Episode 65: Daniel Kondor – The Impact of AI on social resilience
What can the collapse of ancient civilizations tell us about modern AI risks?
Daniel Kondor is a postdoc at the Complexity Science Hub with research interests in the area of social complexity & collapse and Urban Sustainability.
I decided to invite Daniel because of his recent publication Complex systems perspective in assessing risks in artificial intelligence where he is analyzing the European AI Act’s perspective on AI risk and what alternative ways exist to evaluate and manage AI risks.
In the interview, we are discussing how Computational Social Scientists are making use of computer simulations to study social phenomena. Daniel describes how these simulations can use historical data from archaeological findings to, for example, study the effect of political institutions on the stability of societies, or to bring it into modern times, how data from social networks can be used to study the suppression of minorities.
Relevant for the Austrian AI Podcast, of course, is the role of AI in all of this. Unfortunately, the interview leaves too many open questions and areas that we did not talk about.
My Takeaways
I am happy to see that experts from other domains than computer science are investigating social aspects of AI and how it might affect society in the short and long run.
It is very frustrating though, that it seems to me that all those discussions in the end come down to opinions and perspectives. It seems to me that experts and hobbyists alike come to very similar conclusions and that the level of uncertainty of any prediction is ridiculously high.
It leaves me with the perspective that neither history nor the study of other complex phenomena serves as a reliable guide on how to shape political decisions around AI today.
References
- Waring TM, Wood ZT, Szathmáry E. 2023 Characteristic processes of human evolution caused the Anthropocene and may obstruct its global solutions. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 379: 20220259. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0259
- Kondor D, Hafez V, Shankar S, Wazir R, Karimi F. 2024 Complex systems perspective in assessing risks in artificial intelligence. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 382: 20240109. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2024.0109
- https://seshat-db.com/: Global History Databank
By Manuel Pasieka