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Tim O'Reilly has advocated for the idea of algorithmic regulation - reducing the role of people and replacing them with automated systems in order to make goverment policy less biased and more efficient. But the idea has been criticized as utopianism, where actual implementations are likely to make government more opaque and even less responsive to the citizens who have the least say in the operation of society.
Now, as part of New America's annual conference What Drives Innovation Around the Country? Virginia Eubanks has written an essay examining such automation in the cases of pre-crime and welfare fraud. Is it possible to automate away human judgment from the inherently human task of governance and still achieve humane results? Or is inefficiency and waste an unavoidable part of the process?
(Score: 1) by Murdoc on Monday May 04 2015, @02:18AM
But instead of applying the principle of "reducing the role of people and replacing them with automated systems" in order to make things more efficient in government, this idea should be applied to economics instead. And I don't mean the managing money and interest rates type of economics, but more the physical aspects of getting resources from nature, processing them, and delivering them to the people to be consumed. Our current system is just about as inefficient as you can get when compared to something like Technocracy [technocracy.ca] which does exactly what I just said, replaces people with automation in the economy (that is, production and distribution) in order to maximize efficiency, thereby minimizing waste, which raises economic output in order to raise the standard of living of everyone, all within a sustainable framework. And the bonus is that you'd have very little need for government at all, so most of our problems there get solved as well, and you wouldn't need "algorithmic regulation".
It all comes down to separating objective from subjective issues. Objective issues, like how to mine resources, how best to process them, and the most efficient way to deliver them to people, are technical problems that need to be dealt with by objective, scientific means, based on fact, not opinions like they are now. While subjective issues, like politics, are best left to the people. There is no way to make subjective issues more efficient (e.g. What is the most efficient flavor of ice cream?). The only way to make government more efficient is when you are dealing with the objective parts of it, namely the logistics of running it, or where it deals with regulating the economy. Keeping the two separate clears a lot of things up and then you don't have things like political ideologies trying to decide what forms of power generation are best, or how to run an efficient and effective health care system. And that's not even getting into how the subjective value of money ends up making most of our technical economic decisions today either.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 04 2015, @02:58AM
Objective issues, like how to mine resources, how best to process them, and the most efficient way to deliver them to people, are technical problems that need to be dealt with by objective, scientific means, based on fact, not opinions like they are now.
I think you will find that the definition of "best" is pretty subjective.