Control Fraud

David_Allen

A recent post by Bruce Schneier on control fraud.

Control fraud is a process of optimizing an organization for fraud, utilizing a position of power to suborn controls.

From the abstract of the paper Bruce references:

Individual “control frauds” cause greater losses than all other forms of property crime combined. They are financial super-predators. Control frauds are crimes led by the head of state or CEO that use the nation or company as a fraud vehicle. Waves of “control fraud” can cause economic collapses, damage and discredit key institutions vital to good political governance, and erode trust. The defining element of fraud is deceit – the criminal creates and then betrays trust. Fraud, therefore, is the strongest acid to eat away at trust. Endemic control fraud causes institutions and trust to become friable – to crumble – and produce economic stagnation.

Friendly AI is an important topic on this site, but what about creating friendly organizations such as companies and governments? The damage done by a government wireheaded for fraud can be enormous.

Can the same approaches used to build FAI be used to improve other types of systems?

A recent post by Bruce Schneier on control fraud.

Control fraud is a process of optimizing an organization for fraud, utilizing a position of power to suborn controls.

From the abstract of the paper Bruce references:

Individual “control frauds” cause greater losses than all other forms of property crime combined. They are financial super-predators. Control frauds are crimes led by the head of state or CEO that use the nation or company as a fraud vehicle. Waves of “control fraud” can cause economic collapses, damage and discredit key institutions vital to good political governance, and erode trust. The defining element of fraud is deceit – the criminal creates and then betrays trust. Fraud, therefore, is the strongest acid to eat away at trust. Endemic control fraud causes institutions and trust to become friable – to crumble – and produce economic stagnation.

Friendly AI is an important topic on this site, but what about creating friendly organizations such as companies and governments? The damage done by a government wireheaded for fraud can be enormous.

Can the same approaches used to build FAI be used to improve other types of systems?

Yeah, obviously my answer assumes that "legal" is an actual well-defined category; but since the original question seemed to as well, and in this case there was an actual simple answer within that framework that didn't require dissolution of the question, I figured it was OK. :)

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Control Fraud

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