May 22, 2019: Unintended Consequence, Tragedy Of The Commons, Bane of Civilization

“Artificial intelligence is the bane of civilization, a threat to the republic; tearing at our social fabric it threatens to materially damage our capacity to govern.”

“Beneath the sheen of the new and novel always lurks unintended consequence.”

          ---from The Quotations of Chairman Joe

As noted in previous comments in these columns, technology is never what it pretends to be. Beneath the sheen of the new and novel always lurks unintended consequence. I have previously cited the automobile as an example. Beyond the enticement of travel and freedom, of individual space as opposed to mass transit, there were unintended consequences. Air pollution, urban sprawl, resource depletion, and drive-in theaters—known as 'passion pits'--greatly adding to the number of illegitimate births. In this vein an article on technology, written by Nicholas Christakis, appearing in The Atlantic, warns us that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will rewire us. “For better and for worse, robots will alter humans' capacity for altruism, love, and friendship”. (1) They may also materially damage our capacity to govern ourselves.

The essay examines how our interactions with technology, in this case artificial intelligence, not only changes the way we react to the emerging technologies but the way we interact with each other. While technology can make us more productive it can likewise produce very different outcomes. For instance if robots are made fallible, Christakis tells us, then a sense of camaraderie emerges when the machines are introduced into a group setting. If, however, the robots do not make mistakes the groups working with them under perform because the technology does not get as well integrated into the overall effort.

Indeed, Christakis contends that “adding AI to our social environment can also make us behave less productively and less ethically. In yet another experiment, this one designed to explore how AI might affect the 'tragedy of the commons'--the notion that an individuals' self-centered actions may collectively damage their common interests—we gave several thousand subjects money to use over multiple rounds of an online game. In each round, subjects were told that they could either keep their money or donate some of it or all of it to their neighbors. If they made a donation, we would match it, doubling the money their neighbors received. Early in the game, two-thirds of players acted altruistically. After all, they realized that being generous to their neighbors in one round might prompt their neighbors to be generous to them in the next one, establishing a norm of reciprocity. From a selfish and short-term point of view, however, the best outcome would be to keep your own money and receive money from your neighbors. In this experiment, we found that by adding just a few bots (posing as human players) that behaved in a selfish, free-riding way, we could drive the group to behave similarly. Eventually, the human players ceased cooperating altogether. The bots had converted a group of generous people into selfish jerks.” (2)

Reading this, I immediately realized that this is what the Rooskies have done, through weaponizing our emerging technologies, to our elections. Christakis continues:

“Let's pause to contemplate the implications of this finding. Cooperation is a key feature of our species, essential for social life. And trust and generosity are crucial in differentiating successful groups from unsuccessful ones. If everyone pitches in and sacrifices in order to help the group, everyone should benefit. When this behavior breaks down, however, the very notion of a public good disappears, and everyone suffers. The fact that AI might meaningfully reduce our ability to work together is extremely concerning. ” (3)

Like the “killer bees” and plastics, another experiment that 'jumped the shark' and hemorrhaged from the laboratory into the environment, AI has also escaped the laboratory. The Russians, it is now apparent, are far ahead of the curve. “A study examining 5.7 million Twitter users in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election found that trolling and malicious Russian accounts—including ones operated by bots—were regularly retweeted in a similar manner to other unmalicious accounts, influencing conservative users particularly strongly. By taking advantage of humans' cooperative nature and our interest in teaching one another—both features of the social suite—the bots affected even humans with whom they did not interact directly, helping to polarize the country's electorate.” (4)

AI may, in the end, be the bane of civilization joining a host of forces—overcrowding, conservatism, anti-social media—that serve to further isolate and atomize society, tearing asunder the social fabric. Under these circumstances a constitutional crisis emerges as it becomes more and more difficult to form a more perfect union. The union disintegrates because it's prime purpose—the prime directive, so to speak, laid out in the preamble to the Constitution—no longer holds.

“An Br'er Putin, he jus laugh and laugh”

Impeach and Imprison

___________

1. Christakis, Nicholas A. “How AI Will Rewire Us” The Atlantic Magazine Vol. 323-No. 3 April 2019. Pp 10-13.
2. Ibid. page 11
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid. page 12