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Below is part of a longer essay I wrote in 2000 (to Doug Engelbart's "UnRevII" "Bootstrapping" list): "[unrev-II] Singularity in twenty to forty years?" https://dougengelbart.org/colloquium/forum/discussion/0126.h...

But first, maybe one difference twenty years later is that I would emphasize the idea that our direction out of any singularity may have a lot to do with our moral/political direction going into a singularity, and so we should strive to create a better society right now (e.g. one that is more egalitarian and compassionate -- while also dynamically balancing meshwork/hierarchy issues like Manuel De Landa wrote about). The biggest issue humanity faces right now isn't "rogue AI" -- it is narrowly selfish people using computer technology to exploit other people in various ways (or at least create a technosphere which does that, with extensive intrusive monitoring and attention direction). A tangentially-related new book on part of that is "Stolen Focus" by Johann Hari. https://web.archive.org/web/20220126161142/https://stolenfoc... (An archive link as site seems to be down at the moment.)

Also related on focus issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Humane_Technology

I'm all for using electronic systems in a Kanban-like way to coordinate work in a community (including ones with Merkle trees of hashes for audit trails) -- where I have long been a fan of "LETS" systems. https://web.archive.org/web/20190311081102/http://www.lets-l...

But cryptocurrency as a financial movement is more like Tulipmania (an investment bubble a lot like a Ponzi scheme). As I pointed out on Slashdot in the early days of Bitcoin, it wastes electricity and can be easily forked by changing a seed number.

But what I have come to realize is that the ultimate value in any sort of Kanban-like fiat-currency rationing system (like either Bitcoin or the US dollar) is in the nature of the community with a constitution that uses it and stands behind it. And it is hard to predict what happen in social systems globally. And we do need healthy communities and their formal and informal constitutions to live a good life. Distributed currencies could be part of healthy communities -- but it remains an open question how best they could fit in. Also, as I have written elsewhere, healthy communities have some historically-shaped mix of subsistence, gift, exchange, planned and theft transactions -- and crypto mostly is just about exchange.

One good thing coming out of crypto is that some financial winners in it are putting money into public charity. One such excellent inspiring example: https://futureoflife.org/ "The Future of Life Institute works on reducing global catastrophic and existential risk from powerful technologies"

Anyway, from 2000:

========= machine intelligence is already here =========

I personally think machine evolution is unstoppable, and the best hope for humanity is the noble cowardice of creating refugia and trying, like the duckweed, to create human (and other) life faster than other forces can destroy it.

Note, I'm not saying machine evolution won't have a human component -- in that sense, a corporation or any bureaucracy is already a separate machine intelligence, just not a very smart or resilient one. This sense of the corporation comes out of Langdon Winner's book "Autonomous Technology: Technics out of control as a theme in political thought". http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/ You may have a tough time believing this, but Winner makes a convincing case. He suggests that all successful organizations "reverse-adapt" their goals and their environment to ensure their continued survival.

These corporate machine intelligences are already driving for better machine intelligences -- faster, more efficient, cheaper, and more resilient. People forget that corporate charters used to be routinely revoked for behavior outside the immediate public good, and that corporations were not considered persons until around 1886 (that decision perhaps being the first major example of a machine using the political/social process of its own ends). http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/28/usa.html Corporate charters are granted supposedly because society believe it is in the best interest of society for corporations to exist.

But, when was the last time people were able to pull the "charter" plug on a corporation not acting in the public interest? It's hard, and it will get harder when corporations don't need people to run themselves. http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/23/revokecharter.html http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/charter/death.html

I'm not saying the people in corporations are evil -- just that they often have very limited choices of actions. If a corporate CEOs do not deliver short term profits they are removed, no matter what they were trying to do. Obviously there are exceptions for a while -- William C. Norris of Control Data was one of them, but in general, the exception proves the rule. Fortunately though, even in the worst machines (like in WWII Germany) there were individuals who did what they could to make them more humane ("Schindler's List" being an example).

Look at how much William C. Norris http://www.neii.com/wnorris.htm of Control Data got ridiculed in the 1970s for suggesting the then radical notion that "business exists to meet society's unmet needs". Yet his pioneering efforts in education, employee assistance plans, on-site daycare, urban renewal, and socially-responsible investing are in part what made Minneapolis/St.Paul the great area it is today. Such efforts are now being duplicated to an extent by other companies. Even the company that squashed CDC in the mid 1980s (IBM) has adopted some of those policies and directions. So corporations can adapt when they feel the need.

Obviously, corporations are not all powerful. The world still has some individuals who have wealth to equal major corporations. There are several governments that are as powerful or more so than major corporations. Individuals in corporations can make persuasive pitches about their future directions, and individuals with controlling shares may be able to influence what a corporation does (as far as the market allows). In the long run, many corporations are trying to coexist with people to the extent they need to. But it is not clear what corporations (especially large ones) will do as we approach this singularity -- where AIs and robots are cheaper to employ than people. Today's corporation, like any intelligent machine, is more than the sum of its parts (equipment, goodwill, IP, cash, credit, and people). It's "plug" is not easy to pull, and it can't be easily controlled against its short term interests.

What sort of laws and rules will be needed then? If the threat of corporate charter revocation is still possible by governments and collaborations of individuals, in what new directions will corporations have to be prodded? What should a "smart" corporation do if it sees this coming? (Hopefully adapt to be nicer more quickly. :-) What can individuals and governments do to ensure corporations "help meet society's unmet needs"?

Evolution can be made to work in positive ways, by selective breeding, the same way we got so many breeds of dogs and cats. How can we intentionally breed "nice" corporations that are symbiotic with the humans that inhabit them? To what extent is this happening already as talented individuals leave various dysfunctional, misguided, or rouge corporations (or act as "whistle blowers")? I don't say here the individual directs the corporation against its short term interest. I say that individuals affect the selective survival rates of corporations with various goals (and thus corporate evolution) by where they choose to work, what they do there, and how they interact with groups that monitor corporations. To that extent, individuals have some limited control over corporations even when they are not shareholders. Someday, thousands of years from now, corporations may finally have been bred to take the long term view and play an "infinite game".

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