Artificial Intelligence instead of politicians is a concrete possibility?
There is no doubt that the considerable progress achieved by the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) platforms currently provides a very high level of syntactic and semantic rendering, but what arguments would they provide if asked for their "opinion" regarding the possibility to take over the government of a State of Law?
Therefore let's try to ask Artificial Intelligence some possible arguments both for and against replacing politicians with AI. For the test, a textual elaboration was sought (after appropriate and selective programming in the request), which took into account both the positive and negative sides. It should also be noted that the text below (including final considerations) was entirely generated by a GPT4 system and was therefore transcribed without any human modification, therefore these premises should be taken into consideration.
Pro:
- Neutrality: An AI-based system could avoid prejudices or personal preferences that often influence the decisions of politicians, ensuring greater neutrality and objectivity.
- Efficiency: Although politicians represent society, they are often unpopular due to their slow operation, lack of commitment, and corruption. In contrast, an AI system would be able to make quick and optimal decisions.
- Lower exposure to risks: In some contexts, especially in more dangerous or high-security situations like during war or urgent interventions in crisis situations, an AI system would be able to act quickly and efficiently compared to a group of individuals.
- Management costs: Using AI instead of politicians could represent a financial advantage, in terms of reducing the management costs of the political class - since there is no need for salaries or benefits for an AI system - and greater overall efficiency.
Against:
- Ethics: Replacing people with computers could raise ethical questions, since humanity has a social and cultural importance that cannot be compared to a technological invention.
- Limits of technology: Although artificial intelligence is able to make almost instantaneous decisions, the complexity of political issues, contingency situations, and different contexts do not reconcile well with a standard and immediate response. Additionally, technology is not infallible and can make mistakes.
- Risk of losing representation and social participation: The goal in politics is not only to make decisions, but also to represent the needs and desires of the population and promote social participation. Replacing politicians with AI could lead to a loss of these important functions.
- Security and remote control risks: Replacing people with AI in critical situations could pose security risks and vulnerabilities to possible cyberattacks or remote control.
However, it should be noted that in a few years from now the new neuromorphic approach to AI could exponentially improve its performance and therefore, consequently, also in political management.