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Cybernetics, Algocracy and Democracy: The Promises of Cyborg Governance

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Cybernetics, Algocracy and Democracy: The Promises of Cyborg Governance

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James Hughes (executive director of the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies) will be giving a public lecture.

5.45 Entry
6pm Intro: Greg Adamson
6.10 Talk: James Hughes (executive director of the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies) will be giving a public lecture.
7pm Q&A: James Hughes
7.30 Panelists: James Hughes, Meredith Doig, Tim van Gelder
Topic: Politics & Social Formations moving into a Radical Future
Moderator: Adam Karlovsky
8.30-9pm Close: Greg Adamson

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Continuing a Counter-Enlightenment complaint that has arisen repeatedly in the last two hundred years, some contemporary cyber-critics point to the emergence of “algocracy,” the spread of algorithms in every sphere of life that hide and institutionalize undemocratic decision-making. The critics suggest that participatory democratic resistance to algocracy is possible and desirable, and they are as wrong-headed as the misanthropic advocates for AI governance, free of human failings. The critics of and the advocates for AI technocracy are perpetuating a false dichotomy between cybernetics and human institutions, ignoring that every human institution has been partly, and inescapably, built on cybernetic principles. Participatory democracy, on the other hand, is, at most, a useful ritual with benefits for character development, but a practical impossibility given the number and complexity of decisions. Even attempts at participatory democracy devolve into endless meetings and hundred page ballots, as unhelpful for human flourishing as endless work. In the future, democratically accountable algocracy, or cyborg democracy, enabled by artificial intelligence and human-computer co-evolution, can optimally inform debate, aggregate popular desires without the biases of current institutions, and ensure the efficient workings of the gradually withering state. Publicly accountable algocracy can usher in equitably distributed post-capitalist abundance, free from the necessity of work for wages. Indeed, only the embrace of the possibilities of algocratic governance can secure our future against the threats of super-empowered individuals and groups, systemic fragility, and the emergence of catastrophic forms of self-willed cybernetic life.

IEET: http://ieet.org

Wikipedia - James Hughes : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hughes_(sociologist)

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