountryA are a strategic
threat to CountryB. CountryB AI takes actions and CountryA takes actions and
it goes on... Humans are slow, imperfect, but not stupid. They will stop at a
certain loss. AI that has been ceded control won't stop - its fast and could
do a lot more damage in a short span.

May be intelligence is just randomly connected neurons where connections are
evolved via feedback. Or may be we do not understand something fundamental
about intelligence

~~~
soneca
Maybe the Garden of Eden was a AI created heaven for humanity. And the
forbidden fruit was adjusting the AI to exclusive self benefit. Someone did,
then someone else, then everybody was tinkering and the AI predicted it would
lead to complete destruction of humanity. So it shut itself definitely. As
human knowledge was all in digital form registered in organic form and the
code was in a language that no human understood anymore, we had to start from
scratch.

------
onewaystreet
These AI pieces remind me of the FUD surrounding genetic engineering in the
80s and 90s. Which is ironic because with the advent of CRISPR and related
discoveries genetic engineering might actually be the threat to worry about
now.

Edit: typo

~~~
Pamar
I suppose you meant _genetic_ here. Still, now I am tempted to google for
"generic engineering" and see how this could have been a threat (especially in
the 80s/90s).

------
mythrwy
My belief is that AI eventually replaces at least some aspects of "democracy".

People often conceive democracy is a pinnacle of development for society but
nature doesn't care about democracy. It selects for efficiency.

And on the average I guess people are really less interested in having their
vote count as opposed to having a greater quality of life.

But we aren't close to this point right now socially nor technologically.
Might be different in 50 years though. Particularly when the end effects of
"democracy" (used loosely because that's all we have ever seen) are seen
played out.

I'm not advocating either. Just predicting.

~~~
rtx
Democracy is the most efficient arrangement. That's why nature chose it.

~~~
gervase
I think the parent's argument is that while democracy may be the most
efficient system _so far_ , but that who knows how governmental systems might
change or evolve in the presence of modern technological advancement.

------
SomeStupidPoint
I've said it before, but I'll repeat it here:

This is our fault (the many of us who have worked on profiling tech, or for
companies that do). But there _are_ things to do about it.

The problem is largely a coordination and logistics issue -- there are far
more people and resources concerned by the problem than think things are going
well. The problem is that they are spread out and have trouble focusing on
issues such as this, and so end up being largely ineffective.

Here we see our second fault: how many of us have taken the time to actually
_do_ something about it, rather than complain while we spend our work hours
exacerbating the problem?

Many of us have backgrounds in crowd sourcing, in logistics, in machine
learning (especially things like auto-summarization) -- why are we applying
those skills (only) to cab rides and not to making democracy more efficient
and robust?

We've spent too much time on offense -- against people, to build addiction,
manipulation, and control -- and if we want a healthy society, one that isn't
going to tear itself to shreds on behalf of a few wealthy radicals, we need to
work on defense -- deprogramming psychological traps, tools that increase
autonomy and self-control, media meta-analysis, etc.

Politics only works if we engage with it, putting ourselves and our ideas out
there, and technologists have been reluctant to, because many of us saw that
it would devolve in to this mess. Well, the mess happened anyway -- can we at
least get engaged about trying to fix it?

~~~
rtx
You are mistaken if you think these things are not being done. The only
difference is that people with different ideology than yours are doing it.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Could you point to some, of any ideology?

I agree that people of multiple political camps are using technology, but my
experience has been that all camps are exploiting rather than empowering
people. You seem to be of the opinion that Im advancing a particular political
agenda here. This is actually a policy neutral concern -- Im worried about how
we're having the debate, not the outcome.

(And there are _some_ I know of, like CBT apps and productivity timers, but I
don't think they're that effective as engineered. They also don't cover, eg,
meta-analysis.)

~~~
rtx
I didn't mean to imply anything on your behalf. I just meant you might have
missed the use of technology in politics. Because you might not be part of the
group (ideology) who are using it.

I will not go into the technological details as I am just a end user. But I
will say this you are mistaken when you say people are manipulated. I see them
as a cost effective way of dispensing your message. People always vote based
on their interest. Those can be short term or long term.

~~~
SomeStupidPoint
Well, if you're not going to name particular services or technologies, I think
we're going to have to leave it at disagreeing -- but I do want to thank you
for trying to make sure I'm informed!

Have a good one! :)

------
andy_ppp
To be honest I think actually direct _meritocracy_ would be beneficial - you
build up a page rank as a human being based on your contribution to society
and that reflects your ability to vote in the system.

It would essentially remove the career politician and allow people to actually
understand things like what their politicians/highest value contributors did
rather than now what we have. No-one would ever go for it, but I actually
think it'd be great if nurses, doctors, social workers, environmentalists, and
yes entrepreneurs who had done well, charity founders, bin men etc. all got
more voting rights than me who types into a computer all day for no real
societal improvements.

The rich get a disproportionate amount of say anyway, it'd be _more_ even than
it is currently.

All public good works would obviously have to be recorded through the system
and you might eventually be able to do away with money based upon this. I
think it could definitely be worth building and doing away with local
government as a starter ;-)

~~~
booleandilemma
But I like how my vote counts as much as the votes of Bill Gates and the
Walmart Greeter.

Your system wouldn't work for entire classes of people: coal miners, welders,
fishermen, and yes, software engineers, to name a few.

Not everyone can work in a job that provides "real societal improvements",
whatever that means. And not everyone wants to.

Yes, the rich get a disproportionate amount of say, but that's because they
can just afford to spend money on advertising and lobbying.

Their vote isn't actually worth more than mine or yours. No one's is, and
that's great, in my opinion.

~~~
andy_ppp
You can vote and contribute as much or as little as you like to the
functioning of society. That would be the point - but it is a fun experiment
to think about the world in a different way. I'm pretty certain we shouldn't
give people who are rich such excessive influence. Probably what would really
happen is the exact opposite of what I want the system to do and everyone
would vote for fascism for a laugh.

------
paradite
> Today, Singapore is seen as a perfect example of a data-controlled society.
> What started as a program to protect its citizens from terrorism has ended
> up influencing economic and immigration policy, the property market and
> school curricula.

Well I know all the Smart Nation, Data.gov, Gov Tech and Data science
initiatives but I think the influence is _way_ over-exaggerated here.

------
pjc50
See e.g. [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-
merc...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-
breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage)

------
dukeluke
US democracy has already been completely undermined by gerrymandering and
brib- I mean "lobbying."

~~~
algesten
Oh you don't mean "lobbying", because that word is these days legally defined,
and most actors in that sector prefer to see themselves as advisors,
influencers and think tanks. Certainly not filthy lobbyists.

~~~
dukeluke
I can't tell if you're serious. Large corporations wouldn't lobby if they
didn't get a return on investment. If you've never looked into it, follow the
link below. The return on investment for lobbying is _massive_, and a lot of
that lobbying is at the detriment of society in general.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forge...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/01/06/144737864/forget-
stocks-or-bonds-invest-in-a-lobbyist)

------
leereeves
> 40% of today's top 500 companies will have vanished in a decade.

Does this have any grounding in facts or reason?

~~~
village-idiot
It's an extrapolation of current trends. It appears that the lifespan of
Fortune 500 companies is falling, and we've lost most of the ones from the
past century or so.

~~~
leereeves
Seems like an extreme extrapolation.

I found this page listing Fortune 500 companies that failed from Dec 2000 to
Jan 2012:

[http://traderhabits.com/86-of-the1955-fortune-500-have-
faile...](http://traderhabits.com/86-of-the1955-fortune-500-have-failed/)

I don't know how accurate that is, but it lists 24 failures (about 5% of the
Fortune 500), of which one company (Hostess) is listed twice, and at least two
(American Airlines and GM) are still around.

------
rodionos
I wouldn't go as far as declaring the democracy being under the existential
threat just yet. The alleged malfunction in the US does not necessarily
represent a trend.

Maybe we can learn from governance systems that have survived over a long
period of time? Say, Swiss direct referendums. What I also like in their
system is that elected officials are rotated frequently. For instance the
president is elected for a period of just 1 year.

------
cutler
So we're all going to have smart homes yet half of us are going to be made
jobless?! Doesn't quite add up.

------
astralship
The claims about 'citizen score' in China are likely mostly bogus.
[https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizen-scores-credit-
syste...](https://www.techinasia.com/china-citizen-scores-credit-system-
orwellian)

------
acd
One could use wisdoms of crowds to build an artificial president with an human
oversight watch. Ie we would not elect politicians we would elect an
artificial intelligence that represent our political wills.

------
sologoub
The original article title in German captures the issue better - "Digitale
Demokratie statt Datendiktatur", roughly translating to "Digital Democracy
instead of Data Dictatorship".

------
pohl
The most fascinating thing about this article, to me, is that it was published
so recently but has no mention of Cambridge Analytica.

~~~
mirimir
I gather that it was published in 2015 (noted above) so before Cambridge
Analytica became public knowledge.

------
id122015
Big Data has big competitors: Big Governments.

"All animals are equal"

"All animals are equal. But some aninals are more equal than others"

------
anigbrowl
Democracy will. Representative government will not, and will be replaced by
[redacted].

------
wcarss
I'd like to think that this headline is a clever rhetorical [ab]use of
Betteridge's law, but that may broadly give the editorial staffs of the world
too much credit.

(for any who haven't heard of Betteridge's law, "Any headline that ends in a
question mark can be answered by the word no")

------
gydfi
A lot of people seem to conflate "a threat to democracy" and "people I dislike
getting elected".

I'd say those people are the real threat to democracy.

------
eric795
Big Data, no, AI, maybe.

------
LoSboccacc
will news agency survive the sensationalistic headlines?

------
intrasight
Having read "Colossus" by DF Jones as a teen, I know how this will end. It
doesn't end well for humans.

------
Moshe_Silnorin
Will my straw shack survive a hurricane? There are far bigger risks with
artificial intelligence.

~~~
Filligree
In the long run, yes, but we don't know the timeline. We need to survive long
enough to _have_ a long run...

------
TomMarius
I hope people will realize that more liberal systems are the way to go - no
regulation can offset this, because no government will ever follow it. I just
hope they'll realize soon enough.

------
leadingthenet
Stop conflating the term "democracy" with a (neoliberal) Constitutional
Republic.

~~~
umanwizard
"Republic" and "Democracy" are not mutually exclusive. Many republics are
democracies (including the US); many are not. Republic just means not
monarchy.

------
Entangled
No it won't in the long run as we know it. The most important political aspect
of individuals will be their cloaking abilities in order to avoid plunder from
government. Once AI and technology allow individuals to produce and exchange
with invisible currencies and without any political intervention or regulation
then no matter how politicians morph they won't be able to "see" us.

Of course democracy will morph too towards trust networks where privacy,
anonymity and invisibility will be key factors in collective decision making.
Market forces at their best.

I am a big follower of Bruno Frey and his political theories for liberty, one
of the modern panarchists.

------
anovikov
Democracy is meant to be executed by responsible voters, meaning: people who
vote with their money. If technological unemployment will mean that most
people will be unemployable and dependent on UBI or some other form of
handout, there won't be a democracy anymore.

~~~
ygaf
Not a downvoter; what do you mean people who vote with their money?

~~~
coldtea
He means people who have skin in the game.

~~~
ygaf
That being the case, he is implying there is only fiscal skin, and that people
on UBI will have no fiscal matter to care about which sounds utopian.

~~~
douche
No one on UBI will ever vote to have their UBI reduced...

Bread and circuses

~~~
anovikov
This is more or less what i meant. Why someone who is useless and knows it's
irreversible, would vote for anything but more free stuff?

~~~
coldtea
Well, receiving payment from the state doesn't make one "useless" except in
the eyes of the protestant work ethic, and all the moralistic garbage that
comes with it.

In fact people creating much monetary worth could be many orders of magnitude
more useless and destructive for society than a welfare recipient.

