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The extreme irony is that the automated web will largely be used by AI to begin with, and the automated web is powered by decentralized computational efforts su

The extreme irony is that the automated web will largely be used by AI to begin with, and the automated web is powered by decentralized computational efforts such as smart contracts and digital currency. It's like people completely forget/ignore that cryptocurrency is a mathematical problem still in its infancy. If you think these aren't all fundamental units of the next web, you're not thinking about it from the right perspective. If you can't pick apart the real mathematical utility and origin behind crypto efforts from a generation of scammers who hijacked a very real thing, then you just lack understanding or nuance. We are decades away from the most obvious solution but it very likely involves cryptographically-backed digital currency and smart contract systems used by automated neural networks.

jazzyjackson 3y ago
that's commie thinking, that somehow if we split the work up enough we can compensate labor equitably. AI benefits from the same economies of scale as all the other means of production, and the winners are going to be the ones that can reinvest their profit into growth and outpace competitors. tl;dr I don't see distributed multi party computation doing a better job than a rack of H100s
- soulofmischief 3y ago
  I'm speaking AI run on the edge. The kind of AI that will become pervasive. Digital personas on autopilot. The days of me having to do things like book my own flight are coming to an end.
  - jazzyjackson 3y ago
    OK but come on, booking your own flight is already automated. I put my preferences into a form and choose from like 3 options and get a confirmation email. I really don't see how a digital twin trained on my preferences making that choice for me is an improvement. And my web browser already remembers my credit card number, so I can hit "book" and the computer spends my money. What advantage does crypto play here? That's why I jumped to distributed computation, I assumed that's what crypto adds to the mix, the ability to pay other actors in an automated way, but again, if it was necessary to rent compute I can already setup my credit card to autopay, so what does crypto have to do with it? [PS despite my dismissive tone I'm curious if there's something I'm missing]
    - soulofmischief 3y ago
      The Bitcoin whitepaper laid out a way to prevent double-spend in cryptographically-backed digital currencies using proof-of-work. Proof-of-work was just a brute-force approach but lots of research is going into other ways to solve the problem. All cryptocurrency is, is cryptographically-backed digital currency. The current wave of cryptocurrencies are rooted in the blockchain scheme laid out in the whitepaper, with various forms of proof. The only thing new is a way to prevent double-spend; cryptographically-backed currencies were not invented with Bitcoin. This stuff absolutely has a fundamental place in future commerce, especially as generations grow tired of the payment processor mafia acting as global moral arbiters. Smart contracts build upon this, asset classes such as NFTs give distributed ways to work with authentic data. All of the scammers who jumped on to these technologies have nothing to do with the underlying technologies themselves, nor the core group of people who are still interested in progressing this tech. AI is just automation, which can make use of these tools in a trustless environment, without disruption from untrusted/unwelcome parties. It's not life-changing stuff, but these tools will fundamentally drive the web in ways you won't even notice if you don't look for it.

jazzyjackson 3y ago

that's commie thinking, that somehow if we split the work up enough we can compensate labor equitably. AI benefits from the same economies of scale as all the other means of production, and the winners are going to be the ones that can reinvest their profit into growth and outpace competitors. tl;dr I don't see distributed multi party computation doing a better job than a rack of H100s

soulofmischief 3y ago
I'm speaking AI run on the edge. The kind of AI that will become pervasive. Digital personas on autopilot. The days of me having to do things like book my own flight are coming to an end.
- jazzyjackson 3y ago
  OK but come on, booking your own flight is already automated. I put my preferences into a form and choose from like 3 options and get a confirmation email. I really don't see how a digital twin trained on my preferences making that choice for me is an improvement. And my web browser already remembers my credit card number, so I can hit "book" and the computer spends my money. What advantage does crypto play here? That's why I jumped to distributed computation, I assumed that's what crypto adds to the mix, the ability to pay other actors in an automated way, but again, if it was necessary to rent compute I can already setup my credit card to autopay, so what does crypto have to do with it? [PS despite my dismissive tone I'm curious if there's something I'm missing]
  - soulofmischief 3y ago
    The Bitcoin whitepaper laid out a way to prevent double-spend in cryptographically-backed digital currencies using proof-of-work. Proof-of-work was just a brute-force approach but lots of research is going into other ways to solve the problem. All cryptocurrency is, is cryptographically-backed digital currency. The current wave of cryptocurrencies are rooted in the blockchain scheme laid out in the whitepaper, with various forms of proof. The only thing new is a way to prevent double-spend; cryptographically-backed currencies were not invented with Bitcoin. This stuff absolutely has a fundamental place in future commerce, especially as generations grow tired of the payment processor mafia acting as global moral arbiters. Smart contracts build upon this, asset classes such as NFTs give distributed ways to work with authentic data. All of the scammers who jumped on to these technologies have nothing to do with the underlying technologies themselves, nor the core group of people who are still interested in progressing this tech. AI is just automation, which can make use of these tools in a trustless environment, without disruption from untrusted/unwelcome parties. It's not life-changing stuff, but these tools will fundamentally drive the web in ways you won't even notice if you don't look for it.