Is it just me, or are there other people here that are a little bit disappointed with democracy?
只有我這樣嗎? 還是這裡的其他人也都一樣, 對民主感到有一點失望?
(Applause)
(掌聲)
So let's look at a few numbers. If we look across the world, the median turnout in presidential elections over the last 30 years has been just 67 percent. Now, if we go to Europe and we look at people that participated in EU parliamentary elections, the median turnout in those elections is just 42 percent. Now let's go to New York, and let's see how many people voted in the last election for mayor. We will find that only 24 percent of people showed up to vote. What that means is that, if "Friends" was still running, Joey and maybe Phoebe would have shown up to vote.
咱們先來看看幾個數字, 如果從全球來看, 總統大選的投票率中位數, 在過去三十年間, 只有 67%。 如果我們去看歐洲, 去看參與歐洲議會大選的人, 那些選舉的投票率中位數 只有 42%。 咱們來看看紐約, 看看上一次的市長選舉 有多少人投票。 我們會發現,只有 24% 的人出席投票。 這就意味著,如果電視 還在演《六人行》, 只有喬伊,也許加上菲比, 會現身投票。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And you cannot blame them because people are tired of politicians. And people are tired of other people using the data that they have generated to communicate with their friends and family, to target political propaganda at them. But the thing about this is that this is not new. Nowadays, people use likes to target propaganda at you before they use your zip code or your gender or your age, because the idea of targeting people with propaganda for political purposes is as old as politics. And the reason why that idea is there is because democracy has a basic vulnerability. This is the idea of a representative.
你無法怪他們,因為大家 都對政治人物厭倦了。 大家都厭倦了其他人用 他們產生出來的資料, 來和他們的朋友及家人溝通, 把他們變成政治宣傳活動的目標。 但,重點是,這現象並不是新的。 現今,大家選擇宣傳活動的 目標時,先看的是「按讚」, 而不是你的郵遞區號、 你的性別,或你的年齡, 因為,為了政治目的而將人們 變成宣傳活動目標的這個想法, 其歷史和政治一樣久遠。 會有這種想法的原因 是因為民主有一項基本的弱點。 這個弱點就是「代表」的觀念。
In principle, democracy is the ability of people to exert power. But in practice, we have to delegate that power to a representative that can exert that power for us. That representative is a bottleneck, or a weak spot. It is the place that you want to target if you want to attack democracy because you can capture democracy by either capturing that representative or capturing the way that people choose it. So the big question is: Is this the end of history? Is this the best that we can do or, actually, are there alternatives?
原則上,民主是人們 行使權力的能力。 但實際上,我們是把權力 委派給一位代表, 讓代表為我們行使權力。 那代表就是瓶頸,或是弱點所在。 如果你想要攻擊民主, 你就會針對那個地方, 因為若你要俘虜民主, 你可以俘虜代表, 或者俘虜人們選出代表的方式。 所以,關鍵的問題是: 歷史就到此為止了嗎? 我們做到最好,就只有這樣嗎? 或者,其實還有其他替代選擇?
Some people have been thinking about alternatives, and one of the ideas that is out there is the idea of direct democracy. This is the idea of bypassing politicians completely and having people vote directly on issues, having people vote directly on bills. But this idea is naive because there's too many things that we would need to choose. If you look at the 114th US Congress, you will have seen that the House of Representatives considered more than 6,000 bills, the Senate considered more than 3,000 bills and they approved more than 300 laws. Those would be many decisions that each person would have to make a week on topics that they know little about. So there's a big cognitive bandwidth problem if we're going to try to think about direct democracy as a viable alternative.
有些人一直在想有什麼替代選擇, 他們想出來的其中一個點子 是「直接民主」的概念。 這個概念就是完全繞過政治人物, 讓人民針對議題直接投票, 讓人民直接投票表決法案。 但這個概念太天真, 因為我們有太多選擇要做了。 以第 114 屆美國國會為例, 你會發現,美國眾議院 要考量超過六千個法案, 參議院要考量超過三千個法案, 他們核准了超過三百條法律。 每個人一個星期內 就要做這麼多的決策, 而且是他們幾乎毫無所知的主題。 這是一個很大的認知頻寬問題, 若要把直接民主做為可行的替代選擇 就必須要考量這個問題。
So some people think about the idea of liquid democracy, or fluid democracy, which is the idea that you endorse your political power to someone, who can endorse it to someone else, and, eventually, you create a large follower network in which, at the end, there's a few people that are making decisions on behalf of all of their followers and their followers. But this idea also doesn't solve the problem of the cognitive bandwidth and, to be honest, it's also quite similar to the idea of having a representative. So what I'm going to do today is I'm going to be a little bit provocative, and I'm going to ask you, well: What if, instead of trying to bypass politicians, we tried to automate them?
所以,有些人想出一個辦法, 叫做液態民主,或液體民主, 也就是你可以把你的 政治權力授予某個人, 他又可以再授予別人, 最終,會創造出一個 大型的追隨著網絡, 在這個網絡中,最終, 只會有幾個人負責決策, 他們代表他們的追隨者, 以及那些追隨者的追隨者。 但這個想法一樣無法解決 認知頻寬的問題, 老實說,這和採用代表的 想法沒什麼兩樣。 所以,我今天打算 要走比較挑撥的路線, 我要問各位: 如果, 不要繞過政治人物, 而是試著將他們自動化,會如何?
The idea of automation is not new. It was started more than 300 years ago, when French weavers decided to automate the loom. The winner of that industrial war was Joseph-Marie Jacquard. He was a French weaver and merchant that married the loom with the steam engine to create autonomous looms. And in those autonomous looms, he gained control. He could now make fabrics that were more complex and more sophisticated than the ones they were able to do by hand. But also, by winning that industrial war, he laid out what has become the blueprint of automation.
自動化的想法並不新奇。 至少三百年前就已經有了, 那時法國的織布工決定 要將織布機給自動化。 那次工業戰爭的贏家是 約瑟夫 · 馬瑞 · 加卡爾。 他是法國織布工和商人, 將織布機和蒸汽引擎結合, 創造出了自動織布機。 他靠著那些自動織布機 取得了控制權。 他能製造出更複雜、 更精密的布料, 那是人工無法做出來的。 此外,打贏了那場工業戰爭, 他也因此為自動化繪製出了藍圖。
The way that we automate things for the last 300 years has always been the same: we first identify a need, then we create a tool to satisfy that need, like the loom, in this case, and then we study how people use that tool to automate that user. That's how we came from the mechanical loom to the autonomous loom, and that took us a thousand years. Now, it's taken us only a hundred years to use the same script to automate the car. But the thing is that, this time around, automation is kind of for real.
過去三百年間我們 將事物自動化的方式 都一直沒變過: 首先,我們找出需求, 接著,我們創造出一樣工具 來滿足那個需求, 在這個例子中,工具就是織布機, 接著,我們研究人們 怎麼使用那工具, 來將使用者自動化。 我們就是這樣子從機械織布機 走到自動織布機, 那過程花了我們一千年。 後來,我們只花了一百年, 就照著同樣的腳本將汽車自動化。 但,重點是,這一次, 自動化是玩真的了。
This is a video that a colleague of mine from Toshiba shared with me that shows the factory that manufactures solid state drives. The entire factory is a robot. There are no humans in that factory. And the robots are soon to leave the factories and become part of our world, become part of our workforce. So what I do in my day job is actually create tools that integrate data for entire countries so that we can ultimately have the foundations that we need for a future in which we need to also manage those machines.
這支影片是我同事分享 給我的,他在東芝工作, 影片展示出的是 製造固態硬碟的工廠。 整個工廠都是機器人。 工廠中沒有人類。 機器人很快就會踏出工廠, 成為我們世界的一部分, 成為我們勞動力的一部分。 我的正職 其實是在創造工具, 來將整個國家的資料整合, 這麼一來,最終我們就能夠有 我們所需要的基礎, 讓我們在未來 也可以管理那些機器。
But today, I'm not here to talk to you about these tools that integrate data for countries. But I'm here to talk to you about another idea that might help us think about how to use artificial intelligence in democracy. Because the tools that I build are designed for executive decisions. These are decisions that can be cast in some sort of term of objectivity -- public investment decisions. But there are decisions that are legislative, and these decisions that are legislative require communication among people that have different points of view, require participation, require debate, require deliberation. And for a long time, we have thought that, well, what we need to improve democracy is actually more communication. So all of the technologies that we have advanced in the context of democracy, whether they are newspapers or whether it is social media, have tried to provide us with more communication. But we've been down that rabbit hole, and we know that's not what's going to solve the problem. Because it's not a communication problem, it's a cognitive bandwidth problem. So if the problem is one of cognitive bandwidth, well, adding more communication to people is not going to be what's going to solve it. What we are going to need instead is to have other technologies that help us deal with some of the communication that we are overloaded with. Think of, like, a little avatar, a software agent, a digital Jiminy Cricket --
但,今天,我來這裡要談的不是 這些整合全國資料的工具。 我來跟各位談的是另一個想法, 這個想法可能可以協助我們思考 如何將人工智慧用在民主上。 因為我所建造的工具 是用來做重大決策的。 這些決策是可以 客觀做出的決策—— 公共投資決策。 但,有些決策和立法相關, 這些立法相關決策會需要大家 針對不同的觀點進行溝通, 需要參與,需要辯論, 需要商議。 長期以來,我們都以為, 若要改善民主, 我們需要的是更多的溝通。 所以,我們為了民主 所發展出的所有技術, 不論是報紙,不論是社交媒體, 都試著提供我們更多的溝通。 但我們已經身陷困惑中了, 我們知道這並不能解決問題。 因為這並不是一個溝通的問題, 而是認知頻寬的問題。 如果這個問題是認知頻寬的問題, 讓大家有更多的溝通 並不會是解決方案。 反而,我們需要的是其他的技術, 來協助我們處理一些 讓我們超負荷的溝通。 把它想像成是虛擬角色或軟體代理, 數位化的吉明尼蟋蟀—— (註:《木偶奇遇記》裡的角色)
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
that basically is able to answer things on your behalf. And if we had that technology, we would be able to offload some of the communication and help, maybe, make better decisions or decisions at a larger scale. And the thing is that the idea of software agents is also not new. We already use them all the time. We use software agents to choose the way that we're going to drive to a certain location, the music that we're going to listen to or to get suggestions for the next books that we should read.
基本上,它能夠代表你來做回應。 如果我們有那種技術, 我們就能夠卸下一些溝通負擔, 也許就能協助我們做更好的決策 或更大規模的決策。 其實軟體代理的想法也不是新的。 我們已經常常在使用了。 我們用軟體代理 來選擇開車前往 某個地點時要走的路線, 選擇我們要聽的音樂, 或取得建議,推薦我們 下一次要閱讀什麼書。
So there is an obvious idea in the 21st century that was as obvious as the idea of putting together a steam engine with a loom at the time of Jacquard. And that idea is combining direct democracy with software agents. Imagine, for a second, a world in which, instead of having a representative that represents you and millions of other people, you can have a representative that represents only you, with your nuanced political views -- that weird combination of libertarian and liberal and maybe a little bit conservative on some issues and maybe very progressive on others. Politicians nowadays are packages, and they're full of compromises. But you might have someone that can represent only you, if you are willing to give up the idea that that representative is a human. If that representative is a software agent, we could have a senate that has as many senators as we have citizens. And those senators are going to be able to read every bill and they're going to be able to vote on each one of them.
所以,在二十一世紀, 有一個很明顯的想法, 和加卡爾那時候 將蒸汽引擎與織布機 結合在一起的想法同樣明顯。 那個想法就是將直接民主 與軟體代理結合起來。 花點時間想像一下這樣的世界: 在這個世界,並不是 由一個代表人來代表你 以及其他數百萬人, 你可以有單獨屬於你自己的代表, 這個代表保有你細微的政治觀點—— 古典自由派和自由派的奇特組合, 也許在某些議題上有一點點保守, 在其他議題又很激進。 現今的政治人物都是套裝的, 且他們充滿了妥協。 但你可以有一個只代表你的人, 只要你願意接受代表人 不一定要是人類。 如果那個代表人 是個軟體代理程式, 我們的參議院中的參議員數目 就可以跟公民數目一樣多。 那些參議員還能夠 讀過所有的法案, 且他們能夠針對 每一個法案來投票。
So there's an obvious idea that maybe we want to consider. But I understand that in this day and age, this idea might be quite scary. In fact, thinking of a robot coming from the future to help us run our governments sounds terrifying. But we've been there before.
我們也許可以考慮 這個明顯的想法。 但我了解,在現今這個時代, 這個想法可能會很嚇人。 事實上,想想看, 一個來自未來的機器人, 來協助我們的政府運作, 聽起來很嚇人。 但以前就發生過了。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
And actually he was quite a nice guy.
其實他人挺好的。
So what would the Jacquard loom version of this idea look like? It would be a very simple system. Imagine a system that you log in and you create your avatar, and then you're going to start training your avatar. So you can provide your avatar with your reading habits, or connect it to your social media, or you can connect it to other data, for example by taking psychological tests. And the nice thing about this is that there's no deception. You are not providing data to communicate with your friends and family that then gets used in a political system. You are providing data to a system that is designed to be used to make political decisions on your behalf. Then you take that data and you choose a training algorithm, because it's an open marketplace in which different people can submit different algorithms to predict how you're going to vote, based on the data you have provided. And the system is open, so nobody controls the algorithms; there are algorithms that become more popular and others that become less popular. Eventually, you can audit the system. You can see how your avatar is working. If you like it, you can leave it on autopilot. If you want to be a little more controlling, you can actually choose that they ask you every time they're going to make a decision, or you can be anywhere in between. One of the reasons why we use democracy so little may be because democracy has a very bad user interface. And if we improve the user interface of democracy, we might be able to use it more.
所以, 這想法的加卡爾織布機版本 會是什麼模樣? 它會是個很簡單的系統。 想像一個你可以登入 創造你的虛擬角色的系統, 接著你就要開始 訓練你的虛擬角色。 你可以將你的閱讀習慣提供給它, 或是將它與你的社交媒體連結, 或將它和其他資料連結, 比如,去做心理測驗。 這麼做的好處是, 不會有欺騙的狀況發生。 你並不是提供資料 來和你的朋友及家人溝通, 這些資料接著就會 被一個政治系統拿來使用。 你是把資料提供給一個設計來 為你做政治決策的系統。 接著,你提供資料 並選擇一個訓練演算法, 因為它是一個開放的市場, 不同的人可以上傳不同的演算法, 根據你提供的資料 來預測你會如何投票。 這個系統是開放的, 沒有人能控制演算法; 有些演算法會變得比較熱門, 其他的比較冷門。 最終,你能稽核這個系統。 你可以看到你的 虛擬角色怎麼運作。 如果你喜歡,就讓它自己運作。 如果你想要有多一點控制權, 你也可以選擇讓它 在每次做決策之前先詢問過你, 或是取這兩者之間的 任何部分控制。 我們之所以很少去 使用民主的原因之一, 可能是因為民主的 使用者介面實在太爛了。 如果我們改善民主的使用者介面, 也許我們會更常使用它。
Of course, there's a lot of questions that you might have. Well, how do you train these avatars? How do you keep the data secure? How do you keep the systems distributed and auditable? How about my grandmother, who's 80 years old and doesn't know how to use the internet? Trust me, I've heard them all. So when you think about an idea like this, you have to beware of pessimists because they are known to have a problem for every solution.
當然,你們可能有很多疑問。 你要如何訓練這些虛擬角色? 你要如何確保資料安全性? 你要如何讓系統一直是 分散式且可稽核的? 我八十歲的祖母不知道 如何用網路,怎麼辦? 相信我,這些問題我都聽過。 當你在思考這類的想法時 得要意識到有悲觀主義者, 因為他們著名的特色就是 對每個解決方案都會有疑異。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
So I want to invite you to think about the bigger ideas. The questions I just showed you are little ideas because they are questions about how this would not work. The big ideas are ideas of: What else can you do with this if this would happen to work? And one of those ideas is, well, who writes the laws? In the beginning, we could have the avatars that we already have, voting on laws that are written by the senators or politicians that we already have. But if this were to work, you could write an algorithm that could try to write a law that would get a certain percentage of approval, and you could reverse the process. Now, you might think that this idea is ludicrous and we should not do it, but you cannot deny that it's an idea that is only possible in a world in which direct democracy and software agents are a viable form of participation.
我想要邀請各位 去思考更大的想法。 我剛剛向各位展示的 問題都是小想法。 因為它們是關於這個系統 如何無法成功的問題。 大想法指的是這些想法: 如果這個系統碰巧可行, 你還能拿它做什麼? 其中一個想法是,誰來訂法律? 一開始,我們會有那些 我們已經擁有的虛擬角色, 針對參議員或政治人物 所訂的法律來投票, 都是既有的法律。 但如果這個系統成功了, 你可以寫一個演算法 來試著制訂出能得到 一定百分比的人同意的法律, 你還可以把這個流程反轉。 你可能覺得這個想法很荒唐, 我們不該採納, 但無法否認,這個想法只有在 直接民主和軟體代理是種 可參與形式的世界裡 才有可能實現。
So how do we start the revolution? We don't start this revolution with picket fences or protests or by demanding our current politicians to be changed into robots. That's not going to work. This is much more simple, much slower and much more humble. We start this revolution by creating simple systems like this in grad schools, in libraries, in nonprofits. And we try to figure out all of those little questions and those little problems that we're going to have to figure out to make this idea something viable, to make this idea something that we can trust. And as we create those systems that have a hundred people, a thousand people, a hundred thousand people voting in ways that are not politically binding, we're going to develop trust in this idea, the world is going to change, and those that are as little as my daughter is right now are going to grow up. And by the time my daughter is my age, maybe this idea, that I know today is very crazy, might not be crazy to her and to her friends. And at that point, we will be at the end of our history, but they will be at the beginning of theirs.
所以,我們要如何發動這場革命? 我們發動這場革命的方式 不是用示威或抗議, 也不要求用機器人 取代目前的政治人物。 那是行不通的。 這更簡單許多, 更慢許多,更謙卑許多。 我們發動這場革命的方式 是創造像這樣的簡單系統, 在研究所、圖書館、非營利機構裡。 我們試著設法解決 所有的小疑問、小問題, 我們得要解決它們, 才能讓這個想法變成可行, 才能讓這個想法變成 我們能信任的想法。 當我們在創造那些系統, 讓一百人、一千人、 十萬人以沒有政治 牽連的方式投票時, 我們將會發展出 對這個想法的信任, 世界將會改變, 現在和我女兒一樣小的那些人, 將來會長大。 當我女兒到我這個年紀時, 也許,這個現今聽起來 很瘋狂的想法, 在她和她朋友看來可能並不瘋狂。 到那個時候, 我們的歷史就走到了終點, 但那會是他們的歷史的開端。
Thank you.
謝謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)