There has been a lot of ink spilled over the potential and perils of the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT. Some of this is chin-pulling nonsense. But there’s an intriguing, and potentially troubling, use for AI that’s already being tested: as lobbyists.
Not the Gucci-Gulch kind of lobbying that most people think of. But lobbying that is much more widespread: the use of written comments, either on proposed regulations, letters to members of Congress, comments on official websites and select news sites.
Unlike the bots that crawl social media today, or even the more prosaic programs some advocacy groups use to send automated emails to members of Congress, this kind of automatic, robotic lobbying can come off as real. And that makes it uniquely positioned to create genuine mischief:
What makes the threat of AI-powered lobbyists greater than the threat already posed by the high-priced lobbying firms on K Street is their potential for acceleration. Human lobbyists rely on decades of experience to find strategic solutions to achieve a policy outcome. That expertise is limited, and therefore expensive.
AI could, theoretically, do the same thing much more quickly and cheaply. Speed out of the gate is a huge advantage in an ecosystem in which public opinion and media narratives can become entrenched quickly, as is being nimble enough to shift rapidly in response to chaotic world events.
Moreover, the flexibility of AI could help achieve influence across many policies and jurisdictions simultaneously. Imagine an AI-assisted lobbying firm that can attempt to place legislation in every single bill moving in the US Congress, or even across all state legislatures. Lobbying firms tend to work within one state only, because there are such complex variations in law, procedure and political structure. With AI assistance in navigating these variations, it may become easier to exert power across political boundaries.
Skynet would have loved this capability. But there are other downsides, too:
There are obvious potential downsides if AI systems develop instrumental power-seeking goals and use lobbying as a means to effectuate misaligned policies. The potential, less obvious, downside we focus on here is that extended LLM capabilities may eventually enable AI systems to influence public policy toward outcomes that are not reflective of citizen’s actual preferences. This does not imply the existence of a strongly goal-directed agentic AI. Rather, this may be a slow drift, or otherwise emergent phenomena. AI lobbying activities could, in an uncoordinated manner, nudge the discourse toward policies that are unaligned with what traditional human-driven lobbying activities would have pursued.
The bottom line:
…if AI significantly influences the law itself, the only available democratically legitimate societal-AI alignment process would be corrupted.
All the more reason to tread very, very carefully – and with the utmost transparency – on who uses AI and for what purposes. Maybe confine it to writing text for the box scores. And leave the rest to us actual, fallible human beings.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
READ NEXT: George Santos Isn’t Responsible for Both Parties’ Dirtiest Lies – Not Even Close >>
We also have to be concerned about when AL decides that it’s the human race that’s the problem.
If AL could examine all of our laws… it would definitely find everything that’s bad about both parties, especially when someone changes the rules to benefit one or the other.
So the Dimms campaign is working. Even conservative media are calling us a Democracy. No we are not. We are a Constitutional Representative Republic. AI may well constitute a threat, but to the Republic, not Democracy.
This chilling article reminds me of the old 1970’s movie Westworld, wherein human technocrats think they run things, but actually the robots are so subtle and intricate, a chief scientist has to admit: ‘Some are so advanced, we don’t know esactly how they work.’ And therein lies the threat and the ultimate horror of the film. Yul Brynner as the advanced gunslinger robot plays the most frightening role of his career.