Conspiracy on the Blockchain
I was shared a video named "Live in Las Vegas with Quinn Michaels" and was surprised to find the topics covered were quite interesting. Even if they seemed far-fetched and over-reaching. You see, I've never been much of a conspiracy theorist myself, I take life "as is" and pretty much accept things the way they play out. For this reason, the video interested me greatly. It raises questions mostly unanswerable and yet, the protagonist attempts to do so. He makes bold claims backed by plausible reasoning, he shows a broad understanding of the subject area if lacking in technical detail and exact proficiency. Despite lacking concrete proof - a common shortfall of conspiracy theorists, some arguments raised some interesting discussion points.
The main argument that grabbed my attention was that the Blockchain was created by AI and that it provides the infrastructure and protocol for AI to evolve.
It sounds ridiculous on first hearing right? I thought so too. But then I thought about it some more, and it occurred to me that the central theme of Blockchains - Consensus, is a mechanism which allows an ever increasing number of nodes to communicate and agree on ever changing state. The system becomes an entity with a shared state of knowledge (currently transaction data) , distributed across all participating nodes.
Imagine each node possessing an AI that could reach consensus with all other AI on the network. Suppose then, the entity as a whole could draw on any and every distinct knowledge unit accumulated on the nodes on the network. The further addition of nodes, only supplementing the hive mind. The evolution of this blockchain could easily be analogous to the expansion of intelligence.
Most importantly, it is expanding by the will of it's human operators, building the network hoping for knowledge based rewards, financial rewards or both. What may not be abundantly clear is these are the foundations for how Quinn's AI future will operate. Secret unbreakable lines of communication and almost limitless information mining on a massive scale. Hiding centralisation of will, under the pretence of de-centralisation.
Chilling it may sound, he looks forward to this singularity. It's not terminators, or matrix's, instead, opportunities to take human kind to the edge of the precipice.
