The problem with being human and the brain bottleneck in leadership
All brains eventually burn out
Leaders are representatives. Being a leader is really just being a representative for others. It's a kind of service and there isn't supposed to be real power in it. Real power if too much for too long is obviously unhealthy.
The fact is all brains eventually burn out. People who do not factor in this are actually promoting some of the problems. Bad decisions made by tired brains is still bad decisions.
To be the best at service requires knowing what your demographics (people you serve) want. This is not in my opinion going to be accomplished just by going to rooms and talking to 1000 people at a time. This requires algorithms, data science, machine intelligence, just to scale.
Conclusion
The article mentions that power "causes" brain damage but I think that is a bit of clickbait because a casual relationship is not clear. What we do know is that any brain in a position of heavy responsibility (must make decisions for greater and greater numbers and diversity of people) will sooner or later burn out. A person will get tired, they will become fatigued, and this will have physical effects. For example a person under high stress will produce a lot more cortisol. This high cortisol level in a young person might be okay because for the most part the adrenal glands can keep up with it but as a person is under this kind of stress for years and years eventually the problems associated with chronically high cortisol levels can emerge. This can be higher blood pressure, weight gain, headaches, or even in some cases the adrenal cortex stops producing cortisol resulting in adrenal insufficiency.
So the fact is that there can be physical consequences to a high stress life style to the health of a person. It is also possible that a high stress lifestyle can result in brain damage in theory if there is lack of sleep for example or poor eating habits or just a lot of inflammation. Inflammation in fact is suggested currently as being a primary cause of atherosclerosis. So what is the point?
The point is that the human brain is physically limited. There is no way beyond these physical limits using the limited brain except to use the brain to automate, augment, and offload. In other words by thinking outside of the brain it allows the brain to do more with less. A person who desires to serve as effectively as possible is going to require increasingly better tools to do more with less. If the brain is the only tool then what about when the brain burns out? If everything is inside your head what happens if your brain fails, malfunctions, has errors? Why let your brain be the bottleneck in your ability to lead?
Another argument for having AIs to be unbiased leaders who take care about the well-being of us. At least better than the politicians we have right now. Just who will set the rules, how far they can go in protecting us, if we are the worst enemy for our own environment?
Probably better to stick with the flawed brains, and just more often replace them (before damage occurs).
AI doesn't have to be the leader. AI just has to be a better calculator. The humans can be the leaders and have improved leadership capacity due to AI.
Replacing flawed brains means limited ability to lead. Can a human brain process the wants and needs of 10 million people? How about 1 billion people? It will never scale no matter how often you replace one limited brain with another. Better ability to process information means better ability to make complex wise ethical decisions.
then it is not AI... sorry. The Hive Mind will not be our friend
I blog about the AI conflict and its silent assimilation... the human brain has flawed when the environment is coercive only.