Technology for Good
For decades, technology has been wielded in our politics for evil. It is time for a paradigm shift to use the technology to better represent the will of the people for a better, more efficient and responsive government.
Those same decades have seen top down decision-making (think trickle down), but anyone who has held a job knows that the ones to know where efficiencies can be truly gained, what rules no longer make sense due to new technology or procedures, or what is a barrier to services are the ones on the front line or the users. We need to give more power to the workers and the citizens, especially since they are the ones most impacted by any changes, good or bad. It's time to make us part of the solution.
We now have the technology where we can solicit input from everyone, so let's do it. This is separate from the standard public comment rules.
We have over 250 million adults in our country with a wide range of experiences and knowledge. Part of how we reached this point in our history is the disenfranchisement of the citizenry not feeling heard and not seeing effective and meaningful changes.
Each agency can have its own version for its particular niche, but we need a national one where we can submit our ideas for improvement, whether solicited or not. The truth is we are liable to see a lot of resistance from our elected officials and/or agency heads because the power of transparency, direction of change and ideas will come from us, not primarily from them.
Government realignment, regulations, and direction
On our Restructure Agencies and Enhanced Financial Planning pages, COTG started with what makes sense to us. But we need your input.
Sensible and ethical AI laws
A person owns the copyright to their own body, their own voice and their own facial features, to protect against generative AI (deep fakes or realistic, digitally generated imitations).
Banning AI content from paid (including in-kind payment) political advertising.
No AI usage in government to make determinations on contracts, grants or funding.
No AI usage to write government reports or hiring/firing decisions.
We should explore extra taxes on AI products that use or have used the public's information, such as social media and photos/videos to train or supplement their AI models for profit. If they are profiting from our collective information, then we should receive benefits (similar to royalties or a luxury tax) as well in the form of additional funding for government services that benefit us.
AI data centers disproportionately utilize our energy and water resources and should bear the financial burden of doing so, instead of raising costs for the average American.