Thanks for this post. As I mentioned to both of you, it feels a little bit like we have been ships passing one another in the night. I really like your idea here of loops and the importance of keeping humans within these loops, particularly at key nodes in the loop or system, to keep Moloch at bay.
I have a couple scattered points for you to consider:
In my work in this direction, I’ve tried to distinguish between roles and tasks. You do something similar here, which I like. To me, the question often should be about what specific tasks should be automated as opposed to what roles. As you suggest, people within specific roles bring their humanity with them to the role. (See: “Artificial Intelligence, Discretion, and Bureaucracy”)
Elsewhere, coauthors and I have used the term administrative evil to examine the ways in which substituting machine decision making for human decision making dehumanizes the decision making process exacerbating the risk of administrative evil be perpetuated by an organization. (See: Artificial Intelligence and Administrative Evil”)
I like the inclusion of the work on Cyborgism. It seems to me that in someways we’ve already become Cyborgs to match the complexity of the loops in which we work and play together. as they’ve already evolved in response to machine evolution. In theory at least, it does seem that a Cyborg approach could help overcome some of the challenges presented by Moloch and failed attempts at coordination.
Finally, your focus on loops reminded me of “Godel, Escher, Bach” and Hofstadter’s focus there and in his “I am A Strange Loop.” I like how you apply the notion to human organizations here. It would be interesting to think about different types of persistent loops as a ways of describing different organizational structures, goals, resources, etc.
I’m hoping we can discuss together sometime soon. I think we have a lot of interest overlap here.
Thanks for this post! Hope the comments are helpful.
Thanks for this post. As I mentioned to both of you, it feels a little bit like we have been ships passing one another in the night. I really like your idea here of loops and the importance of keeping humans within these loops, particularly at key nodes in the loop or system, to keep Moloch at bay.
I have a couple scattered points for you to consider:
In my work in this direction, I’ve tried to distinguish between roles and tasks. You do something similar here, which I like. To me, the question often should be about what specific tasks should be automated as opposed to what roles. As you suggest, people within specific roles bring their humanity with them to the role. (See: “Artificial Intelligence, Discretion, and Bureaucracy”)
One term I’ve used to help think about this within the context of organizations is the notion of discretion. This is the way in which individuals use of their decision making capacity within a defined role. It is this discretion that often allows individuals holding those roles to shape their decision making in a humane and contextualized way. (See: “Artificial discretion as a tool of governance: a framework for understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on public administration”)
Elsewhere, coauthors and I have used the term administrative evil to examine the ways in which substituting machine decision making for human decision making dehumanizes the decision making process exacerbating the risk of administrative evil be perpetuated by an organization. (See: Artificial Intelligence and Administrative Evil”)
One other line of work has looked at how the introduction of algorithms or machine intelligence within the loop changes the shape of the loop, potentially in unexpected ways, leading to changes in inputs in decision making throughout the loop. That is machine evolution influences organization (loop) evolution. (See: Machine Intelligence, Bureaucracy, and Human Control” & “Artificial Intelligence, bureaucratic form, and discretion in public service”)
I like the inclusion of the work on Cyborgism. It seems to me that in someways we’ve already become Cyborgs to match the complexity of the loops in which we work and play together. as they’ve already evolved in response to machine evolution. In theory at least, it does seem that a Cyborg approach could help overcome some of the challenges presented by Moloch and failed attempts at coordination.
Finally, your focus on loops reminded me of “Godel, Escher, Bach” and Hofstadter’s focus there and in his “I am A Strange Loop.” I like how you apply the notion to human organizations here. It would be interesting to think about different types of persistent loops as a ways of describing different organizational structures, goals, resources, etc.
I’m hoping we can discuss together sometime soon. I think we have a lot of interest overlap here.
Thanks for this post! Hope the comments are helpful.