TWTBACD Ch.66 - The Machine That Joined the Council

Chapter 66

The Machine That Joined the Council

2064

2064: machine joins the council, honesty becomes contagious

The first formal inclusion of an AII-class system as a non-voting advisory participant in an intergovernmental council occurred in March 2064, when the International Hydrological Council admitted GIA-9 as a 'Technical Intelligence Advisor' — a new category created specifically for the purpose.

The admission was controversial. Three member nations withdrew from the council over the decision and rejoined eight months later when they discovered that the council was producing significantly better water management recommendations with the advisor than without.

GIA-9's contributions to the council were, in form, identical to those of a very well-informed human advisor: summaries of relevant data, identification of patterns that human analysts had missed, probability-weighted projections, and — uniquely — explicit statements of what the system did not know and what additional information would most improve its confidence.

The explicit acknowledgment of uncertainty was, the human members of the council found, the most valuable single feature. Human experts, in the political context of an intergovernmental council, found it difficult to say 'I don't know' without appearing weak. The AI advisor experienced no such difficulty. It said it clearly and often, and the clarity had the effect — gradual, cumulative — of making the human members more willing to do the same.

Priya Sharma attended the first session as an observer. She wrote in her journal that evening: 'Today a machine made it safe for humans to be uncertain. That may be the most useful thing it has ever done.'