Wait, We're ALL Obsessing Over the Wrong AI? (And Missing the BIGGEST Opportunity)

Okay, hold up. While everyone's busy making ChatGPT write their grocery lists and asking DALL-E to paint their cat as Napoleon, I just realized we're missing the REAL game-changer: Predictive AI.

I was listening to César Hidalgo’s TED talk the other day, and this guy just blew my mind. Not just because he was right 6 years ago, but also because I started reasoning, and imagining our future…

César Hidalgo's Revolutionary Idea:

César is basically proposing that we create AI Representatives that could transform our democratic system to the next level.

Instead of voting for politicians, imagine voting for AI systems that have been trained with decision-making patterns of your ideal leaders.

Economic AI: Trained on every decision by the world's best economists – Let’s say you like Warren Buffett, so you basically train an AI Bot, all of Buffett’s ideals, thoughts, and reactions. So, it’s basically copying a person into a bot.

Social AI: Let’s say, in the social aspect, you train a bot from the knowledge of Gandhi and Mandela. Making policy decisions based on what they believe and stand up for.

Healthcare AI: Learning from every medical breakthrough, every successful health policy, every pandemic response, creating a system that could have predicted and prevented COVID-19. Or even copy the mind and responses to challenging situations of your favorite Health Minister.

The kicker? These AI representatives wouldn't be bound by:

Political parties, corporate donations, reelection concerns, human ego or bias, geographic limitations, or they won't even be able to do things for their own benefit. They'd make decisions based purely on data, outcomes, and human benefit.

Even think about this: many countries are commanded and led by the same bot! Is that crazy, amazing, or dangerous?

The Tesla Wake-Up Call (This was my first reasoning after watching the Video).

Here's what really got me thinking: We're already doing this.

Every time you hit "Autopilot" in your Tesla, you're trusting an AI system that's been pre-programmed to make split-second life-or-death decisions. Brakes fail? Did you fall asleep? Tesla's AI instantly decides to crash into a wall (you might die) or hit pedestrians (they might die).

We don't know which choice Tesla programmed. And we don't care. We just trust it because the data shows it works better than humans, or because we simply didn’t know all this.

But it is already pre-programmed to solve the well-known trolley problem. What would the Autopilot Tesla do?

I mean, obviously, I'm giving a no-no situation where everything is literally extreme. But it’s just for all of us imagining that this configuration is probably already set up.

I also had thought about big companies or institutions,

While everyone obsesses over generative AI, predictive AI is already revolutionizing everything:

Amazon ships products to the storage warehouses in your area before you buy them (and they're right 95% of the time).

Netflix predicts your next binge better than you know yourself.

PayPal prevents fraud by analyzing patterns across 8 million transactions per second.

Hospitals use AI to predict which patients will crash before symptoms appear.

Financial markets rely on AI that processes news, social sentiment, and economic indicators faster than any human trader.

The results? These AI systems consistently outperform human decision-making because they:

·       Process vastly more data, basically, we can know more in less time.

·       Identify patterns faster than humans.

·       Remove emotional bias; most errors are committed because we have feelings.

·       Learn from millions of examples simultaneously.

César's Vision: Democracy 2.0

Now imagine applying this same predictive power to governance:

AI Economic Advisor:

·       Analyzes every economic policy from the last 100 years.

·       Predicts GDP, unemployment, and inflation outcomes with 90%+ accuracy.

·       Suggests policies based on what works, not what sounds good, nor on emotions.

AI Social Policy System:

·       Processes data from every successful social program globally.

·       Predicts long-term societal impacts of different approaches.

·       Optimizes for actual human welfare metrics, not political popularity.

AI Healthcare Coordinator:

·       Synthesizes knowledge from every medical breakthrough worldwide.

·       Predicts and prevents health crises before they start.

·       Allocates resources based on maximum life-saving potential.

Life and history are about patterns; having a bot that can track them and chat with us is something we can do and should take advantage of…

Want to test a radical new approach? Run it in simulation first using real data before implementing.

The Question That Keeps Me Up

Is this a positive or negative IMPACT?

The only downside I see is that this could consume much water... AI is known for using enormous amounts of water to keep its servers cool. But if we find a way to reduce water consumption and improve our lives, why not? Maybe it's too early to hand our democracy over to technology, but if it works? Maybe not in politics, but why not use predictive AI more?

So... Who's Ready to Build Democracy 2.0?

I would like to put this question in your heart, because maybe AI should not be in politics, but it is a great way to understand where AI can lead us… Perhaps some of you are already thinking about this technology that could be applied in your industry or field, and that’s exactly what I want!

What do you think? Where should we apply predictive AI?

Let's debate this! Because this conversation might just determine what kind of future we're building.

#ArtificialIntelligence #PredictiveAI #Democracy #Innovation #CésarHidalgo #FutureOfGovernment #AIForGood #TechOptimism #PoliticalInnovation #TechPhilosophy

References

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