From: Byrne Hobart (bhobart@gmail.com)
Date: Sun Apr 20 2008 - 08:04:23 MDT
> What is interesting about a "super AI" is that it could run an
> efficient command economy. And it could run it in ways that minimise
> the negative philosophical consequences to people. Would we want that?
It can do so iff people can express demand curves. If it knows I will buy 3
apples at $1 each, it has enough information to manage the status quo (which
the market can do just fine already). What it needs to know is how I would
react to apples at $2 or $4 -- and that's not even getting into how I react
when oranges fluctuate, too. A partial solution is for all of us to start
ceding control of our small purchases to automated agents that will, for
example, order more of stuff we like when it's cheap, hedge against the risk
of huge price increases, etc. I imagine that this will happen with fuel
first -- I suspect that most drives would prefer using derivatives to get a
flat price for gas to paying a fluctuating price at the pump.
The problem with this is that the AI is suddenly redundant. The information
it gets from the agent transactions *is already being used by the agents* to
accomplish the same goals as the AI. All it can do to make things run better
is to create central clearinghouses for this information. And why would we
need an AI to know that collecting this information and managing
transactions would be a great business. All one has to do is look at the
current market value of the NYSE or CME or NASDAQ (the companies running the
exchanges, not the products traded on them) to know that this is an
incredibly profitable business.
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