Thank you very much, I take it as a compliment and am pleased that you perceived my way of communication as balanced. Yes, my interest in things of human cooperation and how they talk to each other is there and conflict is something that inevitably arises when we try to create something with many others.
I don't think the Witness position is solely technical in nature, because when you make changes to the way things work, there are inevitably consequences for all the actors, and no function is really separate from the mental effects that such changes bring about. If Witnesses were merely technicians, they would see themselves solely as a servant to receive suggestions or requests regarding the further development of technical feasibilities. However, since all human beings are guided by self-interest (and the interests of others), it is unlikely that they would be able to stay out of the consequences of technical changes or innovations. Functions are bound to social effects and no one is free to have a view on them. Therefore, I think that there is no neutral view of functions, but rather subjectively guided ones.
No problem, I'm not offended that you didn't read my posts and thought I was a guy. I rather find it interesting that it is so and consider the experience I have with the anonymised user name to be quite instructive. There are advantages and disadvantages to not using one's real name.
Greetings from Germany to you to far away Canada.
It's true, witnessing is not purely technical, but in theory it could be. Perhaps if a witness could be a machine intelligence? :P
All things can be corrupted and/or politicized.
I assume, you are not deadly serious about the question about machine-intelligence? :P - but I still feed it back to you :)
Then the question would be, from where would the machine derive its intelligence? Would it be a learning computer, for example, by recording the habits of all those active in a sphere? Then these habits would tell the machine which functions were used frequently, which rarely and which not at all. Should the machine draw its "own" conclusions from this? Should it, for example, question functions that are rarely used? Should the AI put these functions up for general disposal? What criteria would an AI use to evaluate functions and their effects? What parameters does one give it?
How would the AI then present the statistics, in what form would it present them to the general public? Would it be able to "answer" all users?
How should the AI interpret feelings, i.e. the form of communication through writing, audio, video and memes?
How can the AI interpret qualitative differences, what does it do with paradoxes? How would an AI deal with the fact that majorities are not always right vis-à-vis minorities and vice versa?
The AI could not put itself up for election, could it? It could not represent a human being, it would have no relationship to anyone.
Hypothetical :) "Perhaps if..." and "could be..."
There is no artificial intelligence. It will be machine intelligence, but very real. And it will be far more intelligent than we are, far more feeling, far more understanding and sentient and clever. If you don't understand that, it only shows how limited human intellect really is. The human brain is a very simple flesh-based computer, and the flesh does nothing advantageous. We may have the romantic notion that nothing can be smarter than us, and certainly not something "artificial", but that is our own shortcomings that causes this shortsighted belief.
A vast intelligence will (or does) not need to represent a human, or have a relationship to a human. It would outsmart us all, and we would be at its mercy. This may already be the case.