RE: Would You Be Comfortable Being Ruled By An AI Government?
Not really. As AI is ultimately created by PEOPLE who already impose their own ideologies upon it the moment they start programming in the initial rules. Now, if we can assume those people are 100% benevolent and wouldn't have typical human failings that might not be a bad thing. Then again if we could find people like that to design government we wouldn't really need AI. The only benefit of AI is that in theory it would remain true to the initial "constitution".
People often forget that when people make excuses for algorithms, or AI they tend to not pay attention to the fact it was people who created those algorithms, and AI. It was people that tweaked those algorithms and AI.
Any AI would likely have a backdoor to permit tweaking to keep it from running amok. That would be the stated reason. That backdoor could also be used to corrupt it.
The only benefit of AI in this case is it's speed of processing. As tools I think it is inevitable AI will increasingly become a tool used by governments and many other things. Yet I do not see it replacing humans anytime soon.
It is great at certain things. It is atrocious at others, mainly because we don't understand all things in the mind well enough to replicate them in computers yet. We can make simulations that APPEAR to be those things, but they end up typically not even being close to the real thing. Just like a maniquin they give us something to focus on that our brain recognizes and our imagination can fill in the gaps without actually being equivalent to that which they are supposed to represent.
Most of those other things will be individuals, IMHO. Government and the most powerful corporations in the world cannot keep us from just sharing silly songs. They sure can't keep us from doing the same thing with AI - which is just another kind of data, after all. AI may be the best example of how technology increases the power of individuals relative to institutions. The power of an institution is that many people contribute some of their power to one endeavor. Many AIs cannot be wielded by an institution or it will lose it's institutional advantage completely over individuals, each of which can employ an AI, or some several, just like an institution.
For this reason, I expect AI to contribute far more to human freedom than the technical tyranny fearmongers prattle about.
Most of what people call AI today, I consider to actually just be what are known as Expert Systems. I've been a student of AI since the mid-1980s. I've watched a lot change. (especially the meaning of words)
What I'd call true AI doesn't exist yet.
We have some amazing Expert Systems though. Systems designed to handle specific tasks, or solve very specific problems. They are amazing at it. As such they are useful tools. Though I don't consider that intelligence.
We have simulations that mimic tasks that we do with our intelligence. Yet they lack the awareness to go outside of the task, and in reality are quite limited.
Though that doesn't mean they are without danger. They can potentially be even more dangerous if one considers they are not able to see without the constraints of the task they have been assigned to.
These are all reasons I expect AI to be most useful to people individually, rather than suddenly able to control us due to it's superior abilities. Expert systems are really useful for specific tasks, like managing logistics, feeding schedules for agriculture, or any other dronelike task, but have practically zero relevance to intuitively managing concatenations of systems in diverse cultural milieus.
Institutions fund the development of technologies, and as technology advances, the specific advantage of the given technology is of reduced effect in extent and duration, and also disperses throughout the population of individuals at ever increasing rates, where the increase in power the new technology avails increases the power of individuals relative to institutions. The more tech advances, the more this power differential decreases, and the faster it does so. AI is liable to be extraordinarily potent, and since it is just data, to disperse faster than physical gadgets.
The benefits to individuals AI brings is enormous compared to the degree of benefits it brings institutions. Institutions have traditionally been able to concatenate the efforts of multiple individuals, and this has delivered to them power that individuals could not match. Since AI enables automation to multiply the efforts of individuals, it is particularly empowering of individuals while relatively far less so to institutions.
You make some great points and I have aluded to the possibility of humans behind the AI being the real people in control and that is surely a scary thought. As you said, AI works based on the initial rules which could be changed by the people who designed it or are monitoring it.