Many people are deeply worried by where the growth of surveillance is taking us, all over the world. A fellow member of the i4j Leadership Forum asked us today to pay attention to a very serious article in the Financial Times. He wrote: Good insights but it is only part of a very important and urgent story. By Harari .
My analysis: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for the post. As you say, it gives good insights but is only part of the story. I view this story in game theoretic terms. In truth, I sometimes refer to John Von Neumann's Theory of Games and Economc Behavior as my "Bible". As with the other bibles, I even value the commentaries and extensions
There are MANY pathways to total disaster on the internet. New misuse of surveillance might be fatal for us all by itself, in the end, but it is only one of several such threats to humanity. A year ago, government agencies in Japan and Korea both asked me for an overview of these risks and what we could do about them: Design Challenge for Global AGI - YouTube.
In essence, new technologies have changed the game, such that the Nash equilibrium of the new game (the output we get if we only have natural forces and competition) is death to us all. But Von Neumann and others have taught us a lot about how to get to a better outcome, more of a win-win Pareto optimum. It can be done only by exerting a higher level of awareness and consciously deciding to cooperate, but it can be done, IF WE COOPERATE. (see the overview page attached.) [At bottom, I explain more what a Nash eqiulibrium is.]
(More details coming at www.ffsii.org.)
Human societies have been through challenging times before, not SO threatening, but bad enough that Nash equilibria would have hurt us a lot. There have been many cases, like the US Constitution, the ten comandments, twelve tablets of Rome, etc., when people WROTE DOWN a new "social contract", a certain kind of deal. We are entering a new period when the only way out it to INCLUDE (bot not rely solely on) a new CYBER social contract, building on clear principles with the right properties. That IS possible; the attached page is a kind of overview of what it could be, four tablets if you will rather than two, but there is a whole lot of technica lknowledge which can fill in these essential needs, IF PEOPLE DECIDE TO DO IT, and not just keep on with stupid wars of all against all.
But does anyone care enough to really try this kind of new direction? Perhaps if you join, you can make the crucial difference.
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Nash equilibrium is the outcome of a game where each player chooses actions which maximize ITS utility function, on the assumption that its choice of actions does not affect the choices of other players.
Formally, a Pareto optimum is a choice of actions such that any change in the choices would lead to worse results for at least one player. Crudely, "win-win" choices.
In the game theory post I started from here, I mention for example work by Schelling in his nice clear book Strategy of Conflict, giving a feeling for what win-win solutions can be like in reality. Usually we face a LADDER of degrees of cooperation, step by step... Scheeling and Raiffa have given very detailed examples of such ladders which arise in international discussions and in large organizations.
Very good and clear. Now through in the issue of the governance needed to get the right initial conditions for the development of artificial general intelligence.
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