The Convergence of AI, UBI, and Blockchain
Building Blocks for a New Economic System
AI is on the verge of quickly evolving into Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and performing specific tasks better than humans. With all the jobs that an AGI will replace, it is evident that our society will need to find ways to provide a Universal Basic Income (UBI) to compensate for the loss of revenues for many people. It will also provide the opportunity to gain more time to adapt and learn new skills that an AGI will never perform as well as a human. Given the complexity of AGI and the obscure process that can lead an AGI to make a decision, come up with a reasoning or propose a solution, it will become necessary to record specific steps of the process or sources taken into consideration for providing an answer. In addition, given the AGI’s various creations, it is becoming essential to record originals in an immutable way, whether they are photos, images, videos, or applications, to prove they were created by a human or a group of humans.
It is hard to estimate the direct economic impact on our society that AGI will have. Instead of fighting against AGI, we should embrace it. It is happening now; and we have at our fingertips technical solutions like blockchain and cryptocurrencies to create a UBI and make sense of what an AGI does.
These technologies are coming together now, allowing us to create a new economic system that fosters creativity, consciousness, and more balance in people’s lives.
The impact of AGI on jobs will be massive.
It is probably not a coincidence that more than 120,000 jobs were lost among tech firms in the US in the first two months of this year alone. 5 years from now, we won’t probably need any mid-level programmers. An AGI should be able to create any website or mobile application you want by coding and making sense of available libraries of code and open-source UIs.
I personally use Chat GPT-4 and find that it is much better than any intern I have ever had, probably much better than the top 10 percentile of a student coming out of the top 10 US universities. I encourage everyone in my company to use it to gain time and be more productive.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I will ever have the need to hire a copywriter or a translator again. On the opposite, I was motivated to go back to coding to leverage the amazing capabilities of such LLM to dig into unique datasets and discover things I would not realize or be able to recognize patterns or trends much faster.
AI should lead to a more balanced life.
One of the other great potential benefits is enabling people to have more time. More time for themselves, working on themselves, learning, developing their consciousness, and enjoying life. This should participate in making anyone’s quality of life.
Universal Basic Income (UBI) and alternative sources of revenue
UBI and alternative sources of revenue can provide a solution to expected massive job displacements caused by AI advancements.
Learn-to-earn
In an era where the availability of information is growing exponentially by the day, crypto ecosystems provide many ways to incentivize and gamify learning. Governments could easily leverage these tools and sponsor programs to help people catch up with the latest advancements in AI, educate them, and have them learn new skills.
Access to Finance (DeFi)
Look at the way Nigerians are adopting Bitcoin and how cryptocurrencies and DeFi are enabling many for the first time to have the equivalent of a bank account when most banking institutions would not allow them to open an account. Crypto ecosystems remove the friction of traditional finance. Defi allows anyone to access loans and investment opportunities and optimize how they manage their assets independently from the value of their portfolio.
They provide an infrastructure to pay people anywhere in the world for a fraction of the cost compared to any other traditional overseas transactions.
Cryptocurrencies also enable micro-transactions that can be linked to systems with immutable proofs to justify payment, the creation of an asset, and/or their distribution. Programmable money goes even one step further by linking a cryptocurrency for specific usage, removing risks of abuse and corruption.
Additional Passive and Active Incomes
Nodle is just an example of how anyone with a smartphone can participate in a network and earn passive income for sharing some of their smartphone’s resources or for taking part in specific actions whose results can be cryptographically proven.
The development of a new set of skills incentivized using blockchain ecosystems could be a great option.
There is hope; blockchain ecosystems can help create incentives, while AGI will force us to become better at anything we do, learn soft skills, and take on jobs that will help others develop their creativity and consciousness. These qualities will be hard to be replicated by an AI and will undoubtedly advance society toward valuing unique skill sets. We have already entered the creator’s economy, but this time everyone will be forced to become one or develop other soft skills.
Soft skills
Soft skills encompass the personal attributes that enable individuals to interact effectively and harmoniously with others in the workplace. These sought-after skills include but are not limited to effective communication, active listening, teamwork, adaptability, conflict resolution, time management, critical thinking, creativity, and emotional intelligence. Employers highly value these abilities. They will look for these skills as they contribute significantly to creating a positive work environment and fostering successful collaborations.
How blockchain technologies will help Original Creations and Understanding AI Decisions.
NFTs, public certificates on the blockchain
NFTs are a disruptive innovation whose immutable nature helps protect, prove, and trade original creations (e.g., art, music, writing, photos, videos, code).
Blockchain records to make sense of an AI reasoning and decisions
Combining neural networks and LLM (Large Language Models) processes with blockchain can help understand AI/AGI reasoning. It can highlight multiple sources at the origin of creation or record a decision that impacted the physical world. This is particularly needed when AGI will be used to take proactive actions. An important side benefit of recording some blockchain processes is increasing transparency on these decisions.
Future Implications and Challenges
As AGI advances, challenges will arise, such as large corporations monopolizing valuable datasets. For example, a potential issue could be that large companies try to keep large datasets private to build a competitive advantage over competitors and maximize revenues. This type of behavior could create ethical severe issues when it comes to the accessibility of AI systems in the field of healthcare or medicine, where an AI can improve diagnostics accuracy and potentially propose better medical prescriptions.
It raises questions about the role of regulation that must address the issues highlighted above to protect individual interests. Regulation can also threaten the development of blockchain ecosystems and cryptocurrencies. It will need to appreciate the benefits they bring in the context of the development of much-needed UBI and alternative sources of revenue for individuals.
To succeed, a potential New Economic System will actually need to be decentralized to remove control from large corporations and enable individuals to benefit from AGI’s advancements. Very likely, LLM will need to be open-sourced. OpenAI seems to be considering open-sourcing GPT models, but it has still not happened.
I encourage any of you to perform further research and engage in discussions on these topics to better understand and prepare for the future.
