Decades of ever-evolving technology haven’t set mankind free. Will AI be any different, wonders Robert Howe.
When I started working in the early 1980s, there was an almost revolutionary excitement about the advent of one-per-desk (OPD) computing -what we now call the personal computer (PC). In those days, mainframes ruled supreme. These massive machines were housed in unique climate-controlled chambers, perched on a raised dais and worshiped by white-coated acolytes. Running a program on one was a bureaucratic ordeal: you had to apply for permission, write out your Fortran code on structured sheets, submit it to the typing pool and wait hours for a result – only to discover a transcription error that forced you to start all over again.
The OPD promised liberation from this inefficient system. Computing society envisioned a paperless office, a future where automation would free us from bureaucracy, where workflows would be seamless and life itself would become simpler. In short, a decade after “Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance” was published, the OPD promised to elevate our quality of life to levels we had never imagined.
Forty years later, I can’t help but laugh at the naivety of these ideas. If nothing else, the rise of the PC, the Internet and modern computing has made life far more complex, not simpler. Instead of eliminating bureaucracy, technology has fueled its exponential growth. Decades of rapid innovation have undeniably improved our world, but they’ve also led to an unprecedented expansion of governance. Thirty years of the peace dividend have produced a world run by bureaucrats, lawyers, accountants and financial controllers. We now live in an infinite rat’s nest of rules, laws and compliance procedures so complex that no one truly understands them holistically. The irony isn’t lost on those of us who once believed technology would set us free.
However, we’ve now reached the end of the peace dividend. As Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans recently put it, we’re neither at peace nor at war but caught in a “grey zone” where old systems must adapt to new realities.
Consider that while the Russians are turning their criminals into soldiers and feeding them into the Ukrainian meat grinder, we’ve been turning soldiers into criminals by shackling them with red tape, scrutinizing their every decision and charging them with war crimes if they dare (not to) pull a trigger. This pattern of behavior – the invention of systems that come to enslave us – isn’t just a military problem; it’s a systemic problem that affects governments, corporations and institutions across the board.
Over the past few years, I’ve worked with several large organizations facing existential threats, whether from market disruption, geopolitical risk or internal inefficiencies. Leadership in these organizations recognized the danger, understood the need for rapid change and communicated this urgency to their employees. Their employees, in turn, were eager to contribute. They saw the writing on the wall and were willing to adapt. Yet, despite this alignment, progress was constantly thwarted. Not by a lack of innovation. Not by a lack of resources. But by automated bureaucracy. Procurement, safety, compliance, HR regulations and horrendously opaque SAP workflows created a stranglehold on agility. The very systems designed to protect efficiency now actively prevent it.
The uncomfortable truth is that we’ve lost control over the very systems that govern our lives. Our regulatory frameworks have become so dense, convoluted and inflexible that they threaten to cripple our ability to react to crises. In a time of increasing geopolitical threats, bureaucracy is our biggest enemy.
The US government has recognized this problem. Its answer is Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which seems to mainly involve firing thousands of government employees. In my experience, people are rarely the problem; the problem is the system within which they’re required to operate. Given that this system is essentially a very large set of rules and associated data, could we not use AI to (quickly) find ways to regain control of it?
As a corollary, I fed this article into ChatGPT and asked it how AI might contribute to solving the problem. It provided a long and interesting list of ideas, which seemed quite hopeful. However, it closed with a rather HAL-like summary: “The text argues that bureaucracy is now the biggest enemy in a world of rising geopolitical threats. AI could be the key to cutting through red tape, restoring human control over complex systems and enabling institutions to respond dynamically to crises. Whether AI will liberate us from bureaucracy or entangle us further in it depends entirely on how it’s implemented.”
Hmmm …
