Is this our Golden Age? One where
we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace
(excerpt from a poem by Richard Brautigan)
More than a decade ago, I began to engage in a series of wonderful philosophical discussions with Julio Frenk (then the president of the University of Miami, now the chancellor of UCLA). From our talks an idea emerged, a fusion of computing, technology, political systems, philosophy, economics, and governance. We manifested some of the thinking in Project Alexandria (2018) and with a Knight Foundation Grant (2022): Conversations on the Future of Democracy, Social Media, and Artificial Intelligence in the Americas.
I was planning to go back to school and work on a PhD in Philosophy on this thesis—what we called “computational democracy”—and was greatly discouraged by a philosophy professor at one of the schools where I applied: “Go build it, don’t be a philosopher; this is too important.” So I did, and I founded SynthBee with the core idea that we would be the rebel alliance, the Jedi (not the Sith) and a north star in the ideals of computational democracy.
What President Frenk and I conceived was more than a philosophy. It was architecture, system design, use, and operations of certain types of computing and intelligence systems manifested from the idea of personal freedoms. The idea of computational democracy in many ways reflected the ideals of liberty and the checks and balances of a well-run democracy.
Looking back, the Bay Area of the late 1960s and 1970s was a hotbed of these ideals, in many ways birthing a mix of music, film, creativity, and technology. Stewart Brand’s DIY Whole Earth Catalog (which influenced the internet and the web), the Homebrew Computer Club, and the birth of personal computing with the Apple I were all markers of this fusion of freedom, democracy, and computing. The Grateful Dead played a key role, encouraging a blend of audience and band, fan participation, and the birth of open sharing. The ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness could, and should, be reflected in our computing system architectures and design.
Distribution of power
Today, the core philosophy of computational democracy includes the distribution of power and decentralization, strong protection of users and their IP and data, and systems designed to be safe and trustworthy by design (not by hopes and wishes). Of even higher importance is the ideal of empathy for humanity, and of placing people in the center. I look back at what we built at Mako Surgical, which helped to define the field of collaborative robotics, or Cobots, deployed in operating rooms around the world. And I see in those systems—their behavior, their connection to the surgical teams and patients—the emerging principles of computational democracy.
I would argue and hope that Richard Brautigan would have seen the glow of a machine in true loving grace in the symbiosis between human and machine that exists with surgeons and the Mako robot, and the good they bring to patients. (Fun fact: The Mako robot was deeply influenced by R2-D2, and the love and good R2-D2 brought to the Star Wars world.)
The alternative
On the other end of the spectrum lies computational autocracy: massive, centrally controlled computing platforms run by a few techno-oligarchs who wish to amass and control all the world’s computing power, data, intelligence, and IP.
The scaling and financial performance of these companies has created techno-monarchs. And in turn, actual monarchs, dictators, and autocrats have deeply immersed themselves in the creation, acquisition, and interweaving of these systems in how they govern, control, and suppress their populations. The cozy interplay between technology dictators and actual dictators has blurred the line between technology and government, with both sides fusing and enriching themselves.
The ideals of absolute control, central power, and asymmetrical economics are deeply embedded in a large number of companies chasing the idea of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a form of techno-deity right off the pages of any classic Marvel or DC villain comic. Shall we play a game? With the whole world?
The rest of us are meant to be the serfs, living upon the lands of the manor lords, who harvest and gather us as produce and commerce. Computational autocracy maintains a manifest belief in the manor lords’ power, their right to rule, their right to take our data, our IP, and our work.
AGI is a very hungry ghost, and it demands nuclear power plants, endless computing power, a lack of ethics, and a willingness to be blind to the chaos, hallucinations, danger, lack of trust, lack of testability, and unknown intentions of these massive machines and their owner overlords. And of course, catastrophic or existential risks to humanity (but who cares when we upload to the Great Cloud on Mars?)
Humanity, all of us, is at a fundamental crossroads (the Robert Johnson kind). We can surrender thousands of years of hard-fought struggle to overthrow oppressive kings, queens, emperors, dictators, and madmen—to live freely and to find our purpose in life, to improve the world, and to self-govern (for the people, by the people). We can throw that all away and hope and pray and believe that the mighty few will somehow care for us with their even mightier machines, and we shall become subordinate to their immense wealth and near-endless power.
Or.
We can live in a Golden Age, a neohumanist renaissance where our computing systems and machines reflect the ideals of liberal democracy, personal liberty, safety, trust, and the sovereignty of your data, your creativity, and your inventions.
Choose well. Our world and future depend upon it.