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The Tyranny of Algorithmic Authoritarianism

posted by takyon on Sunday May 03 2015, @09:26AM   
from the garbage-in-garbage-out dept.

tt0064177 writes:

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?

• Re:major problem (Score: 3, Interesting) by turgid on Sunday May 03 2015, @07:56PM

  by turgid (4318) on Sunday May 03 2015, @07:56PM (#178210) Journal

  Here in Blighty, about 150 sub-postmasters were accused of fraud because of a new, buggy computer system they were forced to use. Some went to prison because and some had to remortgage their houses to pay back money that they were accused of stealing.

  Of course the software couldn't have been wrong, could it? Of course not! Over night, all of these people just decided to become crooks...

  See here [bbc.co.uk],here [bbc.co.uk] here [accountingweb.co.uk],here [ukcampaign4change.com] and here [ft.com].

  --
  I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].

  Parent

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