The brain of the future and the viability of democratic governance: The role of artificial intelligence, cognitive machines, and viable systems

Abstract

At a time when smartphones, smart-homes, smart-cities, wearables, factories, etc., are becoming increasingly omnipresent, shall we also expect technological progress in artificial intelligence (AI) to result in the emergence of smart-governments and nations? The field of AI, and more broadly the development of artificial cognitive machines, is making breathtaking advances. A significant increase in computing power is enabling the rapid adoption of a new paradigm of AI, whereby cognitive machines are no longer programmed line by line, instruction by instruction, but instead are now capable of learning autonomously, thereby continuously developing themselves. The new paradigm is unleashing extraordinary progress in a wide range of applications, from healthcare to transportation and even the justice system; at the same time, these new forms of intelligence are making decisions in complex ways that escape the limits of human comprehension.The technological transformation driven by artificial cognitive machines is already beginning to have far reaching consequences, some unintended, at a scale and pace which exceeds even that of the first and second industrial revolutions. This paper aims to discuss these implications, both with an ontological and epistemological perspective, to assess the potential challenges for the systemic viability of democratic societies: a fundamental change in the nature of economic wealth creation, which could raise significant social tensions, combined with the paradoxical reduction in the effectiveness of human communication. It then explores the potential role of artificial cognitive machines to address its own challenges, introducing the idea of a future brain for public governance, understanding brain as an emergent property resulting from the interaction of human agents and AI systems created to address the priorities of social organizations.