Extended Essays 2021

Government by AI

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decisions using solely rationality and calculation for the aim of eternal contentment and

harmony for the citizens.

Scenario 1: Wealth Distribution

Rational AI would choose to operate wealth re-distribution to an extreme. As both

Schopenhauer and Plato recognized, conflict of interests and differences in individuals is the

fundamental cause for conflict and therefore suffering. Reducing this difference would reduce

the suffering and establish a stable, conflict-free community. Through AI ’s precise calculation

of the quantity of property to each citizen, harmony, contentment, and longevity are achieved.

However, China’s misstep into communism shows th at people are intrinsically repulsive to

extreme wealth distribution. People would rather choose painful freedom than the restricted

harmony and contentment. The choice of painful freedom represents the Nietzschean will:

there is an underlying irrationality in choosing freedom than the optimum choice of eternal

happiness, that is what Nietzsche would consider the aesthetic ideal of unrestrained will.

Scenario 2: Education

Rational AI would choose to ingrain good and moral ideals into its citizen and cultivate

autonomously moral individuals for the societal harmony. It would, as Plato described in The

Republic, implement a compulsory education that promotes positive values and censor the

negative. Currently, algorithmic censorship on social platforms is already in place, which

eliminate violent, sexual, and disturbing content, which highly likely includes ideas that the

government disproves of. Future full governance of AI will enable complete control of the

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