Immanence Reputations of Intelligent Instances running on Smartnetworks

One vision of the future is digital societies, comprised of different forms of intelligence like blockchain AIs, smart-contract DACs, and human mindfile uploads all running on smartnetworks. Verification of such digital identities may well be required for smartnetwork access. We are already living in a prototype of this world now, in the sense that access to digital properties requires digital identity verification. Many websites invite logging in with Facebook or Twitter as an already-established digital identity heuristic.

Also in the contemporary world, we are currently constrained to an embodied form, but there would be no such requirement in the digital societies of the future. Digital identity could become so distributed, portable, copiable, open-sourceable, sharable, malleable, and shardable, that it no longer makes sense to think in terms of entities. Instead of entities, personal identities, or embodied containers, there could be ephemeral instances; thinking, informational, actional, enjoyful, subjectivational instances. The question would then be how to enable smartnetwork operations in a post-entity society, perhaps one in which ‘ephemeral instances of capability and creativity’ have replaced identity-bounded entities.

One answer is that reputation could still matter. Even if not a full-fledged identity-entity, any instance, any measurable quantum, any participation no matter how ephemeral could still have a reputation. Reputations could become a lot more complicated, measuring different levels like actor, action, and intention, and also line-item credit for contributions and new ideas. Composite team reputations could be calculated for sharded groupmind participations. All this is could be possible through technology like blockchains that afford more granularity and accessibility in record-keeping.

Thus teputation might persist as a validation mechanism, even in advanced scenarios like post-entity digital societies. However, the trick will be to enact reputation assessment schemas that are not completely externally-imposed and outside the purview of the agent being evaluated. Preferable is re-envisioning reputation as a mechanism to empower the liberty and expression possibilities of the entities or instances being reputationified. This is an immanence reputation, one that is reflective of criteria self-determined by the agent and that accentuates its possibilities. The predictive analytics of the big data era could be applied to the development of reputational mechanisms to encourage agent futurity and potentiality realization as opposed to those that solely based on past acts.

Blockchain Thinking: Transition to Digital Societies of Multispecies Intelligence

The future world could be one of multi-species intelligence. The possibility space could include “classic” humans, enhanced humans, digital mindfile uploads, and many forms of artificial intelligence: deep learning neural nets, machine learning algorithms, blockchain-based DACs (distributed autonomous organizations), and whole-brain software emulations. Machine modes of existence are different than those of humans, which means the need for ways to interact that facilitate and extend the existence of both parties.

Blockchains for Trustful Interspecies Social Contracts
The properties of blockchain technology as a decentralized, distributed, global, permanent, code-based ledger of transactions could be useful in managing such interactions. The cryptographic ledger system could be used for interactions either between humans or multispecies parties, exactly because it is not necessary to know, trust, or understand the other entity, just the code system.

While perhaps not a full answer to the problem of trustful multispecies interaction, and the subcase of enacting Friendly AI, decentralized smart networks like blockchains are a robust system of checks and balances. As such, blockchains are a mechanism with more leverage than other available solutions in responding to situations of future uncertainty. Blockchains could be the infrastructure for setting forth the new social contract between humans and technology, and formalizing this arrangement in smart contracts.

Mutual Coexistence in the Capacity Spectrum for Actualization
Trust-building models for interspecies digital intelligence interaction could include both game-theoretic checks-and-balances systems like blockchains to alleviate threats and fears, and also at a higher level, frameworks that put entities on the same plane of shared objectives. The problem frame of machine and human intelligence should not be one that characterizes relations as oppositional, but rather one that aligns entities on the same ground and value system for the most important shared parameters, like growth and actualization.

What we want is the ability to experience, grow, and contribute more, for both humans and machines, and the two in symbiosis and synthesis. This can be conceived as all entities existing on a spectrum of capacity for individuation (the ability to grow and realize potential). Productive interaction between intelligent species could be fostered by being joined in the common framework of a capacity spectrum that facilitates the objectives of personal, mutual, and collective growth in creating the digital communities of the future.

Adapted from: Swan, M. We Should Consider The Future World As One Of Multi-Species Intelligence. Response to The Edge Question 2015. Ed. John Brockman. 2015. 

Ethics of the future: self-copies

Just as the future of science and technology is rife with legal opportunities and psychological study possibilities, so is it with ethical issues. One interesting example is the case of individuals having multiple copies of themselves, either embodied or digital.

1. Can I self-copy?

The first issue is how different societies will set norms and legal standards for having copies. The least offensive first level would be having a backup copy of mindfiles for emergency and archival purposes, much like computer backups at present. People take pictures and videos of their experiences, why not of their minds? The other end of the extreme would be the most liberal societies allowing all manner of digital and embodied copies. The notion of regulating copies brings up an interesting potential precedent, that currently, the creation of children is largely unregulated on a global basis.

2. When and where can I run my self-copy(ies)?

A second issue is, given copies, under what circumstances can and should they be run. A daily backup is quite different from unleashing hundreds of embodied copies of oneself. Physically embodied copies would consume resources just as any other person in the world and there would likely be some stiff initial regulations since national population doubling, trebling or more overnight would not likely be a useful shock to society. Not to mention the difficulty in quickly obtaining and assembling the required resources for a full human copy; despite the potential advances in 3D human tissue and organ home printers by then.

Digital copies is the more obvious opportunity for running self-copies and could be much more challenging to regulate. In the early days, the size and processing requirements of uncompressed mindfiles would likely be so large that a runtime environment would not be readily available on any home machine or network but would rather require a supercomputer.

3. Am I a copy?

A third interesting problem is whether it would be moral for copies to know that they are copies, and the related legal issues regarding memory redaction as explored in Wright's "Golden Age" trilogy. Depending how interaction between originals and copies is organized, it may not matter. Psychologically for the originals and the copies, it may matter a lot. The original may 'own' the copies or the copies may have self-determination rights. In the case of an embodied copy, it is hard not to argue for their full personhood but somehow a digital instance seems to have fewer rights, although it may come to be that shutting down an instance of a digital mind, even with a recent full memory backup and integration, is just as wrong as a physical homicide.

Interesting ethical issues could arise for originals and copies alike as to what to share with the others; should horrifying experiences be edited out as Brin's Kiln People do at times? There would be both benefits and costs to experiencing the death of a self-copy, for example. It would not seem ethical to make self-copies explicitly for scientific research purposes to garner information from their deaths, but it does seem fully ethical to have multiple self-copies for with different life styles, some healthier and some less healthy to investigate a) whether a healthy life style matters and b) to selfishly share exciting experiences from less risk averse copies back with the longer-lived healthier copy.

Indeed in the new medical era of a systemic understanding of health and disease where n=1, what better control examples to have than of yourself! However, epigenetic mutations and post-translational modifications may be much harder to equalize across copies than memories and experiences.

The issue of the definition of life arises as some people may want the abridged meta-message or take-away from experiences, indeed this is one of the great potential benefits of multiple copies, while others may wish to preserve the full resolution of all experiences. The standard could accommodate both, with the summary being the routine information transfer with the detail archived for on-demand access.

4. What can I do with my self-copies?

Societies might like to attempt to establish checks and balances to prevent originals from selling copies of themselves or others into slavery to reap economic benefits, as dystopially portrayed in Ballantyne's "Capacity". Especially in a potential realm of digital minds, there are many potential future challenges with rights determination and enforcement.

The 'AI abdication' defense is the argument that societies that are sufficiently advanced to have the ability to run self-copies would also have other advancements developed and in use such as some sort of consciousness sensor identifying existing and emerging sentient beings and looking after their well-being, a beneficent policing. There are numerous issues with the AI abdication defense, including its unlikely existence from a technical standpoint, whether humans would agree to use such a tool, whether a caregiving AI could be hacked and other issues. However, technology does not advance in a vacuum and society generally matures around technologies so it is likely that some detriment-balancing counter initiatives would exist.

For example, would it be moral to create sub-sentient beings as sex slaves or personal assistants? This may be an improvement over the current situation but is not devoid of moral issues. At some point, as more about consciousness has been characterized and defined, a list of intelligence stratifications and capabilities could be a standard societal tool. Animals, humans and AIs would be included at minimum. A future world with many different levels of sentience seems quite possible.

Mindfile deletion

How do you know that your mindfile will not be deleted, either on purpose or by accident? What would you do if your mindfile is stored in memory and not allowed to run? How would you know that you are not being run? Is not running the equivalent of being dead? How will you know that you are getting the processing power and bandwidth in your contract when reality is simulated and hardware test results could be simulated too?

There are at least two levels of challenges to address, akin to current physical world needs, first, survival needs and second, needs and rights when interacting with others.

Establishing rights for mindfiles
There will need to be ways to assure basic ‘human’ rights in a potential era of uploading brains to digital software files. There could be many misuses of massive databanks of mindfiles: they could be deleted at will (digital genocide) or by mistake by careless ISPs/data center managers, sold, kidnapped, copied, bred, hiveminded or discriminated against via less bandwidth and processing power. If the reality experienced by mindfiles is simulated, how would anyone know that the virtual reality they experience is the one they want to experience? A code or key could be created so that individual mindfiles could not be copied without the owners permission, agreement or knowing; perhaps like the telomere-shortening system used by biological cells. Pervasive externally run audit software could maintain lists of mindfile citizens (a future role for the nation-state) and periodically query each mindfile to determine its status and whether it is running. As usual, the white hats would need to stay ahead of the black hats.

Reducing naked Darwinism
With less transparency and social pressure, it is possible that the behavioral smoothing that has arisen in contemporary society would dissolve. Codes of conduct for mindfiles could be developed, probably with a much heightened awareness and refinement of the respectful treatment of consciousnesses. If virtuality is 100% sousveilled, this should not be a problem. In addition, mechanisms such as barriers, permissioning tiers and firewalled gardens could arise to prevent stronger minds from terrorizing and controlling weaker minds or different minds. The real goal would be to rearchitect social pressure in ways that are continually empowering to all individuals. Some mindfiles may prefer heavily controlled virtual environments, others may wish to venture onto the interstitial wildnets.

Brain-computer interfacing and the cognition valet

One dream of the future is to augment the human brain via direct linkage to electronics. Brain-computer interfaces could provide two levels of capability, first, by allowing machines to be controlled directly by the brain. This has already been demonstrated in invasive implants for motor sensing and vision systems and non-invasive EEG-based helmets for basic game play, but has been elusive in avatar control (the Emotiv Systems helmet is not quite working yet). The second level of capability is in augmenting more complex cognitive processes such as learning and memory as is the goal of the Innerspace Foundation.

On-board processing
The broader objective is bringing information, processing, connectivity and communication on-board [the human]. Some of this is ‘on-board’ right now, in the sense that mobile phones, PDAs, books, notebooks, and other small handheld peripherals are carried with or clipped to people.

There are many forms of non-invasive wearable computing that could advance. Information recording and retrieval could be improved with better consumer product lifecamming rigs to capture and archive audio and video life streams. Other applications are underway in smart clothing, wifi-connected processing-enabled contact lenses, cell phones miniaturized as jewelry (the communications, GPS, etc. functions not requiring display), EEG helmets with greater functionality and an aesthetic redesign from Apple, and hair gel nanobots. A slightly more invasive idea is using the human bactierial biome as an augmentation substrate and there are a host of more invasive ideas in body computing, implantable devices, evolved and then reconnected neural cell colonies and other areas.

Cognition Valet
After information recording and retrieval, the next key stage of on-board computing is real-time or FTR (faster than real-time) processing, particularly automated processing. Killer apps include facial recognition, perceptual-environment adjustments (e.g.; brighter, louder), action simulators and social cognition recommendations (algorithms making speech and behavior recommendations). Ultimately, a full cognition valet would be available, modeling the reasoning, planning, motivation, introspection and probabilistic behavioral simulation of the self and others.

Protocols and Etiquette of the future: “my people talk to your people” becomes “my cognition valet interface messages or tweets with your cognition valet interface.”

Distributed human processing
Augmenting the brain could eventually lead to distributed personal intelligence. As in, reminiscent of David Brin’s “Kiln People,” I use a copy of my digital mindfile backup to run some Internet searches and work on a research project while my attention is not focused on online computer activities, simultaneously a neural cell culture from my physical brain focuses on a specific task, and the original me is off pursuing its usual goals.

Editing human utility functions

There is a claim that potentially coming technologies, molecular nanotechnology and artificial general intelligence (AGI) for example, will not render human life much different. To the extent that humans control these technologies, it will be further cases of the same evolved human society using technological tools. But the claim goes on to include the ability to dramatically edit human biology as also not making a big change.

It is easier to agree with the first claim than the second. Regarding biology, even without editing utility functions, it is already being found that genes, hormones and other physical details determine a large part and much more of our existence than a conscious mind deigns to think. Genetic therapies, hormonal management and other tools may serve as de facto utility function editing. Better neuroscience, computer-based mindfiles, artificial intelligence aids for abstracting lifelogs and other advances could presumably allow for direct exposure and editing of human utility functions.

There are some examples of what occurs when humans have the opportunity to self modify through plastic surgery, steroids, tattoos and virtual-world avatars. With plastic surgery and steroids, the only objective appears to attain a closer social ideal of beauty or athletic prowess, but this could be a function of cost and legality. Tattoos show much more creativity and human expressiveness; many people think deeply about this self-modification and its personal meaning.

Virtual worlds, where the cost of identity modification is essentially free, show some interesting patterns. The predominant trend is that at their first experience with virtual avatars, maybe 80% of people seek to represent themselves as the cultural ideal (20 years old, the tallest, fittest possible). The rest, an increasing percentage over time, seek the long tails, experimenting and exploring and becoming highly individualized. Some examples are the avatar with a rotating satellite dish as a head, the miniaturized avatar for easier navigation and many humanoid personifications.

If the dynamics are similar in the case of human utility function editing: low cost, legal and ease of changeability, the expectation would be that a lot of experimentation and day-to-day change would occur. Utility functions and personalities might be available for design, sharing and download on the net, to be experienced directly or for entertainment. Sliders could allow for in-flight fine-tuning. Going out could mean not just selecting what to wear but who to be.

Which brings up an intriguing identity question, who are you when you can alter your genes, hormones, personality and drives at will?

Pooled consciousness

There could be a future where individuals opt to pool all or parts of their consciousness, memory and processing power with those of others or in a central repository. Access could be permissioned only to select groups like family, friends or project teams, or to society as a whole. Pooling could be real-time or with a time lag (e.g.; initially people may prefer the increased privacy of uploading thoughts after several years). Pooled consciousness could lead to an interesting future in many ways, for example, consider the Freedom of Information Act extending to the thoughts of politicians while in office.

Greatest Benefit
There would be many benefits and risks to pooled consciousness, but perhaps the biggest advance would be having a repository of collective experience and perception knowledge, a library of experience, perception and analysis. As fact-based data revolutionized human progress, so too would measurable, manipulatable, researchable, aggregatable human experiences.

A small example of the value of pooling would be all of the witnesses to a traffic accident providing their mindfile excerpts of the situation to supplement the facts supplied by street, car and personal life cams with perception, understanding and analysis of the event. In addition to the basic functionality requirements, anonymizing and aggregation techniques, relevance filters and security would be key technical issues in implementing pooled consciousness.

The first phase of pooled consciousness would most likely be transmitting discrete experiences, memories or thoughts to others. It is hard to imagine permissioning one’s full consciousness stream, although before long some people will probably be offering a full neural RSS feed from their blogs or virtual world sims. A funny result could be that people subscribing to other people’s sex thought feeds might be substantially underwhelmed.

What are the benefits of pooled consciousness to society and individuals?

• more accurate and fully-represented history
• more representative democracy, inclusion of all views
• more efficiency, more progress, elephants in the room can not be ignored
  
• sociological data for real-time application and academic study
• rich AI training ground
• individuals feel acknowledged and heard
  
• the long-tail can meet, small groups of similar people can find each other
  
• productivity improvement - people stop worrying about what they think others are thinking, because they know what others are thinking
• learning, training and entertainment applications of experiencing another’s experience

What are the risks of pooled consciousness to society and individuals?

• possibility of groupthink, diminished diversity of thought
  
• spying, loss of personal liberty
• too much information, not wanting to really know
• thought shaping and management through legal and social pressure
  
• advent of thought crime (everyone is a Minority Report precog)
  
• people become slaves to public opinion, behave, have experiences because of what will go in their neural feed (already see this behavior in Facebook)
  

The multi-self team

Can you imagine yourself in competition for resources with ... yourself?

There are several future cases where multiple copies of people may be quite likely and normal. Multiple personal instances could arise to repair medical damage, to make a backup, to have a physical and a digital version, to extend the capability of an individual and because the technology exists, to name a few possibilities. Regulation and legal rights of multiple personal instances are interesting issues but not considered here.

It is likely that there will always be some scarcity of resources whether tangible (matter, energy, processing power, etc.) or intangible (status, reputation, attention, etc.). So it is likely that individuals and groups will always compete for resources.

Whether in the physical domain, digital domain or across domains, if you have copies of yourself, you will be competing with yourself for resources.

Initially, you will know exactly what your other self is thinking and strategizing and you might share resources effectively.

Then, although identical at the outset, any copies, if not mind-synced, will increasingly diverge. In situations of multiple personal instances, regular mind-syncing will probably be desirable but there will be many cases where this will not be possible or desired.

Even if two copies of the same entity are experiencing the same situation, it will not be equal in interpretation by both, the physical experience will not be completely equivalent and the mental experience will be even more different with the randomness of the brain and micro differences in cell chemical states triggering different experiences and interpretations.

Divergence in experience and interpretation could lead to divergence of goals. As with any current or historical examples of resource competition, divergent goals lead to destruction or collaboration.

The multi-self team
An optimal and evolutionarily superior final state would be one's selves coming together in a new entity, a multi-self team, a pool of many nuances of self and abilities, a borg being broader and more capable than any individual.

Historical Simulation Ethical Issues

Historical Sims will be a tremendously useful tool but they are also rife with ethical issues, even without considering that ethics will also evolve morefold by the time historical sims are a norm.

Sim Influencing and Harvesting
To what degree (if any) will external influencing, probing, shifting, etc. be acceptable once the sim has begun? Outsiders do not bring medicine and electricity to tribes living on Earth, the general thought is not to interfere with less-technologically advanced cultures if they are found elsewhere in the world or the universe, but many might want future technology introduced from outside if it were possible. One of the great potential benefits of a sim would be to extract and deploy any developed technologies that do not exist; is this ethical? Both the technology extraction and the introduction would need to be considered, for example, should attribution and royalties accrue to the sim world?

Sim Participant Ethics
Perhaps the largest class of ethical issues relates to sim participants. Self-aware agents (either recruited or created) as sim participants will presumably be more effective than non self-aware agents. The sim participants will either know that they are in a sim and have accepted the historical terms (as in Charles Stross' Glasshouse), particularly the primitive pain and misery of historical harm and death (war, disease, etc.), or not know that they are in a sim, in which case perhaps some argument could be made that it is all right that they do not know since in fact we cannot prove that we are not in a sim ourselves.

Sim Mindfile Access and Participant Privacy
One benefit of sim space is that not just the event outcomes can be known but also much more about the views and experiences of all of the participants not just those who wrote about it or were written about and even before writing and records were preserved. Is it appropriate and ethical to "mindtap" without the sim participant's permission? If the participants know they are being mindtapped, will that heisenberg behavior? Although lifecasting is rapidly approaching normalcy in the current technophilic world, it would be culturally unacceptable in historical periods.

Sim Termination
The issues concerning the termination of sims are non-trivial. Given unlimited processing power, and as a test of existential risk, there is an argument to let all sims continue indefinitely. How is extinguishing a sim not the murder of the self-aware participants or will it be desirable and possible to offer mindfile backups to all participants? This can be tricky, should "death rights" be different for those dying naturally within the sim vs. those dying in an extinguishment of the sim? What are the best approaches if the sim culture does not yet have mindfile backup technology; introduce the idea to sim participants and let them choose, save everyone irrespectively (this could be the future law anyway) with or without their knowledge or allow extinguishment? What would the options be for a mindfile exiting a sim? A state-assigned runtime area and survival resources, and access to the dial-a-world console?