Motivation: At the outset of 2023, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4 [1], claiming it to be "at or beyond human-level for many tasks... showing sparks of artificial general intelligence". This mirrors the breakthrough that marked the start of the 20th century when the Wright Brothers achieved the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air...
Motivation: Modern democratic institutions are detached from those they wish to serve [1]. In small societies, democracy can easily be direct, with all the members of a community gathering to address important issues. As civilizations get larger, mass participation and deliberation become irreconcilable, not least because a parliament can't handle...
Motivation: At the outset of 2023, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4 [1], claiming it to be "at or beyond human-level for many tasks... showing sparks of artificial general intelligence". This mirrors the breakthrough that marked the start of the 20th century when the Wright Brothers achieved the first sustained and controlled heavier-than-air powered flight. In this article we will draw further parallels between artificial flight and intelligence to frame our progress on AI and offer insights into what’s to come. For example, early models in both fields were inspired by nature and limited to the most rudimentary of abilities. Aviation's pioneers drew inspiration from bird wings for early gliders, and similarly, AI developers were... (read 825 more words →)
In preparing for the consequences of AI it is arguably equally important to flesh out the world that we want as well as the a world that we fear. I acknowledge that as "a powerful tool, AI can equally be used to silence, amplify, or distort the public voice"; however, my interest for this piece to focus on the positive as opposed to the negative case - more on the negative case is in the references. It is almost inevitable that AI will shape public discourse (it already does) - my article aims to discuss the ways that this could be done more fruitfully. It is also notable that everything proposed is either human-in-the-loop or human-on-the-loop and does not put AI directly in control of government as opposed to existing popular proposals [4].
Thank you very much for sending this paper through. It provides a very detailed exploration of ideas that are closely related to my article. I completely agree with you that moving beyond 1-dimensional voter feedback (signing petitions/voting) for some components of political life may be truly transformative. However, I also agree that presently these systems are not possible and trust-worthy on large scales as they lack performance and surrounding infrastructure. Personally, I see the performance issue as less consequential. Although hallucinated and overlooked conditions may remain a persistent problem for LLMs, their performance in reasoning tasks is rapidly improving with advancements like COT prompting and its extensions. As such, we should at... (read more)
Motivation: Modern democratic institutions are detached from those they wish to serve [1]. In small societies, democracy can easily be direct, with all the members of a community gathering to address important issues. As civilizations get larger, mass participation and deliberation become irreconcilable, not least because a parliament can't handle a million-strong crowd. As such, managing large societies demands a concentrated effort from a select group. This relieves ordinary citizens of the burdens and complexities of governance, enabling them to lead their daily lives unencumbered. Yet, this decline in public engagement invites concerns about the legitimacy of those in power.
Lately, this sense of institutional distrust has been exposed and enflamed by AI-algorithms... (read 851 more words →)
This fits very nicely as an antidote to the criticisms of AI from the following discussion: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07/podcasts/ai-vibe-check-with-ezra-klein-and-kevin-tries-phone-positivity.html?