The greatest technology humans have invented and the one that currently needs most investment is bureaucratic collective action.
I have considered corporations, nation states, etc as forms of artificial intelligence that long predates computers. Just because the intelligence is collective doesn't make it less artificial. and just because the "code" that makes up these collective intelligences are written as laws and governance documents doesn't change the fact that it is an agent that can make "decisions".
I suppose it is hard for people to feel a connection with a group or org as intelligence opposed to an personified "individual" like ChatGPT. Kind of like how it is hard to see an anthill as an organism when we are so much more related to the ant. However just because its hard for us to relate to an anthill, it doesn't make it any less of an organism that behaves like an individual.
In order to advance AI, it is imperative to study and understand how our current "super intelligences" of nation-states and mega-corporations behave and how they interact with others and govern themselves.
It should come as no surprise how little understanding there is of the social framing of technology and tools.
From chipping flint to writing code, it's a huge mass of inherited and circulated technique-knowledge.
>I suppose it is hard for people to feel a connection with a group or org as intelligence
In theory (one theory, at least), we should have as much chance to understand what such an intelligence thinks as a single brain cell would have of understanding what goes on in a human mind.
Like; admin demands increase until the system barely functions and compliance is just barely possible.
BUT administrators would always like more data, controls and process.
So one possible outcome of AI is that computers magically pick up our admin burdens, freeing us to do our jobs in peace.
The _other_ possible outcome is that AI increases our capacity for admin and therefore generates way more admin.
A particular risk is where AI generates asymmetric leverage for administrators.
An example of this would be admin requiring lengthy forms to do such-and-such. If a human administrator no longer needs to spend their time validating or checking the forms, there's less pushback on making the forms longer or producing even more of them.
This is the most likely scenario.
The original sales pitch for Computers were originally to free doctors and nurses and admins by making things easier. But instead the administrative work exponentially grew.
However, we actually lack an understanding of how large systems are organized.
In the human body, each cell performs its task without a centralized authority but as an individual agent. The cells are selfish and just try to survive. But emergent in this behavior is a human that thinks itself the master of all the cells.
Michael Levin has done surprising things that fall from studying cells of animal bodies and how they can act independently.
We really need a science of agent based systems. I don't know of something that captures it entirely.
What I do know is that top-down hierarchical organizations are fragile and will corrupt with time. Agent based systems are the only way nature will allow to progress much.
Wasn't that Stephen Wolfram's _A New Kind of Science_?
We already have this field. It is just too new though. We seem to conflate the sciences with the efficient market hypothesis instead of the reality of progressing one funeral at a time. We may even have structures now that keep things in place after the funeral and stall progress even further.
I study complex systems on my own but if I was a PhD student I am not sure it would be a great career move.
We need to heavily (re)invest in processes, tools, ethics, technology that boost human social power and our ability to work together.
There are 8 billion people on the planet. So much potential.
No bureaucracy will ever care for individual goals, needs, desires as much as you will for yourself and your family.
We need some rules of the road and limits. History also proves that. But it's a fools errand to think that we can organize 8 billion people to work together, other than within some fairly loose rules that prohibit undesirable extremes of behavior.
Context seems like the most interesting thing to consider. I suspect the attitude and outlook of the individuals toward the organization is the key component (and their capacity to undermine the organization in some manner). All of this is to say that I don't believe organization is inherently against the human sentiment, it just needs to be seen as justified, sensible, and a net-positive to those involved.
I can see plenty of clear reasons why bureaucratic collective action is in need of investment, but I'm predisposed to suspect that's because currently it's pretty bad.