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Would you allow a computer to make decisions for you?

What you eat? What you don't?

What job you have?

Where you live?

Whether you should have a child or adopt?



I ask this because the recent surge in quantum computing (8 quadrillion calculations simultaneously through 11-dimensional math) makes me think that soon there will be Artificial Intelligences on Earth that will most likely be more powerful, logical, and faster than mankind.

I don't suggest they will be our masters, but I do suggest that we may turn over more and more decision making to them.

Often, I see mankind, as a whole, making terrible decisions for our kind. For example, mountains of potatoes rot in the farmer's fields of one country, while thousands starve in another country for no other reason than human capriciousness and politics.

The solution would be obvious to a second grader: send the potatoes to the starving people. But mankind seems often to be incapable of seeing the big picture as a race.

How far would you be willing to trust a computer? With new medical techniques, computers could easily tell if a child would have birth defects with a certain genetic match. Why not ask them before that and save the couple the heartbreak?

Take it further: why not ask the computer which genetic matches would produce the best offspring? I know, that's eugenics and eugenics are bad. Why? We've improved almost every other species of animal that came our way in all human history. Why not ourselves?

How would a computer govern? Wouldn't it be nice to take all the stupidity and emotion out of government? No more deadlocks or partisan posturing?

How would it be if mankind was freed from petty difference, prejudices, and peccadillos? Free to pursue loftier goals? Free to explore?

Just musing,but I often wish I had been born just a couple of centuries from now. It's nice to be in on the revolution, but I'd like to live in a world that has already gotten through the growing pains.

Perhaps some day, a computer could help with a lot of those things like distribution and allocation of resources, and even the mundane personal decisions, like what to have for dinner, as long as knowing my preferences is among the factors to be considered.

And I can see, someday, a DNA test could be performed for two people considering having a child, where an analysis could give them risk factors for defects. Though, I doubt that is going to be in my lifetime. There are too many emotional/religious/moral objections to get past, on that one.

We use computors more and more in weather forcasting and travel.

But using them to run countries?

Who could you trust to input the data?

Bruv;1451460 wrote: We use computors more and more in weather forcasting and travel.

But using them to run countries?

Who could you trust to input the data?


I would imagine that by that time, the evolution of computer intelligence would reach a level that would negate any requirement for data input. What it would do is take out all the completely negative things politicians do to reach decisions, leaving a computer to come to a conclusion on logic alone.

Not suggesting it's necessarily a good idea. Should emotion be eliminated from politics ?

Snowfire;1451469 wrote: Should emotion be eliminated from politics ?


Short answer NO!!!

Bruv;1451472 wrote: Short answer NO!!!


Do you have a shorter one ?

Snowfire;1451475 wrote: Do you have a shorter one ?


Shorter answer X

Bruv;1451472 wrote: Short answer NO!!!


Don't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?

Saint_;1451484 wrote: Don't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?


It depends on what the needs are. The nazis needed to kill certain minorities. I'm sure you catch my drift.

As Bruv said, who inputs the data? Assuming it is a trustworthy source, then I would trust the computer to advise me, but the decision should still be mine.

Saint_;1451484 wrote: Don't the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few?


Have you gone all socialist on us?

The answer was for the elimination of emotion from politics, I said no,would you disagree?

Bruv;1451493 wrote: Have you gone all socialist on us?

The answer was for the elimination of emotion from politics, I said no,would you disagree?


Politics would be no fun at all, without emotion.

The first question is what is the computer using to make the decision - not just by way of input data which is an entire subject in itself, but by way of the program making the decisions.

We've already turned over many of our decision making processes to computers, they're good at applying fixed logic to fixed data to make deterministic decisions but what you're suggesting goes way beyond that - effectively to computers applying self written logic to the data.

Do I trust computers to maintain logical integrity when free to modify their own logic - for a heuristic program to stay true to the concept intended? No, not with the current state of knowledge.

Given the possible advances in AI? No, because I don't think that any starting point we can specify will take all necessary factors into account and, therefore, any resulting logic will be flawed.

I believe that AI will be a useful aid - I do not believe that AI should ever be in control - at that point we lose our humanity.

One of the problems is in determining which data is relevant. How do you accomplish that without giving up the little privacy remaining?

My phone will look in my calendar for appointments and at an appropriate time will analyze traffic conditions and weather to suggest what time I leave and what route to take. That is helpful. Having a computer tell me how to vote or how to live my life would not be helpful. Having the computer analyze the voting records of my senators and congresspersons on various issues would be helpful. Having the computer analyze what each politician says in their speeches versus what how they vote in congress would be helpful too.

I'm fascinated to see the advances being made, can foresee a lot of issues coming into play as those advances continue.

Wandrin;1451502 wrote: Having the computer analyze what each politician says in their speeches versus what how they vote in congress would be helpful too.




Would a computor be able to understand the nuances of speech?

It is possible to say something but mean the exact opposite, the ear and eyes can pick up pauses and facial expressions that mean so much where a computor doesn't.

Computors are not clever they are basically calculators.

I remember a TV progamme where the audience were shown simple line drawings of famous people, DeGaulle or Churchill needed very few lines.

A few notes of music got an audience continueing the tune.

Computors still can't do that....................can they?

For music and art recognition, it is just a matter of processing speed and the size of the database. I have often used the Shazaam app on my phone when I hear a song in the doctor's office or on tv. It "listens" for a few seconds to capture the relevant patterns and the server will compare and give me the result. It is surprisingly accurate.

The experiments and government work having the computer analyzing facial expressions has been improving steadily. I suspect that it will be awhile before accurate speech analysis that includes inflections, facial expressions, etc. can catch up to human ability, but it is being worked on (by governments as well as researchers).

The uses you mentioned are just a matter of assembling a good database and refining the algorithms - well within the capabilities. But understanding what a person actually meant is a matter of probabilities and experience, just as it is for humans. There have been many times when I have made the wrong assumptions about what someone was trying to convey.

Wandrin;1451524 wrote: The experiments and government work having the computer analyzing facial expressions has been improving steadily. I suspect that it will be awhile before accurate speech analysis that includes inflections, facial expressions, etc. can catch up to human ability, but it is being worked on (by governments as well as researchers).



The uses you mentioned are just a matter of assembling a good database and refining the algorithms - well within the capabilities. But understanding what a person actually meant is a matter of probabilities and experience, just as it is for humans. There have been many times when I have made the wrong assumptions about what someone was trying to convey.


The Government 'working on' something/anything doesn't instil me with any confidence, especially when they are after my vote.

Understanding what a speaker means is much more difficult, even an intelligent human reading a transcript will not be able to 'read' pauses that can mean so much, or stress on words or see facial expression.

The interpretation of written Law for heaven sake keeps hordes of intelligent people in work, so what chance a computor program cobbled together by men?

When I wrote this thread, I was thinking of a book by the late great Ira Levin (of "Day of the Dolphins," "Rosemary's Baby," and "A Kiss Before Dying" Fame) that book is called, "This Perfect Day." It details a future society run by a massive supercomputer named "Uni." (short for Unicomp.) In that society, everyone has a job, everyone is trained for their job from birth, eugenics has mixed the genetics of mankind until almost everyone looks identical, a sort of olive-skinned mesomorphic asian-anglo mix.

Where ever you want to go, you must touch your bracelet to a scanner (I just saw this in a Disneyland commercial!) and have that request approved by Uni. All the members of the "family" get regular treatments that "make them humble, make them good" and contain such things as contraceptives, depilatories, and psychoactive drugs. There is no war, there is no poverty, everyone is pretty much happy (except for the protagonist who accidentally misses a treatment and finds his imagination has been stifled.) Of course, the conflict comes in when the protagonist finds out that the "average life span" is NOT 73 and that it's possible to live a lot longer and that there are islands on Earth where the "untreated" live free (rather barbarically, though) and the climax involves a set of "programmers" who live the high life unbeknownst to the rest of the family.



Christ, Marx, Wei and Wood made us humble, made us good.

Christ, Wood, Wei and Marx gave us lovely trees and parks.

Wood, Wei, marx and Christ, all but Wei were sacrificed.

Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei led us to this perfect day.

Although this Utopian vision is depicted as evil in the book, it was hard not to be drawn to it a little. With the absence of war, mankind had colonized the solar system, terraformed Mars, and basically cleaned up the Earth. I was always fascinated by the thought of what mankind might accomplish if we all worked to gather and no resources were wasted on the stupidity of war.

It's really an amazing book, I highly recommend it.

From Amazon: By the author of Rosemary‘s Baby, a horrifying journey into a future only Ira Levin could imagine.

Considered one of the great dystopian novels—alongside Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World—Ira Levin's frightening glimpse into the future continues to fascinate readers even forty years after publication.

The story is set in a seemingly perfect global society. Uniformity is the defining feature; there is only one language and all ethnic groups have been eugenically merged into one race called “The Family.“ The world is ruled by a central computer called UniComp that has been programmed to keep every single human on the surface of the earth in check. People are continually drugged by means of regular injections so that they can never realize their potential as human beings, but will remain satisfied and cooperative. They are told where to live, when to eat, whom to marry, when to reproduce. even the basic facts of nature are subject to the UniComp's will—men do not grow facial hair, women do not develop breasts, and it only rains at night.

With a vision as frightening as any in the history of the science fiction genre, This Perfect Day is one of Ira Levin`s most haunting novels.

The irony is many great advances were pushed forward by war and not peaceful cooperation.

This Perfect Day gave me some very unpleasant nightmares.