Could AI take over the world – in the best possible way?

Last week, Kenyan presidential candidate Railia Odinga had this to say in regards to the country's recent election, which he claims was manipulated by hackers...

“Kenyans will not agree to be led by computer-generated leaders.”

Take him out of context, and one begins to think: could they? Or should they?

While discussions go on around artificial intelligence and its ability to create art or run a business, could the same principals be applied to run an entire country in the same way a president or prime minister does?

Think about what a head of state has to do – the mammoth undertaking that greets them almost every day. They have to know everything about everything. Get asked a question about employment rates in some far-flung town, and you’re expected to have some insight. What about trade performance from one of the hundreds of partners your country works with overseas? Yep, you have to know. Outside of the economy, PMs and presidents are expected to be the fountain of knowledge on how to deal with massive problems like providing for an ageing society, improving healthcare, funding housing, transport and infrastructure, defence... you get the idea.

As a head of state, you have to be not only a jack of all trades, but a master of them, too.

As the world becomes more complex and fast-paced, perhaps it's too much for one woman or man – even with the support of a full cabinet. Allocating funding, for instance, needs a lot of context and balance, meaning analysing a lot of information in the face of travel and media commitments – and that’s disregarding the impact of things like lobbying and personal bias. We can’t comfortably say that the right decisions are being made even a small percent of the time. That's why we argue with people we don't know over Twitter.

But what if we could build a prime minister or president who’s always awake, can analyse all the data in less than a second and makes objective decisions outside of lobbying and personal (even unconscious) bias?

AI is becoming less of a Hollywood dream and something we’re going to see more and more in our everyday lives. Google has announced a dedicated AI chip for people and businesses to use as a service, and Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 8 with AI functionality.

Once we have the sophistication and development expertise, why couldn’t we use AI to make impartial political decisions using all the available data in a matter of seconds?

Consider the renegotiation of trade deals. An AI would be able to look at all the data and judge whether there is a probable chance of profit. Especially if AI was used on both sides of the deal, we could cut out costly bureaucracy, too.

A hyper-sophisticated AI should even do a better job at balancing the many departments a head of state is meant to oversee. With a mighty data analytics capacity, it could be flexible in how it allocated resources to each, depending on the needs of the people.

Of course there are a huge number of complications. AI would not be expected to rule on ethical decisions – you wouldn’t want a robot weighing in on the pro-life/pro-choice debate – to save us from becoming a bleak, utilitarian dystopia.

The human bias during programming would leave a lot to be desired, and cyber security would have to be significantly more sophisticated than what we have today.

We’d also probably need some form of hybrid ruling, with a human authority in charge, to hedge our bets.

But no one said changing the way the political world works is a small job. Will we ever see an AI prime minister? Probably not. But it’s hard to think that it wouldn’t solve some major problems.