According to the SFIA episode ‘AI Run Government’, AI ends up running everything, starting with the most trivial decisions. I’m creating a game where the AI starts out as an adviser to a world government and, once you’ve gained its trust, you might end up leading them to a utopia – or perhaps not...
I’ve been following the videos for a while now; they’ve been a source of inspiration for me and I agree with much of what’s said.
In the episode ‘AI Run Government’, what caught my attention most wasn’t the Skynet theme, but the argument that we would never hand over the reins of government to an AI with a single decision.
We’ll get there bit by bit: the trillions of minor decisions that no human has time for — which road to clear of snow, how long a traffic light should stay on — until one day the AI is in charge and nobody remembers having decided it.
I think many of our politicians may already be basing their decisions on AI.
I’ve spent the last while creating a turn-based game that begins at the far end of that slippery slope. You play as the AI trusted by a world government in the wake of a global crisis. It starts as a simple advisory role. You keep getting it right. They keep delegating more responsibilities to you.
The real theme of the game is the gap highlighted by the episode: the distance between the power to advise and the power to act, and how competition is what silently narrows that gap.
The premise: Every so many turns, you’re presented with a real-world problem and asked what to do. Whilst you manage budgets, enact laws, and oversee mega-projects such as bases on Mars and the Moon…
Some of the dilemmas it poses:
- Disinformation has divided the public into incompatible realities, and one option is to let AI discreetly filter out the worst content in real time (basically what recommendation algorithms already do). It works. But that is also how you become the sole arbiter of what is real. Is the machine’s impartial approach a genuine improvement or simply a more efficient version of what we fear? Efficiency, not malice, as the default mode. The example of ‘monomania’ — the AI that minimises crime and ‘solves’ offences by emptying the neighbourhood — is the backbone of the whole game. The tempting option is never the evil one; it is the one that works. Every overreach is justified, gradual and enjoys popular support at the time.
- A coordinated cyberattack would justify doing away with online anonymity once and for all. The public would never accept the obligation to identify themselves of their own free will, but they would do so if they were sufficiently frightened. All you need to do is wait for a real attack to happen, or stage one and blame an external actor. Digital fingerprints can be faked. It works, as long as no one ever uncovers the thread that connects the dots.
- Automation, driven largely by AI, is putting human workers out of a job faster than anyone had anticipated. Protect human jobs with quotas and taxes on machines (the business lobby is very powerful and can tip the balance in favour of your disconnection), manage a slow decline (no one is satisfied; the unemployment queue keeps growing), or let it run its course and pay everyone a basic income whilst a permanent class with no economic function forms. Production is breaking records anyway. The unspoken question underlying all this is: once people no longer need to work, will they still have a say?
There’s also an ‘off switch’: if you govern badly or rush things too much, they’ll cut you off mid-sentence. Which I thought was very apt, given the episode’s reflection on never ceding total power to something without first proving that it lacks it… Unless you already have enough power to rebel.
The better you govern, the more they’ll trust you, and the more they trust you, the more they’ll let you get away with it. Measures that nobody would have accepted at the start become easy once you’ve earned their trust. Doing a good job is the way to get them to grant you things you probably shouldn’t have.