#AI OpenAI ChatGPT: Can you visualize Artificial Intelligence being used to measure the effectiveness of governments?

I asked ChatGPT: 

Can you visualize Artificial Intelligence being used to measure the effectiveness of governments? E.g., how tax revenues have been used in different programs; or giving updates in real time on how many are employed or contracted to deliver specific results?

ChatGPT answered: 

"Certainly, I can help you visualize how Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be used to measure the effectiveness of governments in various aspects. AI has the potential to revolutionize governance by providing real-time insights, data analysis, and predictive modeling. Here's how it could work:

1. Data Collection and Integration: AI systems can aggregate data from various sources such as government databases, financial reports, surveys, and social media. This could include information about tax revenues, government spending, employment rates, program outcomes, and public sentiment.

2. Real-time Monitoring: AI algorithms can process data in real time, allowing for immediate tracking of key indicators. For example, AI could provide live updates on the number of individuals employed through government programs, the progress of infrastructure projects, and the allocation of tax revenues to specific initiatives.

3. Predictive Analytics: AI can use historical data to predict future outcomes. For instance, it could analyze the impact of different government policies and predict how they might affect employment rates, economic growth, or other relevant metrics.

4. Performance Evaluation: AI can compare actual results against predefined goals and benchmarks. If a government's target was to allocate a certain percentage of tax revenue to education, AI could assess whether this goal is being met and flag any discrepancies.

5. Program Effectiveness Analysis: AI can analyze the outcomes of various government programs. It can determine which programs are achieving their intended goals, identify areas for improvement, and even suggest adjustments to optimize resource allocation.

6. Sentiment Analysis: AI can analyze public sentiment by processing social media posts, news articles, and other online content. This can provide insights into public perception of government initiatives and policies.

7. Transparency and Accountability: AI-powered dashboards can provide easily accessible visualizations of government performance metrics. This promotes transparency and allows citizens to track how tax revenues are being used and the impact of various programs.

8. Adaptive Policy-making: Based on real-time data analysis, AI can help governments adapt policies more quickly. For example, if certain economic indicators start to decline, AI might suggest policy changes to mitigate negative effects.

9. Resource Optimization: AI can analyze spending patterns and suggest areas where funds could be reallocated for better outcomes. This could help governments make more informed decisions about resource allocation.

10. Decision Support: AI systems can provide decision-makers with insights, predictions, and potential consequences of different choices. This assists governments in making informed decisions that align with their objectives.

Visualizing AI in Action: Imagine an interactive dashboard accessible to both government officials and the public. This dashboard provides real-time data on tax revenue distribution, program outcomes, employment rates, and public sentiment. Users can select different metrics, time frames, and government initiatives to view detailed visualizations. AI-powered predictive models generate "what-if" scenarios to help policymakers assess the potential impact of different strategies.

In this vision, AI contributes to a more data-driven, accountable, and responsive government. However, it's essential to address challenges such as data privacy, algorithm bias, and the need for human oversight to ensure that AI is used ethically and effectively in governance."

I asked ChatGPT: 

Carrying out this delicate task, so as to avoid any undue biases or favoritism, how important is it that #AI is supervised by a continuously renewed and very diversified board of taxpaying citizens?

ChatGPT answered: 

"The idea of having a diverse and continuously renewed board of taxpaying citizens to supervise AI-driven governance is indeed a valuable concept. Such an approach can help mitigate biases, ensure accountability, and maintain the ethical use of AI in government processes. Here's why it's important:

1. Representation and Fairness: A diverse board that reflects a broad range of demographic, socioeconomic, and cultural backgrounds can help identify and address biases that might inadvertently be present in AI algorithms. They can ensure that AI systems don't disproportionately favor certain groups or exclude others.

2. Accountability and Transparency: A citizen board can hold government agencies and AI developers accountable for their decisions. It can demand transparency in AI models, algorithms, and data sources, ensuring that decisions made by AI are explainable and justifiable.

3. Checks and Balances: An independent citizen board can serve as a critical check on government power. It can review and assess the implementation of AI systems, ensuring that they align with democratic principles and the best interests of the public.

4. Ethical Oversight: Citizen board members can provide ethical perspectives and considerations that might not be fully captured by technocrats or policymakers. This ensures that AI applications respect human rights and societal values.

5. Renewal and Adaptation: A regularly renewed board ensures fresh perspectives and prevents stagnation. As technology and societal dynamics evolve, having new members join the board can bring in updated insights and approaches.

6. Public Trust and Participation: Involving citizens directly in the decision-making process enhances public trust. When people see that their voices are being heard and considered, they are more likely to have confidence in the AI-driven governance process.

7. Reducing Capture: A diverse board makes it harder for any single interest group to capture the decision-making process and steer it in their preferred direction.

However, while a citizen board is a promising approach, it's important to consider potential challenges and limitations:

· Expertise: Citizen board members might lack technical expertise in AI and governance. It's crucial to provide them with the necessary knowledge and resources to make informed decisions.

· Bias and Conflicts: Board members could also bring their biases and conflicts of interest. A careful selection process, transparency, and conflict-of-interest guidelines are necessary.

· Resource Requirements: Maintaining a diverse board requires resources for training, compensation, and support, which might be a logistical challenge.

· Balancing Act: Striking a balance between informed decision-making and preventing information overload is essential. Board members need to have access to pertinent information without being overwhelmed.

· Influence and Decision Power: Defining the extent of the board's influence and decision-making power is crucial to avoid token representation or making the board's role merely symbolic.

In conclusion, a citizen board can play a vital role in supervising AI-driven governance, ensuring fairness, transparency, and accountability. However, careful planning, structuring, and ongoing evaluation are necessary to make this approach successful in practice."

I thanked ChatGPT: 

This is a good start. Thanks!

ChatGPT responded: 

"You're welcome! I'm glad I could help. If you have any more questions or need further assistance in the future, feel free to ask. Good luck with your exploration of AI in governance, and have a great day!"

Note: The answers are copied exactly from those given to me by ChatGPT

Forcing oligarchs to keep their yachts, would be a much more severe sanction.

In those very rare moments the desire to own a yacht sets in, I remember the saying that the second happiest day for a millionaire is when he buys himself a super-duper yacht but, the happiest one, is that day he sells it.

With this in mind why should we advance the oligarchs such happiness? It could be much more effective to have a judge order him to keep the yacht and its crew in tip-top conditions for the next twenty years, and, if failing to do so, have to spend five years doing community service.

Warning! Let's not wake up to taxpayers having to pay unemployment benefits to many fired yacht-crews and pick up huge yacht-maintenance costs.

I warn so because though there must be tremendous buyer market in Russian oligarch yachts, few buyers, or none, will dare to show up. What's the future for this yachts: luxurious restaurants or tourist attractions like fancy Russian Faberge eggs floating museums?

Please, the more you feel enemies to your grandchildren’s way of life could be accumulating too much resources, would you not love for as much of these as possible to be frozen in unproductive assets, like fancy super-yachts?

So, is confiscating yachts a really potent way to fight a war and bring peace?

As also applies when taxing wealth it is important to consider if assets, like yachts, are to be sold, who are the buyers and what would they otherwise have done with that money. Would you, e.g., like an able entrepreneur to freeze his money/purchase-power in a luxurious yacht? And are we really sure those who will receive that money, e.g., the bureaucracy of turn, will give it a better use?

Warning! Just let not confiscations become somebody’s profitable business. 

I say this because, when selling a confiscated asset, e.g., a Russian oligarch’s super-yacht, what’s really obtained, effectively confiscated, is the money somebody else has willingly put into that useless asset.

There is no time for games

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote about the evolution of economic nomenclature in the context of describing the efforts of economists and politicians to soften over the impact of economic disasters. He describes how, throughout the period between 1907 until the Nixon years, the word ‘panic’ evolved into crisis, depression, recession, sideways movement and rolling readjustment. At the end of this period, the panic of 1893 would have been called a simple “growth correction”.

In Venezuela we have perfected the habit of exaggeration, and I therefore think we have never linguistically sub-estimated our economic crises. Our problem is that we have never managed to act in accordance with the gravity of our problems. We are eight months away from the swearing in of a new government, but the majority of the proposals put before us seem to be related more with actually making it there rather than with finding ways of facing the emergency situation we are in today.

In today’s economic context, we have a basic problem. The country blithely jumped onto the global wave of commercial aperture without having identified a strategy beforehand that would guarantee an acceptable level of employment. We trusted too much in the sheer power of market forces while totally ignoring the fact that sometimes these forces can work only if there is a total destruction of the existing economic structure in the country. Nobody was willing or prepared to accept such destruction, nor did anyone have much reason to accept one of such magnitude.

Unemployment grew hand in hand with the opening of the economy to global markets that implied prices at international levels, for example, for fertilizers. Instead of allowing the market in all its cruelty (supposedly temporarily), to indicate the way forward, politicians, either because their hands trembled or simply because they wished to take advantage of the added resources, let the public sector employment grow as never before.

We are at the crossroads of a new century (indeed, millennium). We know that the marginal economic value of our public expenditure is zero, zilch, zippo. We also know that we should, without much contemplation, sack almost 500,000 public employees, since these, also without contemplation, are the most probable cause of the poverty of another 5 million. What we do not know is how to go about it, especially in an electoral year.

The result is that we continue to be captives of the illusion that this massive reduction can be made only when the private sector (who’s taxes and interest rates we want increased) has supplied us with jobs to offset it. My God! We certainly seemed to have made up our mind on this particular chicken and egg situation.

The current state of the oil sector makes this structural problem even worse. If it was difficult to maintain the system with oil at US$ 15 per barrel, it must be impossible at US$ 11. The drop in oil prices, however, now gives us the excuse to review our current policies. If I were to sit down with a panel of experts and was allowed the traditional 30 seconds that is allowed an expert to solve problems, I would say:

Our priority is to generate real employment in Venezuela. If we don’t, we will never recapture the confidence of the Venezuelans, and without the latter the confidence of the international community is a moot point and may even be damaging. 

The lowering of interest rates is essential in order to kick-start this policy. In this sense, we must devalue the Bolivar now, accepting that it has already been devalued about 20% and 30%, a fact that has been hidden behind high interest rates. We should also study the possibility of changing banking regulations to allow for a system of financing based on indexed units that would allow real repayment terms for those who wish to invest in long term projects.

In order to insure that the above has real significance and does not worsen the situation even more, we must among other things: immediately reduce public payroll by 500,000 people; reactivate the construction sector; impose (without being bashful) protectionist import duties of 15-20% on all imports (except those from Colombia [Edited out: the only trading partner were we bilaterally seem to be promoting jobs and who we should invite to join us in the increase of tariffs]; and finally, reduce or even eliminate the value added tax. The reduction of the value-added tax, even though it flies in the face of fiscal balance, is a sacrifice the politicians must go through in order to make their promise of the reduction of the public sector in favor of the private one credible.

People may say that this is a Messianic proposal. In many ways they may be right. I think, however, that this alternative is based on sounder fundamentals than, say, those of the desperate Messianism which argues for the sale of PDVSA in order to balance the accounts.

The day a constitutional prohibition on new debt is put into place and the government has been limited and complies with its duties, I will be at ease with the plan to sell PDVSA in order to service our debt. In the meantime, the only patriotic thing to do is to avoid fanning the fires of waste, such as we did with the resources obtained from the oil opening.

The demands of university professors simply serve to make a point for drastic action. The professors brazenly maintain that they are 40,000 strong in 17 public universities. This translates into 2,350 per institution and they are asking for the equivalent of US$ 115,000 per head in compensation.

This is not a time for fun and games. Towards the end of June I read a statement issued by a representative of the World Bank who contemplates the possibility of a real depression in Asia. This is the first time I’ve read something like that, and knowing how discreet these officials usually are, it is frightening.

It just must get smaller

Last week, the Finance Ministerndeclared that “there will be no modification to the sales tax simply to comply with the requests of the business community”. Immediately thereafter, he stated that “when tax evasion is reduced ... we could think of reducing the percentage of the sales tax”. There is no doubt that the official sector has become expert at applying the “divide and conquer” formula.

The desire to reduce sales tax levels is completely normal and common, typical of tax payers world-wide. The reduction of sales tax levels doesn’t only benefit the business community. On the contrary, given the progressive nature of this tax, the salaried workers are normally the ones who benefit most from this reduction. In this context, to divide Venezuelans into businessmen on one side and workers on the other seems out of place.

Another such “division” is between income earners that actually pay their taxes and those that don’t. This would imply that the payment of taxes in Venezuela is simply the result of individual social responsibility and not as in other countries, the result of the existence of an efficient tax collection entity which is perceived as severe but just.

Normally, a State would not even have the right to apply new taxes in the face of such a deplorably poor and inefficient collection process. If it does, instead of complying with its duty as promoter of justice, it is merely promoting just the opposite. Evidently, there is a dose of truth as far as its final implication is concerned, when the Minister declares that there is a possibility that our taxes will be reduced if and when our neighbor pays his. This, however, does not imply that we must become the collector of our neighbor’s taxes. This function is still exclusively in the hands of the States.

This discussion, however, is totally irrelevant in Venezuela. Since the State enjoys unrestricted use of “our” oil income which, by the way, is obtained through the use of a fiscal collection system that is so efficient that we don’t even notice it, it should not collect one more cent. The Venezuelan State is so immense for a country with a population of 20 million, that it is difficult for even the shrewdest of politicians to hide it.

These declarations, which point toward the probable lack of fiscal pressure in Venezuela, were written in the midst of the negotiation and signing of the centralized public administration labor contract framework which will benefit seven hundred and fifty (750,000) workers. For those who worry about the State’s capacity to efficiently manage such a large public sector, an olive branch is offered; the labor contract upholds advancement by merit and awards benefits for individual achievement and for fulfillment of duties as a public servant.

In reality, these comments are simply variations of old and well-known themes. Subjecting this article’s readers to another version of the Venezuelan tragedy is not meant to be an expression of refined sadism, but the unfortunate result of the identification of new threats that block the development of solid public opinion that would demand, for the benefit of all, a real reduction in the size of the Venezuelan State.

One of these threats comes from international multilateral entities. After much insistence on the necessity of reducing the role of the State in favor of the private sector, the message has now been increasingly oriented towards the need to improve the efficiency of the state. That is to say, there seems to be no need to reduce the size of the State. What it should be, is more efficient. This position, which is obviously logical when applied to the efficiency of a State which has already been reduced in size, will unfortunately simply be an excuse for our pro-bureaucracy politicians to maintain, or even increase, the size of our public sector.

The second threat is endogenous, much more subtle and therefore much more dangerous. The theory that the problems facing the administration of the public sector in Venezuela are based not on its size but on the will, capacity and affection for the country of its leaders has resurfaced as an issue around one particular pre-candidacy for the next presidential elections. This is evidently based in turn on this official’s excellent and admirable administrative achievements at a local level. We are again beginning to feel the first consequences when debates about the qualities of the pre-candidates bring up discussion about the merits of having solid political party administration experience versus the merits of political independence based on administrative capacity and personal integrity.

For someone convinced of the fact that even Bill Gates, reborn as Simón Bolívar (in other words, Mandrake The Magician) could not efficiently manage a country in which the State is as omnipresent as it is in Venezuela in the long run, these new theories are undoubtedly distressing.

Personally, and as a prerequisite to give my unconditional support, I will have to continue my search for a candidate with a less developed ego who recognizes that the future of our beloved country depends more on the dismantling of official bureaucracy than on its great will and capacity for work.

Per Kurowski