Blockchain and AI 🔶Artificial Intelligence And The End Of Government🔺

Even as artificial intelligence (AI) is forecast to exceed human capabilities across a range of industries it is also predicted to augment human labor. In finance, AI is already helping financial advisors augment financial planning while enhancing investment strategy. And in medicine, AI diagnostics systems have proven to be far more accurate than doctors in diagnosing heart disease and cancerous growths. In fact, McKinsey lists some 400 use cases representing $6 trillion in value across 19 industries in which AI will augment human work.

But what about government? What will the impact of AI be on the nature of government?

🔰Waking Government to AI

Not surprisingly much of the public sector has already begun experimenting with AI-driven technologies. At the federal level many agencies are beginning to deploy AI-powered interfaces for customer service, alongside an expanding use of software to update legacy-systems and automate simple tasks. Growing investments in infrastructure planning, legal adjudication, fraud detection, and citizen response systems represent the first phase in the ongoing digitization of government.

Notwithstanding these investments however, government remains far behind the private sector in deploying and integrating AI. As Silicon Valley’s Tim O’Reilly has suggested, augmenting government through AI is critical to modernizing the public sector. AI-based applications could potentially reduce backlogs and free workers from mundane tasks while cutting costs. According to Deloitte, documenting and recording information alone consumes a half-billion staff hours each year, at a cost of more than $16 billion in wages. Add to this an additional $15 billion in the procuring and processing of information and the value of AI in transforming government bureaucracy becomes clear.

Some now argue that the affordances of technology are critical to remaking government for the 21st century. Advancing democracies into the era of Big Data could go a long way towards reducing systemic dysfunction within the public sector. Using sensor technologies and machine learning systems to reinforce government oversight could begin to reduce regulation while actually increasing the amount of oversight. Coining the term “algorithmic regulation” for example, O’Reilly suggests that government regulations should be regarded as algorithms (i.e. a set of rules) that can be adjusted based on fresh data.

The most recent advancement in AI— deep learning— represents a revolution in the use of machines for supporting decision-management, forecasting, data classification and the synthesis of information. Building on deep learning tools, AI could mean significantly improving service delivery for citizens and elevating the work of public service professionals while also inspiring a new generation of technocrats to enter government. Alternatively, AI could also mean remaking government altogether.

💢Digital Leviathan

In the United States, demographic polarization and toxic federal politics have stymied needed action on a host of pressing issues including immigration reform, welfare reform, gun control and the country’s overall faith in government and its institutions. More problematically this political polarization lends itself to growing concerns about the very efficacy of democracy itself.

Outside the US, China is clearly pioneering an entirely different model of government. Where Soviet-style central planning led to scarcity and oppression, China's new economic thinking is that Big Data can assist planned economies in shaping markets and potentially leapfrogging democracy. Combining Big Data, sensor technologies and AI, China is introducing a techno-utilitarianism that may well outpace participatory decision-making.

Could China’s model work in other countries and if so what would that mean for democracy? In the West, the growing fear is that China will become a kind of digital autocracy on a scale never previously imagined. Given China’s expanding use of AI and its outsized influence on the developing world, this begs the question: what systems of government are necessary for managing AI driven societies? And what is the potential for exploitation in such a vast system of algorithmic management and control?

🔆Technocracy or Democracy?

The worrying question today for many is whether democracy can survive AI. The reality is that disruptive technologies like AI cannot be put back in the box. AI is becoming a mainstream technology that will need to be effectively integrated into 21st century decision-making across all institutions— especially government. In the wake of this digital revolution some functions of government will necessarily be eliminated. But AI will also enable new tools for smart citizenship and open government that can augment democracy. Rather than technocracy or democracy, the answer will likely be a combination of both.

What we do know is that we are leaving the era of centralized systems and top-down decision-making. As Beth Noveck, former head of President Obama's Open Government Initiative explains, representative democracy itself now faces a crisis of legitimacy. The rationale for closed systems of decision-making in which citizen participation is confined to voting or interest group activism belongs to a different era. In an era of networks, we now need tools that bridge algorithms with new forms of collaborative decision-making. Simply put, we need digital democracies that build on the capabilities of AI and Big Data

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