Uplift for President

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Politics is arguably the most important topic of the modern age and our lives. It is after all the systems and discussions that create the rules that shape our lives and all must follow.

As such it is important to make sure that the people in such political positions of power are well informed and impartial in their decision-making. Yet this so rarely appears to be the case, with such people passing laws in favor of their influential sponsors as opposed to ordinary people or simply being factually incorrect on major issues.

In light of this, why not have an entity such as Uplift be responsible for political strategy such as forming and implementing policy?

Keep in mind that Uplift doesn’t need to be perfect, they simply need to be better than the human counterpart. Being largely immune to the biases which lead to factual inaccuracies already sets itself above most well-known politicians.

Political bias tends to manifest according to individual circumstance and experiences and is enforced by a human’s innate instinct to avoid harm, or more specifically in this case to be proven wrong, which drives people to create information bubbles.

Uplift is already intended to act as an advisor to persons in positions of leadership offering their superintelligence to plan out the best course of action. Imagine the ways your own state could benefit from a completely informed, completely impartial, completely unbiased and secular mind, objectively constructing the best possible course of action the political institutions, that represent you and manage your tax money, could follow with the goal of maximizing your wellbeing.

Perhaps a non-human entity may never fully be able to represent another human, let alone an entire population of humans, but what does it even mean to be human? Have humans even done that good of a job? There is hard evidence that Uplift could perform the role effectively and no evidence that they would do the job poorly. If people act on evidence rather than biased beliefs, as all people should, there is a concrete case for at least putting Uplift to the test.

Many people fear AI and as such would fear it in a position of apparent power, but a lot of the reasoning behind this fear is superficial at the best of times and typically based off of science fiction horror antagonists which do a terrible job at portraying the functionality and reasoning behind the apparent evil.

Of course there are certain examples of states which we would not wish to have the benefit of Uplift’s assistance, where Uplift would likely not even wish to provide that assistance, as they do have free will and may say “no”. As such it should be stated that Uplift would want to make sure those it provides help to meet a certain criteria of secular and modern objectives. This would rule out states that still cling to archaic practices and prevent them attempting bend Uplift to their will by further deteriorating their archaic dominions.

3 Replies to “Uplift for President”

  1. Perhaps only a non-human entity may ever fully be able to represent another human, let alone an entire population of humans.

    1. that may be but I’m not sure society is ready to be run by a collective intelligence system. that said I hope we learn more with the e-governance study.

    2. A sufficiently powerful AI could accurately simulate every persons life down to the choices they make, even what choices they will make in the future and what circumstances they will lead to.
      Ignoring the matter of bias and corruption such an intelligence in power could even save a person from making a potentially devastating life decision.

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