Policy Brief
GETTING-Plurality Comments on Modernizing the Privacy Act of 1974
The GETTING-Plurality Research Network submitted a comment to Representative Trahan’s Request for Information to modernize the Privacy Act of 1974.
Policy Brief
How AI Fails Us
Researchers and funders should redirect focus from centralized autonomous general intelligence to a plurality of established and emerging approaches that extend cooperative and augmentative traditions as seen in successes such as Taiwan’s digital democracy project to collective intelligence platforms like Wikipedia.
Issues
The dominant vision of artificial intelligence imagines a future of large-scale autonomous systems outperforming humans in an increasing range of fields. This “actually existing AI” vision misconstrues intelligence as autonomous rather than social and relational. It is both unproductive and dangerous, optimizing for artificial metrics of human replication rather than for systemic augmentation, and tending to concentrate power, resources, and decision-making in an engineering elite. Alternative visions based on participating in and augmenting human creativity and cooperation have a long history and underlie many celebrated digital technologies such as personal computers and the internet. Researchers and funders should redirect focus from centralized autonomous general intelligence to a plurality of established and emerging approaches that extend cooperative and augmentative traditions as seen in successes such as Taiwan’s digital democracy project to collective intelligence platforms like Wikipedia. We conclude with a concrete set of recommendations and a survey of alternative traditions.
More from this Program
Commentary
Weaponized AI: A New Era of Threats and How We Can Counter It
Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation Fellow Dr. Shlomit Wagman lays out a framework to address the threats artificial intelligence poses to global security and democratic institutions.
Additional Resource
Why US States Are the Best Labs for Public AI
In a recent piece for Tech Policy Press, Allen Lab Senior Fellow Alex Pascal and Nathan Sanders outline how US states are well-positioned to lead the development of Public AI. State governments can act as “laboratories of twenty-first century democracy” to experiment with AI applications that directly benefit citizens.
Feature
How Do Legislators Think Democracy Should Work? Evidence from the United States and Germany
What kind of democracy do legislators want? This question was at the center of a recent discussion with Melody Crowder-Meyer, associate professor of political science at Davidson College, as part of the American Politics Speaker Series.
Policy Brief
GETTING-Plurality Comments on Modernizing the Privacy Act of 1974
The GETTING-Plurality Research Network submitted a comment to Representative Trahan’s Request for Information to modernize the Privacy Act of 1974.
Commentary
AI on the Ballot: How Artificial Intelligence Is Already Changing Politics
At a recent Ash Center panel, experts and AI developers discuss how AI’s influence on politics has evolved over the years. They examine the new tools available to politicians, the role of humans in AI’s relationship with governance, and the values guiding the design of these technologies.