https://www.noemamag.com/ai-blockchain-human-autonomy-future/ #media/Article by divya
AI and blockchain imagine a future which is not supportive of interdependence
one that is impossible in the worlds these technological visions imagine.
However, the link between individual autonomy and the collective good has always been pernicious — and nowhere more so than in the visions of technology that promise to give us both in unparalleled measure.
AI
AI paints a binary future of utopian or dystopia (eschatology?)
centralization vs. decentralized technologies and their relationship to human autonomy
This is outcome-orientation in the extreme, with almost any means brought to bear to justify human survival first, and thriving, second.
- takes away our ability to thrive through satisfying all our needs
Blockchain
inherently political
autonomy as self-governance for self-determination, achieved through creating spaces that elude formal structures of control
“Decentralization,” as Nathan Schneider describes it, at first encompassed the principles of transparent, open-source, permissionless access to digital infrastructure, but has transformed into a plastic political philosophy that seeks to maximize autonomy through political freedom, freedom of choice and voluntary association.
blockchain is about freedom from and also strongly dependent on individual freedom and choice
More broadly, ends are always contingent on individual choice, making solving collective action problems wholly contingent on individual incentive structures.
autonomy is not enough for technology to give.
Trustlessness, on the blockchain side, and automation, on the AI side, aim to subsume to the machine the strength and growth borne of cross-community dependence, space for disagreement and deliberation, and human higher-order critical thinking in cooperation and coordination.
human messiness cannot be abstracted away for interdependence
The more we aim for a future free from human messiness, the more we push humanity away in the present: cast aside data workers whose labor underpins AI systems, cover up knowledge of autonomous system bias and error, dissolve well-intentioned projects into asset speculation and obfuscate the misdirection of present trajectories in visions of future perfection
a need to combine the focus on solving big problems for collective good + empowering individual agency with humanistic principles that encourage plurality without disconnection
interdependence > autonomy and agency is the argument (individual agency is not enough in of itself). What is collective agency? Is that interdependence and mutualism??
future is not binary, we want technological pluralism, but what does that look like in practice?
path to this interdependent digital future
why is this not already the world?
- no one likes all these options altogether we just need to keep taking from each of these methods to improve on our worlds and processes across the spectrum.
nation-state level is the governance model that fails, we need a polycentric system of governance.. (eu? can we get past the failure of institutions via this method? what is a method of governance that will push forward this future)
- who is the coordinating body?
- market decentralization vs. democratic decentralization
- how do you scale localized government structures? democratic accountability is better than breaking up giants
essential problem of aligning incentives, such that all parties will work towards this better future. already a lot of pathways to creating incentives across orgs, as long as you know the space and politics deeply and how you can properly weave it all together.
- where does authority come from for local bodies of governance?
regulation
top-down reactionary method
crypto / trustlessness
bypass democratic processes, anti-tech
techno-authoritarianism
china’s system of enforcing interoperability