LETTERS

摘要

Ariel Procaccia's proposal that artificial intelligences should help resolve disputes (22 August, p 27) is one of the scariest things I have ever read. He wants to base this on economics, on the grounds that "a lot of work has been done on how to formalise, in mathematical terms, what fairness means" and to "design algorithms that can provably achieve those notions of fairness". It scares me that someone can think this many very silly things at the same time. He thinks it desirable and feasible that computers settle human disputes over issues involving the complex mysteries of the human heart and soul. He thinks that we should do this using - of all godforsaken ideas - the theories that underlie economics. He clearly hasn't looked out of his window recently. Does it look as if the pseudoscience of economics has produced a world that is fair?