The veil of ignorance
There are many predictions of a black future in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) and algorithms take over and we live in a digital dystopia. And we will be slaves, they say. At the risk of downplaying it, it’s nothing humans can’t handle. We have already traveled that path, on more than one occasion. For example, slavery, or let’s take a look at “Taylorism.”
American industrial engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor had many ideas about how companies could integrate machines and workers to achieve maximum efficiency, and he wrote them all in his 1911 book, The Principles of Scientific Management .
Maximum efficiency: if you can’t measure it, you can’t control
As an employee at Bethlehem Steel, a US steel company, Frederick Taylor observed that managers knew very little about how specific jobs were actually performed and designed a series of experiments that would influence his famous scientific management principles .
In one of the experiments, he improved the efficiency of the shoveling operation, designing new optimized blades for each of the different materials. In another, he used a stopwatch and biomechanical analysis to come up with a better method for workers hauling to railroad cars, getting it transported almost three times as much as is regularly done. These and other time and motion studies became the origins of Taylor’s management theory (still in use in many industries).
Automation, algorithm-based management, and Artificial Intelligence engineers are challenged to create tools that enable humans to increase effectiveness by optimizing their combined talents, rather than maximizing their individual contributions.
Digital transformation
Now consider, for example, these ideas: Process analysis; efficiency; collection of empirical data; standardization of best practices; disdain for tradition; mass and scale production, waste disposal; knowledge transfer between workers and from workers to tools, processes and documentation .
These seem like ideas drawn from a “ Digital Transformation “ plan in response to the COVID pandemic , but no. They have been raised, several decades ago, by Taylor and — this is where the ‘but’ lies — when they are taken to extremes, or practiced with little regard for the humans who carry them out, the result is alienation. and untying .
Automation, algorithm-based management, and Artificial Intelligence engineers face the challenge of creating tools that enable humans to increase effectiveness by optimizing their combined talents, rather than maximizing their individual contributions. (Because) As with Taylorism, reliance on algorithmic management can end up creating workplace unrest and broader social unrest .
From utilitarianism to equity
In response to utilitarianism (“the best act is the one that provides the maximum utility”), John Rawls (1921, 2002), in 1971, in his book A Theory of Justice , proposes a thought experiment known as “The veil of ignorance “ .
The veil of ignorance , as is expected from many thought experiments, should not be taken in the literal sense because its purpose is to explore ideas about justice, morality, equality and social status in a structured way.
those decisions you must make without knowing who you would be in this new society
Mental exercise: summary
You have the opportunity to design society from scratch, what would it be like? How would you distribute wealth and power? Would you make everyone the same or not? How would you define justice and equality?
And, here is the trick: those decisions must be made without knowing who you would be in this new society
The rules
According to Rawls, in a just society all individuals must possess the following:
- The necessary conditions for self-respect
- Power and opportunities
- Wealth — income — sufficient for a good quality of life (not necessarily all must be rich, but they must have enough money to live a comfortable life).
The components
The people, designing this ‘ hypothetical society ‘ behind The Veil of Ignorance , must satisfy two key components:
For these ‘designers’, human behavior is not a mystery, they understand the general principles of science, psychology, politics and economics. They are clear on key economic concepts such as comparative advantage, supply / demand and have a desire to create a stable and orderly society. Knowing human psychology leads them to be aware of the universal desire for happiness and satisfaction.
Rawls considered all this as the minimum viable knowledge for rational decision making.
A simple example
Imagine that you have the task of cutting a pizza to share with your friends and that you are the last person to take a slice. It may be that everyone, including you, is thinking of getting as much of it as possible, and the only way to make sure this doesn’t happen is to make all the slices the same size. You could cut a large portion for yourself and a few small ones for your friends, but one of them could take the large portion and leave you with a small portion.
We can also consider as an example the Tragedy of the Commons , introduced by the ecologist Garrett Hardin . In short, this mental model states that shared resources will be exploited if a fair distribution system is not implemented.
Another example: Laws and their application
But let’s consider an example more ‘grounded’ to certain social realities that we live today. Let’s say that the opportunity is given to support a bill, you might ask yourself: if it affects you or not, would you support it anyway?
All the people who have the opportunity to make important decisions that shape the lives of large numbers of people are almost always those in positions of power. These people are almost always members of privileged groups.
For example, laws that allow or prohibit abortion have typically been enacted by men. Since the issue has no real meaning in their personal lives, they are free to base their decisions on their own ideological views, rather than considering what is fair and sensible.
But, let’s say we find ourselves with the hypothetical situation that every so often, a percentage of the world’s population will change bodies. Anyone deciding on abortion laws would have to face the possibility that they themselves end up as a woman with an unwanted pregnancy.
and … What about AIs?
The veil of ignorance is nothing more than an exercise in empathy, a thought experiment in which we give ourselves the privilege of putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes. An exercise that helps us make better decisions by imagining how we would feel about those decisions if we woke up the next morning to discover that we were one of the people who was directly affected and did not participate in the decision.
Algorithms, systems that manage teams or employees, and artificial intelligences are created by people, they are not born alone (at least not in this timeline), they are tools that, on the contrary, offer a lot of opportunities to design more flexible and satisfying ways of working.
Of course, as tools, they are prone to manipulation and abuse, but in the end we humans find the way, we have already been there. We will learn — even by trial and error — as we have done with other technologies, with other working methods.
Further reading
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The book ‘The Principles of Scientific Management’ is in the public domain and is available from the Gutemberg online library: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/6435 .
A Theory of Justice , John Rawls
The tragedy of the commons
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedia_de_los_bienes_comunales
The kingdom of the ants
Another example to see the implications of the Veil of Ignorance is to consider the social structures of certain species of ants. A queen ant forms its colony, by itself, and once the colony grows and becomes strong, it joins other colonies, but not before facing the first group of worker ants to reach maturity. The queens fight to the death until one remains. When they first form a colony, queen ants are behind a Veil of ignorance, they do not know if it will survive. All they know, instinctively, is that cooperation is beneficial to their species.
Originally published at https://anotheronymous.substack.com.
