# To what extent can robots help us make better decisions? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 7, 2016, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015 "2016-08-07T06:59:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2016, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015/21 "2016-08-07T19:59:25Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > Robots may or may not make things simpler in the future. > > There are people who believe computers will be sooner or later used in various decision-making processes, such as human resources management for example, due to their ability to quickly process great amounts of relevant and consistent data so that they can come up with resolutions that will allow for better efficiency and productivity in any organization. It’s already been mentioned, but I think it’s worth re-emphasizing that computers have been used in this way for a great many decades – decision support systems go back to the 60s, and AI systems have achieved spectacular successes in recent years. > [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > … But suppose you are in a position of authority and while employing such AI you are suggested to resort to religion in order to be more successful in influencing people and implementing your policies. > Would you take the advice and use religion as a tool? > > And if your answer is no, would you be able to admit a limitation to AI or to using AI in handling complex social issues? That’s not a “limitation of AI”. If an AI system is trying to find optimal strategies for a particular goal, it may well suggest strategies that aren’t practical for legal or moral reasons if it doesn’t have sufficient knowledge of the law, for instance, or lacks information about human concepts of morality. So one ignores the particular strategy, imposes the appropriate new constraints, and iterates toward a different solution that applies the necessary constraints. Where problems can arise – and we’ve already been there a long time – is when complex automated systems prevent a theoretically simple and obviously logical action from being taken because there’s simply no provision for it and no way to do it manually. This isn’t a problem with AI but just a problem with automation generally, and specifically with poor design. And there are interesting moral dilemmas that may come up with driverless cars, where the car cannot avoid an accident and has to pick the “least bad” option. The moral dilemma is how you evaluate “least bad” – least bad for the vehicle occupants, or least bad for the totality of other vehicles and people who may be involved? If you’re about to have a head-on collision, should the car veer right where it might hit pedestrians, or veer left and drive off a cliff? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2016, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015/22 "2016-08-07T21:16:17Z")
What if the AI said that people are happiest when they can blame scapegoats for their problems, and therefore you should blame everything on the Jews and round them up and send them to the camps? What if the AI said that people are unhappy more than they are happy, so the way to get the maximum amount of human happiness is human extinction? What if the AI said that religion makes people happy and so you tell them that your decisions are handed down by God, but then the people find out you lied to them and they drag you out into the streets and hang you by your neck from a lamp-post? What if the AI kept posing hypothetical questions? ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2016, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015/23 "2016-08-07T21:57:52Z")
L. Ron Hubbard resorted to religion, and didn’t even need an AI Robot to advise him. ---
**Author:** ![Arkcon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/96bed5/32.png) [@Arkcon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arkcon)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2016, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015/24 "2016-08-07T22:43:17Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Is there one US president in the last 50 years who has not said something along those lines? It’s SOP for presidents to ends speeches with: And God bless the United States of America!! > > If that’s what you mean by “use religion”, then we’re already doing it and didn’t need a computer to tell us it was a useful thing to do. Well, yeah, so who refutes that sort of talk, I don’t think Bernie Sanders did. And Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins probably wouldn’t either,even if they went into politics. I suppose if they did, and used a computer, that for some reason highlighted a religious passage, and they were so boorish and uncultured to negate that part of human culture (and I doubt they were/are of that frame of mind) wouldn’t that just chalk it up to a computer glitch? ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2016, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015/25 "2016-08-08T18:01:40Z")
Two statements: 1. Suppose the AI indicates you can be more successful in influencing people and implementing programs if you resort to **religion**. 2. Suppose the AI indicates you can be more successful in influencing people and implementing programs if you resort to **falsehoods and deceptions**. I see no practical difference in meaning between the two. Clearly someone has programmed the AI to propose solutions without an evaluation of moral or perhaps ethical consequences of those solutions. As far as I’ve concerned, having an “advisor”, either human or an AI, suggest such solutions is ok. So long as those solutions are not simply implemented automatically. As to the scenario, without knowing the specifics I can’t say which side I would come down on. Differinf circumstances might mean I’d make one call in one case and another in another. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015/26 "2016-08-09T12:43:35Z")
I don’t need an AI to tell me that when I’m talking to a religious person who has a religion-based objection to something, it helps if I can put my own arguments in terms that their own religion uses. It’s no different from talking to a chemist in formulas, or in English to the people reading these boards. I wouldn’t try to use religious language with someone who doesn’t, nor would I use religion to go “God Smash” on someone, but the first is merely practical and the second is repulsive. The uses listed in the OP have all been in place for quite a while, but we call them “business software” instead of “AI” and have a human somewhere in the line. That the human is smarter than the machine’s algorithm is generally assumed, but not always true. Computers are used to filter resumes, to automatically produce lists of “things to make / buy / move around” from a list of expected or actual sales… I’m always surprised by how many people are practically drooling on the meeting table when we mention that it is possible to set up safety stocks, or to make some materials be part of those calculations while others are not. These are people who make their living in logistics, often with postgraduate training on the subject, but having a machine do things any housewife does without thinking seems to them the height of scientific advancement. Dude, seriously, stop drooling on your laptop or you’ll need a purchase requisition for a new one… ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015/27 "2016-08-09T13:21:14Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > You regard AI as a trustworthy tool, which can handle certain complex issues faster and better than human beings, but if you were in a position of authority, you wouldn’t accept to use religion as a tool to implement your policies or influence people even if AI recommended it. > > Objection One: > What if there were other people in positions of authority who did follow the AI recommendation and as a result they became more successful? How would you deal with this pressure? You touch on this later, but I’m not sure I get it: what’s the big deal about AI? Imagine that I’m in a position of authority, and that I have a trusted advisor: PhD in psychology, PhD in political science, supervises a team of expert researchers, you name it. He’s not an _artificial_ intelligence; he’s just _intelligent_. If he says that ‘resorting to religion’ will score me some political victories, do you think doing otherwise is ‘admitting a limitation’ regarding mere human intelligence? And if other folks in positions of power get so advised, won’t I be up against the same ‘pressure’ regardless of whether they get that advice from humans or AIs? ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2016, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015/28 "2016-08-09T13:49:45Z")
> [@PlaceboTarget](#): > > There are people who believe computers will be sooner or later used in various decision-making processes, such as human resources management for example, due to their ability to quickly process great amounts of relevant and consistent data so that they can come up with resolutions that will allow for better efficiency and productivity in any organization. Replace “will be sooner or later” with “are”. Companies already use computers to analyze data to augment decision making. Pretty much anytime you hear terms like “business intelligence”, “data science”, “data analytics”, “decision support systems” or “predictive analytics”, it usually involves using data to augment or support decision making. Some real world examples of analytics projects I’ve worked on: -Assisting attorneys in their document reviews by analyzing how label a sample set of documents and then applying those codings to a much larger population. -Applying statistical algorithms to predict when your sales reps have the highest likelihood in making a sale. -Fraud detection -Making staffing decisions based on current utilization needs and expected future project pipeline. > [@UY Scuti](#): > > Suppose the AI indicates you can be more successful in influencing people and implementing programs if you resort to religion. That’s not really how AI works. It’s not like some virtual life coach who follows you around giving advice. Typically analytics is used to answer a specific business question based off of qualitative and quantitative metrics. “How many people should I hire next quarter?” “What attributes make a good hire?” “How likely are certain loss-incurring incidence and how much capital should we allocate to cover those losses?” “How likely are people in certain demographics likely to buy this product?” Maybe an AI might come up with a correlation such as “people who are very religious are more likely to purchase XYZ Product”. In a case like that, I don’t think “using religion” to sell a product is fundamentally different from using any other subject. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/to-what-extent-can-robots-help-us-make-better-decisions/762015.md?page=1)