3 Comments

“Model Neutrality & Bias Mitigation – The underlying models powering CivicTwin must be rigorously tested to ensure they do not systematically favour specific ideologies or values. Any perception of bias could undermine trust and lead to rejection of the system.”

I think there’s a simple answer to this that I have not heard from anyone else.

I believe it it’s an unrealistic expectation to expect any AI to be absolutely unbiased. What would that even mean?

The solution is to have more than one AI, maybe even five or six.

When I’m looking for advice, I don’t expect any of my sources, whether they be friends or influencers to be unbiased. I take their words of advice with a grain of salt specifically tailored to what I believe their biases to be. Doesn’t everybody do this? If they don’t, they should. The same logic will apply to bots.

I expect that, in the same way I trust some friends doing certain tasks, it will be the same with the bots. Like in a liquid democracy type of situation, where I give my voting rights to a particular bot for a specific subject matter. I don’t see them as twins, but I do see them as friends that understand you, and represent you.

So where is all this voting going to happen?

I had long conversations with the people from flux on their subReddit, You can probably still find them there. I’m afraid I wasn’t very nice, I was a bit of a critic.

Participation is a far bigger hurdle than anyone seems to want to recognize.

So I am part of a small group that has a whole different way about doing politics and it will all be one click away, no harder to use than Google. we also don’t need permission from anybody to do it. No politicians need to be involved.

I’m calling a Kaos, and it is simply a database of public opinion.

But before getting into how it works, it is essential you understand why. And the “why” is also the reason this is a bit of a hard sale proposition.

If you are not convinced by the premise I make in this short post, and there’s no point going further:

https://substack.com/@kaosovercontrol/note/p-156105488?r=36tq0f&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Expand full comment

Interesting concept and one worth exploring. I agree with the fundamental principle, that our current conception of democracy, which relies on elected representatives, is facing extraordinary challenges. There is a misalignment between reps and the demos that needs to be solved.

In matters of democracy, however, I tend to favor old-fashioned solutions. My preference would be to return to sortition; instead of elected representatives, a number of individuals would be selected at random to pass laws. This ensures cognitive diversity and reduces the misalignment problem (if you don't have campaigns at all, no need for "campaign finance" laws.")

The challenge, of course, is writing laws. A large group of people cannot collaboratively write law. I have a potential solution for this though, using randomly "interest panels" that seek the outside assistance of experts. It's here, however, where I think AI could play a huge role. Acting as research experts/assistants and helping concerned citizens "red team" proposals before they go to the sortition-selected legislature.

That way, humans are also in charge but AI broadens the capacity of what these humans can do. You might be interested in my essay on this: https://www.lianeon.org/p/imagining-our-martian-government

Expand full comment

Thanks J.K.,

I'll definitely give your essay and Substack a read.

Old-fashioned solutions are definitely something worth looking into. Intuitively, I would anticipate a couple of issues with sortition, namely:

1. Legislation is much more complex compared to when sortition was more commonplace. Would an average member of the general public be able to effectively way the pros/cons of a given bill if it was outside of their circle of competence?

2. Since these randomly selected individuals are neither elected nor affiliated with a political party, what mechanisms would be in place to mitigate the risk of corporate lobbying, corruption, or undue external influence?

Expand full comment