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Notes -
Keeping humans in the loop puts pressure on the processes to be more legible and comprehensible. If you dump everything into an inscrutable ML model, then the danger is that people will simply offload their thinking to the model and take its word as law. When your account gets banned at youtube, no one can actually say why (except in high profile cases) - it’s just, “The Algorithm said so, and we trust The Algorithm”. I don’t want society to work that way. I want there to be a person who has to take responsibility for the decision, and who can explain their reasoning. No hiding behind a binary blob of trillions of parameters.
Of course, humans can build labyrinthian inscrutable bureaucracies too. And humans can be outright evil. But I’d still rather take my chances with humans. Unlike AI, they have skin in the game - they are conscious entities, they have desires and fears. They can be persuaded or bribed, they are subject to political and social pressures, they will grant exceptions under the right circumstances. These are not aberrant modes of operation - they are necessary to the functioning of a humane society.
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