The Confidence-Man within the twenty first century

I not too long ago learn Herman Melville’s novel entitled “The Confidence-Man”. (At the least I assumed it was a novel after I picked it up, though typically it appeared extra like a collection of anecdotes.  I have to reread it.)  Within the story, Melville portrays a collection of con males (or is it only one?), pretending to be a doctor, philanthropist, pharmacist, thinker, psychologist, funding advisor, and many others.

Considered one of Melville’s characters observes that it’s nearly not possible for the economic system to perform with out belief:

Confidence is the indispensable foundation of all types of enterprise transactions.  With out it, commerce between man and man, as between nation and nation, would, like a watch, run down and cease.

Sadly, evolution offers a bonus to those that benefit from others.  Luckily, an equilibrium is reached the place solely a small a part of the inhabitants consists of sociopaths.  Right here’s Melville:

“Pray, which do you suppose are most, knaves or fools?”

“Having met with few or none of both, I hardly suppose I’m competent to reply.”

“I’ll reply for you.  Fools are most.”

“Why do you suppose so?”

“For a similar motive that I believe oats are numerically greater than horses.  Don’t knaves munch up fools simply as horses do oats?”

One character argues that solely machines will be trusted:

“I’m now on the highway to get me made some type of machine to do my work.  Machines for me.  My cider-mill—does that ever steal my cider?  My mowing-machine—does that ever lay a-bed mornings? My corn-husker—does that ever give me insolence? No: Cider-mill, mowing-machine, corn-husker—all faithfully attend to their enterprise.  Disinterested, too; no board, no wages; but doing good all their lives lengthy; shining examples that advantage is its personal reward—the one sensible Christians I do know.”

“Oh pricey, pricey, pricey, pricey!”

And he anticipates the day when machines shall change all employees:

“Therefore these thousand new innovations—carding machines, horse-shoe machines, tunnel-boring machines, reaping machines, apple-paring machines, boot-blacking machines, stitching machines, shaving machines, run-of-errand machines, dumb-waiter machines, and the Lord-only-knows-what machines; all of which announce the period when that refractory animal, the working or serving man, shall be a buried bygone, a outmoded fossil.”  

Melville wrote this in 1857, comparatively early within the new industrial economic system.  In some methods, the problem of “confidence” might be far more central to right this moment’s economic system than to the economic system of the 1850s, when most Individuals have been farmers and lived in small villages the place folks knew one another.  The next is from a 2021 paper on psychopathology:

On this course, it has been proposed that it will be doable to search out increased ranges of psychopathic traits in sure professions or occupations (e.g., entrepreneurs, managers, politicians, traders, salesmen, surgeons, attorneys, telemarketing workers). The rationale behind this may very well be that it’s exactly these traits those that would enhance the duties concerned in these professions or occupations and even facilitate success in them (Hare, 2003b; Dutton, 2012; Babiak and Hare, 2019; Fritzon et al., 2020). . . . 

On this regard, Dutton (2012), after making use of the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale (LSRP; Levenson et al., 1995) on-line to five,400 folks and asking about their occupation, discovered that, in the UK, the ten professions with the very best ranges of psychopathic traits have been firm CEOs, attorneys, radio or tv characters, salespersons, surgeons, journalists, monks, law enforcement officials, cooks, and civil servants.

There’s a substantial amount of dialogue about what AI will or won’t be able to do sooner or later.  I see much less dialogue of how AI will tackle the issue of confidence.  Who would you belief extra, a human promoting natural treatments, or an AI allotting recommendation on natural medication?  A human actual property agent, or an AI offering info on homes on the market?  A human funding advisor or an AI giving funding recommendation? 

If Melville is true, then the largest factor that AIs can have going for them is that folks belief machines greater than they belief different folks.  Recall how Uber largely solved the taxi regulation downside.  Maybe AIs will clear up the principal-agent downside.

PS.  It is a hyperlink to Melville’s novel.  Chapter 7 gives an amusing tackle efficient altruism (particularly the portion from the underside of web page 53 to web page 58.)