[Proto] Brave New World
On Government, Markets and Values.
Democratic governments need a society and an economy to govern along with citizens to vote for them. In market societies that economy is a market which itself needs trades which requires property and hence values of exclusion i.e. the belief that there is such a thing as your property and my property. That exclusion can either be through social norms or codified in property law, both of which need some form of force (either social, economic, technological or physical) to enforce it.
People (i.e. citizens) need markets to buy goods from. That market doesn't have to be a physical place, it could be distributed. That buying and selling could involve many forms, from some sort of token exchange (e.g. currency) to barter to even some form of social exchange. People also need fairness and opportunity which requires inclusion. Hence, you have two competing values — inclusion and exclusion.
These values are part of what makes the society. There are many values a society has, not all are uniform, many are evolving. To help with this discussion, I've provided a quick map of the above components showing how evolved those area i.e. we have a pretty accepted view of trade but fairness/opportunity is still more converging.
One of the roles of Government (it has many) is to balance these competing needs such as inclusion and exclusion. Get the balance wrong and the people might not vote for you unless you can change the norms in society (think the Overton window). Alternatively, you could undermine the market itself by undermining exclusion or enforcing inclusion. Get it badly wrong and you destabilise society, possibly requiring a different form of Government and/or civil war.
How you strike that balance and how your democracy operates varies over time and place — there is no single playbook and it is highly contextual. China (a democratic system, just a very different one from how the US operates which itself is very different from how Ancient Athens operated) chooses to prioritise society over the market i.e. the market is seen as a tool of society. In the US, for now, the society is seen as a tool of the market.
You might not agree but our perceptions are baked into our educational systems and the stories we tell. I'm not going to get into that debate other than to note that even within Western economies, how we consider the writings of the same dead economists varies across societies. US perceptions of what some economist said or what a democracy is are not necessarily the same as Europe or China.
The interconnections between these components are essential for discussions on sovereignty and where you should invest for societal or market benefit.
Take healthcare. For societal benefit you'd probably invest in measurement of patient reported outcomes (PROMs) and sharing of medical data. Unfortunately, we don't have healthcare systems, we have sickcare systems that are governed by clinician reported outcomes (ClinROs) i.e. we are very good at treating symptoms but not necessarily so good at making you healthy. In terms of market benefit, the focus is on personalised medicine and preventative healthcare (in a system which doesn't effectively measure health outcomes).
The same disparity occurs across every industry I've examined bar one from education to agriculture. That one was bizarrely Space. Any I digress.
There is a lazy assumption that market growth equals societal benefit and it is rarely challenged. What appears even rarer is the questioning of how LLM/GPTs can change the values within a society by becoming a new ground truth (see AI and the new theocracies).
So what triggered this somewhat wandering rant? I just read about "Burger King Adding AI to Employees' Headsets to Constantly Monitor Whether They're Being Friendly Enough" and was immediately struck by how much of a forceful corporate invasion of the person this was. This seemed on par with the "Chinese headbands" for primary school children that were trialled and then rejected in China back in 2019 due to public backlash. Chinese officials intervened and ordered the school to suspend the use of the devices. I wonder whether US officials will be intervening and ordering Burger King to stop its own interventions?
The BrainCo device in China, was of course, built and promoted by a US company known as BrainCo (a competitor to Neuralink) which seems to sell it as a more training and wellness device these days. I suspect it will be soon heading towards those poor Burger King Employees (unless Elon gets to drill holes in their heads first) to ensure that they are not only "being friendly" but are actually "happy". The soma pills will follow shortly after.
Which leads me to the point of this discussion. The US Government appears heavily slanted towards the market (and away from society) despite the rhetoric. The LLM/GPTs spreading are not neutral but have embedded values.
So, how many years will it be before Burger King employees being monitored by AI both in terms of headsets and brain bands is an acceptable norm, given that our norms are being influenced by these AIs?
10 years? 5 years? Or sooner?
Background
The post that triggered this: Burger King Adding AI to Employees' Headsets to Constantly Monitor Whether They're Being Friendly Enough
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/burger-king-adding-ai-employees-headsets
Societal vs Market Benefit
https://medium.com/mapculture/societal-versus-market-benefit-cff439595671
AI and the new theocracies
https://medium.com/mapai/ai-and-the-new-theocracies-9b573eb9ab1b
AI headbands tracking student attention levels suspended amidst online controversy
https://en.people.cn/n3/2019/1101/c90000-9628768.html
Chinese primary school halts trial of device that monitors pupils' brainwaves
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/01/chinese-primary-school-halts-trial-of-device-that-monitors-pupils-brainwaves
BrainCo
https://www.brainco.tech/
Originally published on Medium.