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21 February 2023, TRENDS IN CRYPTOS – Feb 21 2023

BLOCKCHAIN BATTLES

February 21, 2023February 21, 2023
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BLOCKCHAIN BATTLES

CAN CRYPTO TECHNOLOGY DEMOCRATIZE THE AI AND AUTOMATION REVOLUTION?

ChatGPT is pounding home a new awareness of just how disruptive AI and automation may be for the entire current economic and social order.

Yes, things change. But wiping out 50 or 70 or 90 percent of human jobs over the next 10 years?

It adds up to a technological whirlwind—and conundrum—that the world has never seen. And those percentages are the predictions of some experts.

It’s time to start considering how to fairly apportion the benefits and productivity of AI and automation systems not only to growing waves of displaced and obsoleted workers, but indeed, to humanity itself.

And crypto technologies may hold the key for a wide scale and transparent distribution of the fruits of the AI revolution.

The “Innovation” Was Built Off of Us

As The Trends Journal has led the way in pointing out, the kind of deep-learning AI that is already fueling massive disruption has trained on collective human knowledge on a scale never before possible. (See, for example, “CREATIVE CONTENT INFRINGEMENT OF DEEP LEARNING AI HAS MONUMENTAL IMPLICATIONS.”)

Similarly, AI algorithm powered selling and advertising platforms like Amazon and Google, were built off systems that offered “free services” in exchange for scraping, profit-izing and weaponizing huge and often hidden and corrupt surveillance and data collection.

To those who say these companies just created better mousetraps, the answer to that, to linguistically apply Gerald Celente’s famed red button, is “bullshit.”

The Trends Journal has detailed corrupt, illegal and unethical big tech practices in article after article:

Political and elitist profiteering off the whole rigged system? Oh, there’s plenty of that too:

The profits of these elites, not just in the tech sector, but in banking and finance, the healthcare industry, green energy and more, is so endemically ill-gotten and manipulated, they should all be seen as tainted, period. 

And if there was ever a time to decide that the concentration of power and wealth at some point needs to stop and be reversed, AI and automation are crying out that the time is here, right now.

The AI Takeover Should Come With Crypto Rewards, Not Elitist Hoarding and UBI Handouts

AI pioneer Ben Goertzel, speaking recently on a London Real podcast, estimated that the time-frame of a decade seemed plausible, for a drastic outmoding of most human jobs.

He used the example of the way AI imaging generators are threatening the graphic art industry, to predict that many more jobs will be displaced by the AI and automation revolution, than created:

BEN GOERTZEL: “Like now you can type in a textural prompt, like you know, ‘show me a picture of some old dogs eating a pill fed by their young attractive loving owner, and then becoming shiny energetic dogs.’ And then you’ll get a picture or a short animation of that, right? So you don’t need a human to make that picture, or that little movie anymore. The AI will do it. You do need a human to write the prompts, and figure out exactly what to tell the AI to do. The human who was good at making the graphic art might not be the human who’s best at making that prompt to tell the AI what to do, right? And so you’re getting rid of one job classification, ‘graphic artist.’ You’re creating another one, ‘prompt engineer.’ Right? Figuring out the text prompt to give the AI. The thing is, you may get rid of ten graphic artists and replace them with one prompt engineer. Right? So you’re re-shuffling the job titles and job categories and reorganizing an industry. And the precise way to do that differs across each industry, right? So there are some job categories that will just be obsoleted, right? Like say the drive-through at a fastfood restaurant…

But a lot more [jobs] are partially gone, and reshuffled into new different job categories. And figuring out that reshuffling itself creates jobs, right? But again that creates a small number of jobs for people who understand AI and understand each industry. It creates fewer jobs than it obsoletes. But even if it’s only half of white collar jobs being obsoleted in the next three to five years, that’s still incredibly huge, right?  

LONDON REAL: And that’s very possible, right? 

BEN GOERTZEL: Very possible. But then we have to look at the implications of these same sorts of technologies for robotics, right? Factory robotics is already rolling out big-time in Asia…

Goertzel says factory and industry production jobs will see the same sort of human obsolescence as white collar positions. 

He believes the AI revolution will be far different than previous technological and industrial revolutions like the internet or factory processes of the 19th century industrial age. In those earlier revolutions there was disruption, but plenty of new human jobs were created.

He contends that AI and robotics will be unprecedented in creating an eventual, overall near-complete human job obsolescence.

Meanwhile, recent research by Ali Zarifhonarvar, a PhD student in Economics at Indiana University Bloomington, noted the breadth and scale of current AI and robotic automation by businesses:

“Recent research conducted by McKinsey aimed to model the potential effects of artificial intelligence in general on the global economy. Computer vision, natural language, virtual assistants, robotic process automation, and advanced machine learning are the five primary categories of artificial intelligence. According to their analysis, seventy percent of firms may have deployed at least one category of AI technology, and less than fifty percent may have fully integrated all five categories. By 2030, the potential impact of artificial intelligence on global economic activity may amount to around 13 trillion dollars. This potential impact would be the outcome of increased productivity and other channels associated with the deployment of AI.”

It’s hardly a secret that the COVID War accelerated the move to AI powered, as well as non-AI robotic and software automation.

According to Zarifhonarvar:

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, AI significantly impacted the labor market. Many industries have adopted AI and automation due to the sudden shift to remote work (Zarifhonarvar 2023). A recent paper (Carbonero and Scicchitano 2021) explores the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the need for physical proximity in the workplace during the COVID-19 epidemic.”

Radical Tech Times Require New Democratic Solutions

Radical changes being spurred by AI, robotics and related automation call for radical re-thinking of who these systems will be controlled by, and who these systems will benefit.

The answer isn’t to be content with a UBI (Universal Basic Income) check and watching VR porn, as Goertzel has stupidly suggested.

No, the answer is to democratize the overseeing and participation in the entities transitioning and carrying out large-scale AI and automation systems.

These companies, built of the knowledge and data of humanity, should be considered resources and engines of humanities.

Let technocrats and synthetic biologists continue to innovate, with guardrails democratically voted on, concerning limits that humans decide, regarding what is progress, and what has the potential so lethal that it does not represent progress. (See “WOKE ETHICS WON’T SAVE US FROM THE SINGULARITY” in this issue.)

But let their bosses and overseers be the citizen participants of DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations).

DAOs are showing themselves as an innovative way to democratize the running of projects and enterprises. Decentralized permissionless blockchain crypto networks, and their smart contracting features can automate business processes, implement transparent voting and participation, and automatically calculate and distribute fractional tokenized profits.

Let’s decide that humanity deserves to democratically direct and benefit from the revolution, while cutting down the corrupt mediation of politicians, megalomaniac elites, and titans of technocracy.  

Crypto technology can dispense with these endemically corrupt middle players, as certainly as AI driven automation dispenses with the need of our human labor.

And we should demand nothing less.

Also check out:

COINTELEGRAPH INTERVIEWS DARKFI

Corrupt crackdowns on privacy and civil protests have only spurred a return by many crypto innovators to the cypher punk ethos that motivated crypto development at its inception and early development.

This past week, Cointelegraph conducted an interview with anonymous participants in DarkFi, a group that says it’s dedicated to ensuring privacy and freedom of people to engage and support each other without intermediaries.

Their efforts come as recent events, from the imprisonment of a developer of the Tornado Cash privacy crypto mixing service, to government crackdowns on monetary support for political protests, including the 2022 Canadian Truckers Convoy against COVID vaccine mandates, have drawn widespread criticism.

DarkFi said concerning its motivation:

“DarkFi is a community and a movement trying to create user-empowering systems, enabling an individual to preserve fundamental human rights, like the right to privacy, freedom of speech, and the right to interact with each other without intermediaries. Some of those systems are a Layer-1 blockchain with privacy by default, a peer-to-peer IRC messaging system with encrypted groups and DMs, and even decentralized collaboration tools for organization, task management, etc.”  

The group told Cointelegraph it wants to develop rigorous privacy protocols beyond cryptocurrencies like Monero, to encompass smart contracting and more:

“With DarkFi, we want to build anonymous and secure crypto. Like what Monero and Zcash are for money, DarkFi is for apps/smart contracts. We felt there is a large market and need for being able to develop decentralized and anonymous financial applications. This has not been possible until now.”

Entrenched Authoritarian Powers Want Surveillance, Obeyance, and Continued Control and Profit Over Finance

Many privacy and political rights advocates have been raising alarms about increasing government efforts to control and suppress activities, including by surveilling and weaponizing the financial system, and initiatives to implement CBDC government digital currencies.

In 2022, the U.S. Congress enacted new legislation which now surveils bank transactions of 600 dollars or more. The previous trigger for banks having to report transactions was 10 thousand dollars.

The U.S. together with western allies have involved financial, business and energy sector entities in a wide-scale weaponization, to economically sanction Russia.

That sanction regime provides the reason—and some say pretext—for the U.S. to oversee the Euro arrest of Alexey Pertsev, a developer of the Tornado Cash crypto anonymousing transfer service. (See “THEY CAN’T STOP DECENTRALIZED TECH, BUT THEY CAN ARREST ENGINEERS,” 16 Aug 2022.)

The U.S. has claimed the service is largely used to make it harder for authorities to track criminal activities utilizing cryptos, including Russian evasion of economic sanctions.

The Biden administration worked with, and even directed Canadian officials to crack down on Canadian Truckers in early 2022, and coordinated on cutting off monetary donations to the groups organizing the protest.

For related reading, see:

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