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