Better Living Through Algorithms?

Like many others all over the world, the chances are you’re sequestered in your home, possibly with your children and/or spouse or pets, trying to while away the hours until schools reopen and you can go back to work. What are people doing to combat boredom and stir-craziness? Streaming TV shows and movies, of course! Imagine a world without “Netflix and chill” right now… the entire world would be building pillow forts and holding sock puppet shows in their living rooms (if they’re not already). Sci-Fi hit Westworld returned for its third season on HBO last Sunday, and given the state of the world before and during the novel coronavirus outbreak, the show’s take on the not-too-distant future doesn’t seem entirely farfetched. In the first two seasons, the show took place almost entirely within in the confines of a futuristic theme park populated by artificially intelligent humanoid robots. At the end of the second season, one of the AIs escapes the island theme park and makes it out into “the real world,” only to find it much more similar to the artificial world she just left than she had previously supposed.

In the future depicted in Westworld, virtually every aspect of human life is guided by a single, enormously powerful artificial intelligence that uses algorithms to place every human being on the planet into a job based on a points system. Think of it like your car insurance – the more points you accumulate on your driving record for things like moving violations and collisions, the more your premium goes up. On the show, the more points you accumulate through things like education and work experience, the higher you climb in the workforce – and society. The idea of human beings letting an AI determine their future en masse seems pretty farfetched – but is it really?

Cities are already experimenting using AI to help ease traffic congestion – what if AI determined that the best way to do so would be to stagger people’s commutes? An AI would essentially be determining your daily schedule, telling you to go into work at noon instead of 9AM and to come home at 8 instead of 5PM. Class sizes are a recurring issue in public education – could AI similarly stagger teachers’ and students’ schedules to create opportunities for more facetime between faculty and students? Food shortages are a worldwide problem – could AI determine the best way to ration out the planet’s nutritional resources to ease world hunger? In the event of a global pandemic (like the one we’re currently experiencing), could AI deduce where the next outbreak will occur and allocate resources accordingly? Infected people could have their movements back traced via their cellphones’ GPS and anyone they’ve come in contact with could be quarantined. (China, South Korea and Israel are already using cellular GPS data to try and track the spread of the virus.)

Traffic congestion, school class sizes, food shortages – these are all symptoms of what might be the most wide-ranging and long-lasting issue on the planet – overpopulation. If you saw the season premiere of Westworld, you might have noticed that the city of Los Angeles doesn’t seem as crowded in the fictional future as it is in reality. Although it’s never specifically stated, the implication is that the AI running this imaginary universe is regulating human procreation, i.e. how many children people can have and when they can have them. As a result, the underlying issues solve themselves. The question the show poses is a good one – would the world be a better place if we let AI run every aspect of human life? One day, could we live in a future in which algorithms tell us when (and possibly if) we can have children? Would people be able to accept computers running their lives to that extent? If we’re willing to let cars drive themselves (while we’re in them, no less), we’re clearly willing to leave our lives in the hands of AI to a point. And if you’re watching Westworld, you might be thinking that a world run by AI doesn’t look so bad right about now.

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