Saturday, January 19, 2019

[byopuoco] AI manager

Groups of people can change the world through politics, but only if they are organized.  To be organized traditionally requires a manager, someone hired by the group of people to coordinate organization.

Can AI significantly decrease the cost of management?  If so, such technology might profoundly change the world, because it would give poor people more access to management, so it would allow the poor to organize amongst themselves to improve their lot in life.

One of the traditional techniques for those in power to stay in power has been to prevent the opposition from organizing, while they themselves are organized.

Therefore, this technology, AI managers, will be asymmetric in who it affects.  Those with more money were already employing human managers (to stay in power).  This technology will decrease their costs, but it won't increase the amount of organization they already have.  In contrast, the poor didn't have organization in the first place, so access to this technology will affect them much more.

To be effective, people need to trust their manager.  People likely will be more willing to trust a machine as their manager than a human: one can, for example, audit the source code of the management software to verify that it is working in your and your group's best interests.  (If your best interests don't align with your group's best interests, you shouldn't be part of the organization.)  Cryptographic techniques (e.g., homomorphic encryption) can credibly assure that private information you share with the manager stays private and won't be used against you.

Of course, if the poor become more politically effective, then the rich will probably move on to other techniques -- violence -- to stay in power.

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