While governments and presidents are in a rush to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), should we also evaluate if AI can be used effectively to regulate governments? I recently gave a talk titled, "Exploring Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice in AI: A Comprehensive Lens," and another one last year titled, "Machine Learning for Societal Improvement, Modernization and Progress." Thankfully, President Joe Biden's recent executive order addresses a few concerns raised in these talks.
For the last few years, bail petitions are being adjudicated based on an AI tool. There is also increasing speculation that AI will replace humans in decision making in the judiciary. The Chicago Police Department has been using gunshot detection and predictive software to determine where crimes are more likely to occur and deploy officers to those areas. Tax and revenue agencies employ AI to decide when to initiate action for fraud.
There are many such instances where AI is being used effectively to guide the operations of the executive and the judiciary wings of the government. When the judiciary and the executive can be increasingly guided by AI, why not the legislature?
ChatGPT passed the bar exam. The same generative AI should be able to guide the legislative process. This is particularly important in a democracy where vote bank politics can trump over the common good. People do not always act in ways that are good for themselves, let alone for the common good of society.
In my experience working with machine learning, it has been a common observation that many students like easy grades, teachers who are fun, and getting through college without much effort, even though such attitudes can be detrimental to their careers.
The majority of people like authorities to go easy on them, despite the adverse impact on the public interest. The result has been liberal governments—a democracy that loosens human values, and lowers moral standards. Values, human or material, have an intrinsic propensity to degenerate and crash, unless actively upheld. It may be fallacious to trust a democracy to genuinely be interested in working for the welfare of the minorities when the concept of democracy itself is based on majority votes. Democratically-elected governments may tout for equity, diversity, and inclusion, but the very notion of democracy is built upon the notion of the majority.
Generative AI can predict the next word in a sentence, answer questions based on prompts, and possibly determine the next important piece of legislation based on the status quo. For instance, I prompted ChatGPT to "come up with a legislative bill that can help with homelessness in CA," and it did a reasonably decent job.
In addition to providing guidance, AI can help reduce governance and legislation costs significantly. People can directly participate in the legislation process by proposing laws to a system backed up by AI that evaluates its impact and give a score to the proposal instantaneously. If the score is sufficiently high, the proposal could possibly be taken up for a debate in the legislature. The score and the accompanying qualitative assessment generated by AI could guide the debate and speed-up the overall legislation process.
While teaching machine learning, which is increasingly becoming synonymous with AI, I often wonder along with my students what numbers can do for us in the long run. Artificial intelligence is magic with numbers and that magic can make governance better for all of us, despite vote bank politics.
Vishnu S. Pendyala, Ph.D., MBA (Finance), teaches machine learning and other data science courses at San José State University and is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Toward an AI-Driven Democracy
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24.11.2023
While governments and presidents are in a rush to regulate artificial intelligence (AI), should we also evaluate if AI can be used effectively to regulate governments? I recently gave a talk titled, "Exploring Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Social Justice in AI: A Comprehensive Lens," and another one last year titled, "Machine Learning for Societal Improvement, Modernization and Progress." Thankfully, President Joe Biden's recent executive order addresses a few concerns raised in these talks.
For the last few years, bail petitions are being adjudicated based on an AI tool. There is also increasing speculation that AI will replace humans in decision making in the judiciary. The Chicago Police Department has been using gunshot detection and predictive software to determine where crimes are more likely to occur and deploy officers to those areas. Tax and revenue agencies employ AI to decide when to initiate action for fraud.
There........
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