From: jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>
Date: Thu, 30 Jan 1997 10:38:18 -0800 (PST)
To: Dale Thorn <aga@dhp.com>
Subject: Re: Rejection policy of the Cypherpunks mailing list
Message-ID: <199701301837.KAA10125@mail.pacifier.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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At 09:05 PM 1/28/97 -0800, Dale Thorn wrote:

>I dare say that the downside of this is much less pleasant than the
>virtual anarchy (in the bad sense) we suffer now.  If the police get
>out of control, A.P. will arrive just in time to plug a few of those
>holes, so to speak.  Ideally, future robotics should be able to
>provide something like Gort (sp?) to take the place of human officers,
>given advances in the kind of pattern matching needed to deter
>aggression and the like.  Those who don't make it past the robots,
>well, the rest of us can learn to behave, and we'll be much better
>off when we do.


Your comparison with the fictional Gort, in the movie "The day the earth 
stood still" is of course apt.  It was only after I'd written most of the 
essay that I realized that an AP-type system would function much as Gort did.  

Occasionally we (CP) see a spoof where somebody claims to have developed a 
software program to "replace the judicial system" or something like that.  
Well, the problem with such a claim (aside from the obvious and enormous 
AI-type difficulties) is that the current system contains numerous biases.  
Writing a program to replace the legal system would presumably require that 
these biases be measured (and admitted-to!) and implemented into a 
well-defined system.  

What we'd discover is that the current system only barely resembles the 
guarantees in the US Constitution. At that point, there would be an argument 
between those who will insist that the Constitution be followed, and those 
who believe that the current de-facto system, however biased, be maintained 
as-is.  

 

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com