Category Archives: Multi-agent systems

Automated capitalism and it’s implications

Adaptive systems, Automated capitalism, Distributed Collaborative Organization, Multi-agent systems, Smart drones

Automated corporations (drone corporations)

If we look at a probable evolutionary trajectory for corporations there is evidence that as technology becomes more sophisticated we will  see the rise of the automated corporation.  Thinking of the “drones” metaphorically speaking as automated corporations of some sort can help readers to make sense of how voluntary basic capital, voluntary basic income, and reputation, can converge in an automated capitalist economy where humans are supported primarily by automated corporations (drone corporations).

To have a full understanding would require thinking of the humans as inherent shareholders, and the human is maintained in the loop on a community or tribal level by programmatically authorizing a percentage of shares to all verified humans, and the drone simply gives dividends (profit sharing) to each human.

Reputation


Human beings by instinct usually want to maintain a good reputation in their community, drones can be programmed quite easily to care about the social consensus of the network.  The social consensus of a network would be how drones maintain good reputations. Drones could profit as corporations do now, but support humans as inherent shareholders. This would transition the human labourer from being the “worker” into being the shareholder over time. The humans during this transition will be encouraged to pay voluntary transaction taxes to support their selected community.

 Voluntary basic income

 

Voluntary basic income is facilitated through transaction taxes which both humans and drones pay. In order for the humans and drones to maintain membership in their communities, some which may be exclusive, they must agree to the rules of the community which may include paying transaction taxes. This would be similar to the fair tax, the same tax which many libertarians endorse, and it would be a tax on every transaction which means it would apply to drones as well as humans. As the economy becomes more automated the number of humans who pay transaction taxes may become far outnumbered by the number of drones paying the tax which means after a certain threshold the economic activity of the drones may fully support the welfare of humanity.

Voluntary basic capital

Voluntary basic capital can leverage the evolution of the economy from a human based employment economy into an automated economy. Voluntary basic capital can help human beings make the transition from employment-based income to investment-based income. Voluntary basic capital promotes capitalism by making all humans a stakeholder.

Smart drones (automated corporations)


Smart drones or automated corporations are the linchpin which could make voluntary basic income and voluntary basic capital economically viable. Typically we have UAVs which are unmanned aerial  vehicles, and drones are usually recognized as flying robots. In my metaphor I use the phrase “smart drone” to mean a robot which is programmed to profit and which may in fact be self owned, partially owned, or part of a swarm. An automated corporation is a corporation which does not need any permanently employed human labor to run itself and which can profit. Smart drones also known as automated corporations may from time to time contract human labor for specific tasks such as for instance a self driving car which requires a human to repair it, but it keeps it’s profits as it’s own just as a vending machine would do.

Some memorable points

  • Reputation is the mechanism which enforces responsible behavior. In the case of human beings it will be inclusion in a community, where they cost of their continued inclusion is to agree to the social consensus of that community.  No community is obligated to accept anyone as a member who does not meet their qualifications, and if maintaining a membership badge requires they give to charity, or pay a transaction tax, then just as with Bitcoin, or with Proof of Stake, the transaction fees as a price of membership.  Drones may also seek to maintain reputation credits, and anyone will be able to rate drones or entire networks of drones on reputation. A human friendly drone could be the drone which is certified by a community of shareholders.
  • Transaction taxes are a  mechanism of producing basic income. In the near term the majority of transaction taxes may be paid for by human beings. In the long term the majority of transaction taxes may be paid for by drones, by non-human labor sources. Examples of drone corporations may include self driving delivery vehicles which are paid by a human to delivery groceries, but like a corporation these self driving delivery vehicles may collect profits from their economic activities, and these profits could be used to secure parking spaces, repairs, and  to provide an equivalent of dividends to a community of humans.
  • Dividends would be the result of the basic capital ownership rights that all humans in the community could have. The basic capital approach would be pure capitalism, philosophically compatible with anarcho-capitalism, and mainstream libertarianism. Shareholders in these automated corporations also known as drone corporations could benefit from the rise of the automated economy.
  • Human based drudge labor is slowly being phased out and this isn’t a bad thing. The working class can join the investor class instead of having to try to compete with robots. Additionally for shareholders there could be dramatic efficiency gains when human labor is minimized, due to the productivity per dollar. This isn’t to imply that there will not be jobs which only human beings can do, or which human beings are most suited for, but it means that it is possible to have an economy where human beings are supported entirely by automation. Automated capitalism is an illustration of a society which can be built where all humans are supported by automation, where the cost of living decreases as the cost of automation decreases and AI is made ubiquitous.

 

References

Are we ready for companies that run themselves? – David Morris – Aeon. (2014, January). Retrieved from http://aeon.co/magazine/technology/are-we-ready-for-companies-that-run-themselves/

Kelion, L. (2015, February). Could driverless cars own themselves? – BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30998361

Pangburn, D. (2015). The Humans Who Dream Of Companies That Won’t Need Us | Fast Company | Business + Innovation. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/3047462/the-humans-who-dream-of-companies-that-wont-need-them

Personal preference bot networks and Ethereum’s Provenance

Distributed autonomous agents, Ethereum, Intent casting, Multi-agent systems, Personal preference bot networks, Personal software agents, Provenance, Swarm intelligence

What are Personal Preference Bot Networks?

PPBN’s are personal software agent networks owned by individuals. PPBNs work by allowing the individual to delegate tasks to their personal swarm of bots which can trade on their behalf. This can include shopping for example where Alice uses intention casting to set forth her bot(s) in accordance with her intention to find the best deals for a acquiring list of items.

These PPBN’s in theory should be able to integrate and interact with DApps, DACs, DAO’s, virtual states, or even traditional centralized entities.

What is Provenance?

Provenance solves a particular part of this problem by revealing exactly how the products are made. If Provenance has an open API which allows for easy integration with bots then bots could scour the Internet for products which meet the fitness criteria of the swarm of bots. Those bots would then purchase the most fit and avoid purchasing the least fit.

What problem does this solve?

It solves the problem of attention scarcity and adverse selection by utilizing automated transparency. Human shoppers typically are not rational and also do not pay attention to details. A human being for example may not have the attention or time to read every ingredient for every food product they buy to make sure it doesn’t contain anything unethical or harmful. As a result many humans eat products which contain substances they are unaware of.

Fitness criteria (swarm preferences) and swarm intelligence

When PPBN’s (Personal Preference Bot Networks) converge then purchase patterns can favor certain “fitness criteria” which we would call swarm preferences. So the personal preference bots allow for intention casting as well as an automated multi-agent system of supply and demand. Provenance allows for the necessary transparency so that the intelligent swarm can know whether or not what is being supplied meets “fitness criteria” aka swarm preferences.

References

Ethereum London Meetup: Provenance (YouTube)

Provenance | Discover the stories of great products and their makers. (Provenance)
https://www.provenance.org/

Swarm intelligence (- Scholarpedia)
http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Swarm_intelligence

Personal preference bot nets and the quantification of intention

Conditional preference networks, Intent casting, Multi-agent systems, Personal preference bot networks, Personal software agents

Personal preference bot nets

“Personal preference agents” are software autonomous agents (most commonly known as bots) that act on behalf of the individual. So if you for example tell your “personal preference agents” your needs such as a shopping list, the “personal preference agents” would automatically pursue tasks using AI to fetch whatever is on the list.

In the shopping example this would mean you would not have to spend time shopping and you would not be susceptible to vicious subliminal ads. It would save scarce time and attention for the human being by delegating AI to useful tasks.

Intent casting 101

Traditional literature would call the “personal preference agents” a conditional preference network or in the generic sense a software agent network. Doc Searls calls it intent casting in his video on the subject. The main idea of Doc Searls’s intent casting is to create an intention economy. Personal preference bots would be a means of bringing the decentralized “intention economy” to virtual citizens.

The “personal preference agent” would be a particular kind of software agent which can accept preferences by the person and using AI seek to meet those preferences by connecting to various different external networks, blockchains, the web, etc.

The idea is each virtual citizen should have the capability to utilize personal preference bots / “personal preference agents”. These bots would then interact with multiple blockchains, multiple API or network interfaces so that for example the bot owned by Alice could contact the bot owned by Bob over any open protocol in automated fashion to relay an encrypted message, conduct a trade/transaction, or coordinate as a swarm (a sort of collective transaction). This would give each virtual citizen the swarm intelligence capability and empower virtual citizens.

References

Searls, D. (2012). The customer as a God. The Wall Street Journal, 1-4.
Searls, D. (2013). Eof: Android for independence. Linux Journal, 2013(227), 9.

Decentralized reputation based reward networks and gift economics

Distributed autonomous communities, Human based genetic algorithms, Multi-agent systems, Reputation based reward networks, Reputation lotteries

What are decentralized reputation based reward networks?

If we look at the reputation system as a sort of human based genetic algorithm in a sort of multi-agent system then it becomes possible to use smart contracts to reward agents which meet a threshold score for certain reputation attributes. These attributes could be for instance how effective an individual agent is at altruism. The agents who are deemed most effective at altruism would receive the highest effectiveness score in the altruistic reputation based network and they could then qualify for conditional discounts, conditional rebates, conditional rewards, from corporations and individuals within that reputation based network.

Is BasicIncome.co a reputation based reward network?

The Basic Income algorithm which allows for dividend pathways works in a similar fashion where the givers within the personalized safety net become part of the overall Resilience social support network.  The Resilience network accounts for and tracks the altruists who volunteer to pay the tax and at the same time the individuals (individual agents) who pay into the network are given the incentive to shop at businesses which are part of the network. The Resilience network is a sort of reputation network where all who maintain a certain attribute by giving to the community get to remain a part of the community. Basicincome.co could be recognized as a reputation based reward network but only in a very limited sense due to the fact that participants may or may not choose to see it that way. If participants choose to build a reputation system on top of Basicincome.co then it can become an effective reputation based reward network.

Reputation based reward networks allow for gift economics

In a gift economy nothing is bought or sold. In a gift economy everything given or received is a gift similar to how at Christmas it is a gift economy because everything given or received is gifted. A gift economy can take advantage of reputation so that those who give a lot to others earn a certain reputation which can allow the givers in the network to obtain priority status for rewards. It is also possible to have smart contracts with conditions such that only those who have proven themselves through specified acts of kindness can become eligible for the reward lottery.  In essence in order to enter the lottery you would have to earn lottery tickets which can only be earned by giving donations to certain charities.

Reputation lotteries can leverage greed to encourage effective altruism

  1.  In order to enter the lottery you must be able to prove you did the specified act of altruism. This can easily be shown by a blockchain transaction for example.
  2. For every altruistic interaction you shall receive points which can be traded in for lottery tickets.
  3. The more lottery tickets you have the greater your chance to win the rewards.
  4. All who enter the lottery are guaranteed to receive a permanent badge of honor for having participated whether they win or not. This would encourage the participants to continue playing into the future.
  5. Participants can be human or machine.

References

resilience.me,. ‘Basicincome.Co – Incentive-Based Decentralized Safety Nets’. N.p., 2015. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.

YouTube,. ‘Identity And Reputation’. N.p., 2015. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.