Cloudworld: A Hegelian Theory of Complexity and Algorithmic Reality

Philosophy could be an important conceptual resource in the determination of human-technology interactions for several reasons. First, philosophy concerns the topics of world, reality, self, society, aspirations, and meaning, all of which we are hoping to reconfigure and accentuate in our relations with technology. Improving human lives is after all one of the main purposes of technology. Second, philosophy relates to thinking, logic, reasoning, and being, which are the key properties of what we would like our technology entities to do. We would like our technology entities to be more like persons: pre-uncanny valley but fully-fledged tech others; thinker helpers, empathic listeners, coaches, optimizers; a new kind of technology-presenced companion. However, ensconced in recent computational advances, it has been neglected to look to thinking about thinking as a primary resource. Third, philosophy treats the grasping and naming of new things in the world, which is precisely helpful in the case of new and quickly-emerging technological realities.

Hegel could be a potentially helpful position in the consideration of the governance of emerging technologies. This is because the Hegelian reference point is specifically a moving dialogical expanding and not a pre-specified moment in response to unfolding situations. The Hegelian method involves triads: there is the thing itself, its negation, and a bigger third position that sublates the truth content out of the two previous positions into a new shape of its own consciousness. This kind of conceptual robustness could help in articulating more nuanced positions regarding emerging technologies and moving beyond stark binaries like ‘adopt-or-don’t adopt,’ technological dualism that ‘any technology has both good and evil uses,’ and a seemingly inevitable hopelessness in the face of existential risk.

The current situation of emerging technology is one of algorithmic reality. Not only are more new kinds of technology entities having a substantial presence in our human reality, where we are interacting with them on a regular basis, there is a sense of a quickening progression of these entities. There are drones, self-driving cars, personal home robots, quantified-self gadgets, Siri-commanded mobile phones, blockchain smart contract DACs, tradenets, deep-learning algorithms, big data clouds, brain-computer interfaces, neural hacking devices, augmented reality headsets, and deep-learning gaming worlds. Further, each of these technology classes is itself a platform, network, and app store, where the implication is cloudworld. Cloudworld is the notion of a deep multiplicity of networks as a compositional element of new algorithmic realities, where every network is a Turing-complete general computational substrate for every other. Any technology can immediately ‘grok,’ simulate, and run any other; the meaning of which from our human standpoint is vastly unclear. Derivatively, any sort of cloudmind (clustered interactions between multiple human minds or entities (e.g.; artificial intelligence) coordinated via the Internet cloud) might run on any platform.

A Hegelian theory of algorithmic reality is a complexity philosophy position, meaning that it has the properties of a complex adaptive system in being nonlinear, emergent, dynamic, open, unknowable, self-organizing, and interdependent. A complexity philosophy position is required to congruently correspond to the underlying reality which is itself complex. Algorithmic reality is not just an increasing degree of human-technology entity interaction but a multiplicity and proliferation of classes of network technology entities. The Hegelian position is exactly one that might constitute a bigger yes-and collaboration space that expansively accommodates all parties.

Inspiration: Minsky's legacy in the context of contemporary and near-future AI

A New Kind of Economic Philosophy: Network Economies of Abundance

Blockchain technology, as revolutionary as it is, is perhaps most revolutionary in exposing the corner of a whole new philosophy of economics that can be formulated as a Network Economics of Abundance. Not just a new economic theory, but a new philosophy of economics is required because the entirety of existing economic theory has been constructed around the assumption of scarcity, and reconfiguring our economic thought around abundance instead as a central parameter requires rethinking economics so profoundly as to be a new philosophical position that is outside the field of economics. Thus, it is timely to articulate a Philosophy of Abundance. Many different pieces have been emerging in the world that can be assembled into a description and future vision for this Network Economies of Abundance (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Network Economies of Abundance: A transformational philosophy of economics.

Click for a bigger chart.

Shifting from the Labor Economy to the Actualization Economy
First considering Paradigms, two positions can be articulated. First is Traditional Economies. We are familiar with traditional economic models where the organizing parameters are scarcity, control, hoarding, hierarchies, and relationships of power being held over others. The definition of economics concerns the production and consumption of goods and services, and success is measured by output (GDP). The goods and services that are valorized and measured in the formal economy are produced by monetary-based labor.

A second position is Network Economies of Abundance where the organizing parameters are completely reversed. This economics is based on abundance, access, availability, yes-and collaborative willingness, and power shared with others. Network Economies of Abundance are measured in fulfillment; though actualization, connection, purpose, and meaning. In a full, liberation economics, the measurement metrics are self-chosen by individuals and groups. The definition of economics has shifted, away from transactions, even if game theoretic, to interactions. Economics can be seen as a facilitation mechanism rather than a transaction mechanism. Economics becomes a discovery and exchange process, one of interaction, acknowledgement, collaboration, and creation.

Evolving Positions in Network Economies of Abundance

Network Economy: Already in the current world, distinctly different economic models have arisen and co-exist alongside the traditional model. This has always been true regarding the informal sector, and is now more recognizable. One feature that characterizes network economies is a free flow of information, and engaging and interacting with that information, and more generally active participation. Another feature is that there is a mindset shift to access rather than ownership, or at least an attunement to different ownership models, and the notions of rights, responsibilities and stewardship attached to each. There are peer-produced commons goods like Wikipedia, sharing economy properties like Uber and Airbnb, and there is a multi-currency society where other currencies such as attention and intention are monetized. Societal shared trust stems from individual identity being known by others.

Resource Grid Economy: This is what is starting to unfold now, the idea of Ubiquitous on-demand Resource Network Grids, which is fundamental in the mindshift to abundance. More and more resources are becoming fully dynamically available, lurking in the background as a resource blanket, to be called forth on-demand for use at any moment. For example, mind-controlled personalized drones could deliver on-demand items from an intention picked up by personalized QS EEG neuro-hacking rigs or smarthome personalized robots like Jibo, or the Nest. Ubiquitous resource grids are practical, and contribute to the ongoing mentality shift from scarcity to abundance. Time is freed for other higher-level cognitive engagement and enjoyment when resources are always-available on-demand, instead requiring cognitive effort to plan for availability. A simple example is having to know the bus schedule (keeping it loaded in memory) versus walking outside, opening up an app and seeing what bus is next. Societal shared trust is a function of agent reputation.

Crypto-Economy: The emerging crypto-economy uses blockchain technology and cryptocurrency tokens like Bitcoin to automate and facilitate human (and human-technology) interaction patterns. Decentralization as a new organizational paradigm extends our capabilities beyond hierarchical organizational models (both practically and values-wise (e.g.; more autonomy for all agents)) into trustless very-large scale models for coordinating world-scale activity. A million cryptocurrency tokens could bloom as the community token of individual cryptocitizens and groups for coordinating local post-monetary economies like basic income initiatives and demurrage programmable currency redistributions. Cryptographic ledgers could coordinate spot transactions (cryptocurrency) and t+n interactions with smart contracts and autonomous dapp, DAO, DAC, DCO, and datt.co entities and all physical and intangible assets registered as smart property. Societal shared trust is instantiated though smartnetwork consensus, independently non-totalizingly (integrity-preservingly) signed.

Needs-based Economy: A final position in the Network Economies of Abundance could be one in which the focal point is needs, where the needs of all entities readily surface and can be met. A needs-based economy focuses on the most important aspects and deeper level of what occurs in economic transactions. Each entity (person, group, community, country, technology entity) has needs. Some of the most important needs for humans tend to include acknowledgement, connection, contribution, meaning, and action in the world. Economics is a strategy for getting these and other needs met. Smartnetwork code entity DAOs/DACs could unobtrusively orchestrate patterns of interaction among biocryptocitizen agents to maximize needs-meeting, including by registering needs as smart assets to which token is posted to indicate degree of met-ness (basic income smart needs). Another example could be secure user-permissioned cloudmind collaborations with other human and technology entities for the purpose of problem-solving and creative expression. Societal shared trust is a priori, based on agent capacity, in digital society smartnetworks of the future.

Reference: Swan, M. (2015). Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy. O’Reilly Media.

Blockchain AI: Consensus as the Mechanism to foster ‘Friendly’ AI

The blockchain is the decentralized public ledger upon which cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin run; the blockchain is possibly the next Internet; the blockchain is an information technology; the blockchain is a trustless network; the blockchain is an M2M/IOT payment network for the machine economy; and the blockchain is a consensus model at scale, the mechanism we have been waiting for that could help to usher in an era of friendly machine intelligence. The blockchain’s consensus mechanism could be instrumental in the connected world of Bitcoin which necessarily accommodates communication between humans and machines, and the possibility of increasingly autonomous machine actions and entities which could lead to artificial intelligence and a technological singularity (a moment when machine intelligence supersedes human intelligence).

Large Possibility Space for Intelligence
Speculatively looking towards the longer term, there may be a large possibility space of intelligence that includes humans, enhanced humans, different forms of human-machine hybrids, digital mind uploads, and different forms of artificial intelligence like simulated brains and advanced machine learning algorithms. These intelligences would likely not be operating in isolation, but would be connected to communications networks. To achieve their goals, digital intelligences will want to conduct certain transactions over the network, many of which could be managed by blockchain and other consensus mechanisms.

Only Friendly AIs are able to get their Transactions Executed
One of the real benefits of consensus models is that they could possibly enforce friendly AI, which is to say cooperative, moral players within a society. In decentralized trust networks, an agent’s reputation (where agents themselves remain pseudonymous) could be an important factor in whether its transactions could be executed, such that malicious players cannot get their transactions executed or recognized on the network. (It does not matter if malicious players masquerade as bonafide players since the reputation requirement and network incentives elicit good behavior from all players, malicious and bonafide alike). Some of the key smartnetwork operations that any digital intelligence may want executed are secure resource access, identity authentication and validation, and economic exchange. Effectively, any network transaction that an intelligent agent needs to fulfill their goals could require some form of access or authentication that is consensus-signed, and which cannot be obtained unless the agent has a good (benevolent) reputational standing in the smartnetwork. This is how Friendly AI could be effectuated in a blockchain consensus-based model.

The Blockchain Consensus-Recommended Data is a High-Resolution Information Technology
The blockchain is an information technology, a consensus-derived third tier of modulated, denser, freer-flowing information. Level one is dumb, unenhanced, unmodulated data; level two is socially-recommended data, data elements enriched by social network peer recommendation, and now, level three is blockchain consensus-recommended data, data’s highest-yet recommendation level per group consensus-supported accuracy and quality. Consensus data is data that comes with crowd-voted confirmation of quality, the vote of a populace standing behind the data quality, effectuated by a seamless automated nonce-mining mechanism. Possibly, the blockchain is precisely the kind of scalable information authentication and validation mechanism necessary to expand to a global and eventually beyond-planetary society. The blockchain as an information technology provides high-resolution modulation regarding the quality and authenticity of information.