AI in the Decision Website
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will soon explode in usage. AI will help make the process of managing our debates so much easier, shortening the timelines and boosting the feasibility of the Decision Website. To be clear, AI will not be writing our opinions or be a true participant in the debates.
Artificial Intelligence
AI is basically a software design, whereby a computer itself makes complex decisions, has access to a broad range of information, possesses the ability to learn from experience, and can analyze patterns and interconnectivity in data.
Rather, AI can:
Here is what’s below…
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One of the first steps in developing a debate will be to define the scope and organize the various subtopics. AI is that research assistant that can explore our body of knowledge in record time and organize the results. The array of unique prompts by debate participants will allow AI to quickly unveil the breadth of the needed discussion.
As subtopics are accumulated, AI can make a first draft in outlining the scope of the debate and eventually use advanced skills to suggest a progression in which to tackle each subtopic.
This is that unique point in history with AI and the Internet,
where we can take democracy to a new level.
For our debate participants, AI will serve as a robust research tool to study history, statistics, and essentially humanity’s known pool of information.
AI’s summarization ability and quick research allows every participant to broaden their depth of knowledge. Especially though, consider how someone who brings a more narrow but important focus (e.g. economist, scientist) can now debate more vigorously on a broader topic. Everyone has the data and information at their fingertips in a much easier and digestible format.
More and more Expert AI systems are being created that focus on specific disciplines like medicine, engineering, geology, chemistry, biology, etc. This will allow many more debate participants to engage in discussions and let us better utilize the extensive knowledgebase humans have developed.
Apply this new research ability to fact-checking and even more people are available to cross check information. AI can be asked for its sources of information, helping us all to move towards comparing data rather than judging the messengers. This fosters trust in our debate process, building a culture of “Us vs. the Problem” rather than versus each other.
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When people start submitting thoughts to the debate (e.g. cost of mining rare earth metals), AI can be available to inform you of other submissions in this same line of thinking. In fact, a participant can ask AI to gather streams of thought previously presented into the debate so as to analyze what else needs to be added or fine-tuned.
Since AI is tracking the entirety of all debates in the Decision Website, it can inform us when other debates have already discussed a topic (e.g. relocation equality) and thereby save us time.
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Our writing in the debate needs to be clear and concise. AI will help the brainiac to write for all of us. AI can act as a grammar checker, detect ambiguity, warn of long-windedness, point out terms that aren’t well understood, and help summarize complex ideas into concise verbiage.
Our problems in logic could also be revealed by AI. It would recognize logical fallacies like generalizations, moral equivalence, ad hominem, straw man, circular argument, or cherry picking data. It’s not that we are forced to bend to the AI’s will, but good logic is our goal after all.
For more detail on logical fallacies…
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A debate participant will always be able to ask AI (inside or outside of the Decision Website) to write a submission for them. However, we want to require the participant to “own” that piece of writing, making them responsible for the content. Humans are debating… not artificial intelligence.
In the future, we might consider Expert AI systems (e.g. a Lawyer AI) to be so precise that we consider it a source of authority. Nonetheless, in our opinion based Decision Website, where there is so much room for bias, we should use AI as a source of information rather than a source of authority. Humans need to take AI’s output, double-check its accuracy and logic, and apply it in our human way of thinking.
As mentioned above, AI can offer a participant a flow of prior submissions on any topic. It could even offer you a list of submissions since a certain date or submissions that you have not read. Writers should find it much easier to catch up, get realigned with the discussion, and offer their opinions to advance the debate.
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Another way AI will help the Decision Website is as a visual tool, keeping track of the various subtopics in a debate. AI can provide statistics about the up/down-voting, how sentiment is changing, where challenges need attention, and what area is being ignored. This will allow someone who is coming to the site to visually see the scope of each topic and choose where they want to get involved.
For anyone who wants to see the complexity of a debate or wants to drill down to experience the enthusiastic exchanges between folks, they just have to look at the organizational chart that AI has created. If a citizen wants to ensure that some point of view is included in a debate, they could evaluate the chart or ask AI where that view can be found.
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AI’s analysis of statistics, patterns in challenges, up/down-votes, and energetic participation will reveal where we need resolution. AI will be able to understand complex concepts so as to act as a mediator and encourage us towards consensus. Probabilities are an area that AI could calculate for us to help us weigh options. Progress towards consensus requires that we answer the challenges that people tag to our writing. AI will be tasked as a watchdog to remind us of these challenges.
We could devise a method for AI to help coordinate between participants, notifying them of contentious areas, and putting together participants of a like mind or even a strong disagreement in order to foster collaboration and problem resolution.
Could AI eventually learn how to suggest innovative compromises that benefit and please all parties? Might it be able to suggest interconnectedness or patterns between issues that it sees in its vast knowledgebase? That is, suggest links from one problem to another, (e.g. crime to disparity of wealth to education), thereby helping us to think more broadly and outside of the box. AI’s development as a real intelligence can be the tool we need to push ourselves towards expansive open-ended thinking.
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For the casual person wanting to read about a debate, they can look at the final “Position Statements” (summaries created by participants) or dig deeper into the a subtopic (e.g. the “viability of hydrogen energy”).
AI will help the reader with navigation and comparison of the varying positions. AI will show trends in voting and provide debate outlines.
This is the way citizens act as watchdogs and ensure the debate is balanced and inclusive. AI would help citizens issue a challenge if that viewpoint was missing and so interject that new viewpoint into the debate.
For these purposes, we could use a specially trained AI bot that only knows what has been discussed within our debate. This prevents the bot from interjecting other information or proxy opinions when we need to analyze our debate progress. Such is the flexibility of AI.
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AI’s Dire Warnings
Popular warnings about AI focus on its autonomy and unilateral decisions. You know, machines control the weaponry and then take over the world.
There are also more nuanced ways we have to worry about AI, such as how humans relegate hard thinking to a machine and get mentally weak. There’s the idea that we get complacent and stop inspecting the results of AI. Then there is the problem of having bias in an AI that does not hold to our complete range of human values.
The good news is that each milestone that artificial intelligence achieves, means we can improve the effectiveness of our debates.
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Our debates can be a balance or counterweight to AI. By this I mean that for important issues, or any issue, we are required to interject our minds on an issue to ensure that true human values and perspectives are used.
An AI system’s thinking will be so much smarter than any individual because of its immediate access to so much information and its ability to process so quickly. But it will not be smarter than the full body of humanity and our collective thinking. All we need to do is use the Decision Website and enough participants to smooth out our personal biases and logically work together.
Doing this work ourselves can also help humans maintain mental strength when AI has become so pervasive in feeding us its usual stellar information.
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Here’s the thing. When the “stamp of approval” on opinions rests in the hands of the people, it balances the dangers of AI. Plus, it makes the value of new technology soar in human’s favor.
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