Government legibility — people empowered by AI
Highlights
- ▸Government accountability bottlenecked by intelligence (processing), not access — AI removes the processing bottleneck, making legally transparent documents practically transparent
- ▸4000-page omnibus bills are legally but not practically transparent — AI makes dense government documents accessible to non-specialists
- ▸"Seeing like a state" reverses: AI enables society to see back at government — accountability tools that were asymmetrically government → citizens now work both directions
Original excerpt
Something I've been thinking about - I am bullish on people (empowered by AI) increasing the visibility, legibility and accountability of their governments. Historically, it is the governments that act to make society legible (e.g. "Seeing like a state" is the common reference), but with AI, society can dramatically improve its ability to do this in reverse. Government accountability has not been constrained by access (the various branches of government publish an enormous amount of data), it has been constrained by intelligence - the ability to process a lot of raw data, combine it with domain expertise and derive insights. As an example, the 4000-page omnibus bill is "transparent" in…
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