From business to public administration to on a regular basis life: artificial intelligence is changing the world – and politics might be next.
While the thought of AI politicians might worry some people, survey results paint a distinct picture. A Opinion poll The study conducted by my university in 2021, in the course of the early surge of AI advances, found broad public support for integrating AI into policy in lots of countries and regions.
A majority of Europeans said they would really like to see at the least a few of their politicians replaced by AI. Chinese respondents were much more optimistic about AI agents influencing public policy, while typically innovation-friendly Americans were more cautious.
As a philosopher who explores the moral and political questions raised by AI, I understand There are three essential paths to integrating AI into policy, each with its own mixture of guarantees and pitfalls.
While a few of these proposals are more outlandish than others, their consideration ensures one thing: AI's involvement in politics will force us to reckon with the worth of human participation in politics and with the character of democracy itself.
Chatbots running for office?
Before the explosion of ChatGPT in 2022, efforts to switch politicians with chatbots were already underway in several countries. Already in 2017 a Chatbot named Alisa challenged Vladimir Putin for the Russian presidency, while a Chatbot named Sam ran for office in New Zealand. Denmark and Japan have also experimented with chatbot-led policy initiatives.
While these efforts are experimental, they reflect a longstanding curiosity in regards to the role of AI in governance in various cultural contexts.
In some ways, the appeal of replacing flesh-and-blood politicians with chatbots is apparent. Chatbots lack most of the problems and limitations typically related to human politics. They will not be easily seduced by desires for money, power or fame. They require no rest, can interact with virtually anyone without delay, and offer encyclopedic knowledge and superhuman analytical abilities.
However, chatbot politicians also inherit the shortcomings of today's AI systems. These chatbots are sometimes based on large language models Black boxeswhich limits our insight into their argument. They often generate inaccurate or fabricated answers, so-called Hallucinations. They face cybersecurity risks, require massive computing resources, and require constant network access. They are also characterised by Prejudices derived from training data, social inequalities and programmer assumptions.
Furthermore, chatbot politicians wouldn’t be suitable for what we expect from elected officials. Our institutions were designed for human politicians, with human bodies and moral agency. We expect our legislators to do greater than reply to requests – we also expect them to supervise staff, negotiate with colleagues, show real interest of their constituents, and take responsibility for his or her decisions and actions.
Without significant improvements in technology or a more radical reimagining of politics itself, chatbot politicians remain an uncertain prospect.
AI-powered direct democracy
Another approach goals to completely abolish politicians, at the least as we all know them. physicist Cesar Hidalgo believes that politicians are annoying middlemen that we will finally eliminate because of AI. Instead of electing politicians, Hidalgo wants every citizen to find a way to program an AI agent with their very own political preferences. These agents can then robotically negotiate with one another to seek out common ground, resolve differences, and write laws.
Hidalgo hopes this proposal can unleash direct democracy by giving residents a more direct influence on policy while overcoming traditional hurdles of time and legislative authority. The proposal appears particularly attractive against this background widespread discontent with traditional representative institutions.
However, abolishing representation could also be tougher than it seems. In Hidalgo’s “Avatar Democracy,” the de facto kingmakers could be the experts who design the algorithms. Since the one option to legitimately empower them would likely be through voting, all we could do is replace one type of representation with one other.
The specter of algocracy
An much more radical idea is to eliminate people from politics entirely. The logic is sort of easy: If AI technology advances to the purpose where it reliably makes higher decisions than humans, what could be the purpose of human input?
A Algocracy is a political regime controlled by algorithms. While few have clearly argued for a whole handover of political power to machines (and the technology for this continues to be a good distance off), the specter of algocracy forces us to think critically about why human participation in politics matters . What values – corresponding to autonomy, responsibility or consideration – do we want to preserve within the age of automation and the way?
The way forward
The dramatic possibilities of integrating AI into politics make this an important time for clarifying our political values. Instead of rushing to switch human politicians with AI, we will now deal with tools that improve human political judgment and shut democratic gaps. Tools like that Habermas machinea facilitator of AI debates, experimental groups have successfully helped experimental groups reach consensus when voting on divisive, polarizing issues. More innovations like this are needed.
In my view, the long run of AI in politics lies not within the wholesale alternative of human decision-makers, but in thoughtful integration that expands human capabilities and strengthens democratic institutions. If that is the long run we wish, we must construct it with purpose.
image credit : theconversation.com