George Orwell, Artificial Intelligence and My Predilections!

Asoke K. Laha, President & MD, Interra IT

It appears the whole world is looking at AI as a futuristic digital platform that can bring soccer from drudgery, human errors, subjectivity etc. no matter even if they can make mankind redundant. At least that is what many feel. Is it because the humans are more for leisure centric and less inclined to work? 

Students of political science would vouch that the first form of democracy originated in the Greek city states. Those city states were too small and inhabited by equally small number of people. Decisions were taken collectively ascertaining the views of everyone who could express themselves and that way neutral to gender, age and what have you. People used to assemble at an appointed place and each decision that the city state was contemplating to implement would be discussed and finally  put to vote  possibly by raising  hands or by any other methods since ballot boxes, and papers were  non - existent several years before Christ.  That system, history tells us, had worked well. Those well-tested methods of knowing the minds of the people for every development projects might have been discarded, when population of a city state would have swelled beyond manageable levels or when a neighboring state or a predator from a far flung area would have conquered the city state and disbanded the democratic system and resorted to dictatorship, where rights of the conquered were seldom respected or even heard. 

The other thought that influenced me for dwelling on the subject matter was about Marxian concept of “withering away of the state”. Let me make it clear that I am not going to dwell on anything politics and that way one should not think I am going to hail George Orwell’s “1984”, which explains how state would become omnipresent in a totalitarian regime. Karl Marx, the greatest thinker and revolutionary of his time, said that the state will wither away. The idea behind such line of thinking was that after a lapse of time, the control of the state will erode and people might feel that there is not much of role for a state when every need of the human beings are met.

I am going to dwell on how AI is going to impact politics or electoral process. Could AI be the sole arbitrator to decide for a state what to do and what should not be done?  I understand that there over 160 countries in the world and every landmass call itself as a country has a government either elected or monarchy or in the form of dictatorship. Let us look at every state from the smallest to the biggest, infant democracies to oldest and strongest democracies. One striking thing that you would find is allegations and counter allegations on how the election process was manipulated, election rigging and in some places bloody feud let loose in the aftermath of elections. In some places, elections were postponed and countermanded for one reason or other. Yet, trillions of dollars are spent for conducting elections. In places where there is a possibility of rigging there, United Nations appoint neutral observers. Yet there are increasing number of complaints about manipulations and rigging. It could be just allegations without much substance. Yet, these unsavory developments mar the civic life, not to speak about scores of people who are killed in the election related violence and billions worth property that are damaged in the process. Welfare economists are advocating secondary level of poverty in developed world, which is more relative and less in absolute sense. It is like someone losing job in the US. Of course, he or she can claim social security to cover some expenses.  

Assume for a while all political systems across the world are disbanded and every country has been given a central monitoring system enabled by artificial intelligence. Every person across the world is given a mobile phone with a lot of Apps embedded in it. The central monitoring system asks you to give your preference for implementation of a project. People need to click in the mobile and communicate their preference, which will be received at the central monitoring system. After elaborate data mining, the central system will take a call whether the project should be implemented or not. In this dispensation, you do not need an elected representative to voice your concern in the Parliament, assembly or any such representative body. A citizen is in direct connect with the decision maker and his vote counts for taking every decision. All those functions would   be carried out by the digital platforms which will have a central processing apparatus and connected devices such as internet connections and mobile phones. Why then should we have elected governments, which are generally perceived as a drain on resources, since every country is spending huge resources not only for conducting elections but also upkeep of elected representatives?

Is it a safe bet against proliferation of scams, corruptions and all those sinister activities, which many feel, at least some of the elected representatives indulge across the world?  Scams, corruptions and all those manmade machinations will become a thing of the past if AI embedded robot or an Alexi picks up best bid for construction of a bridge or a dam or a road or a highway or what have you. If the best student in a class is picked up by a robot, who can allege that selection is partisan or arbitrary. If a robotic surgeon does a surgery, who can claim that there is a doctor’s error while performing a complicated the surgery?  One can extrapolate this situation to many contexts and backgrounds to ensure transparency and fair play in the working of a system. Then the question boils down to why we are not doing it: who will bell the cat. Of course, such transparent acts and procedures may not go well with the vested interests, particularly those who have a stake in the opaque systems.

Do my predilections have any parallel with Orwellian narration? Is AI that I am advocating is similar to the command system that Orwell has abhorred?  To my great disappointment, I found out that the supreme power of technology that I am advocating is in a way similar to the omnipresent command economy dubbed by Orwell. In both the dispensations, human freedom is curtailed and power of ingenuity is discounted. Will that do good or bad to the mankind? I believe in technology, its power but it as an aid of human civilization and not a master to own and control it.