> Why does it matter if the flagging is automatic? Does that somehow make it more acceptable?
Neil Postman discusses this at length in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992):
> Naturally, bureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear.
AI is a new wrinkle in an old trick to distance elected officials from accountability. After the electrical blackouts last week in Texas, the weather-worthiness of power generation facilities was framed as a technical decision that engineers made, instead of a political decision to weigh costs and benefits of regulation. When the decision is framed this way, the public's attention is directed away from the elected officials who are supposed to be accountable, and for which we have created straightforward mechanisms of accountability. Public anger dissipates in a fog of uncertainty of how these unknown, anonymous engineers could be held accountable and what kind of accountability they should actually have. AI plays exactly the same role.
Neil Postman discusses this at length in Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992):
> Naturally, bureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear.