Putting Trust Out of Business
How Autonomous Agents Will Shape The Future of Work
What do a clothing factory, military units and a rural tribe have in common? According to Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist studying the manner in which humans and primates organize themselves into groups and communities, these three seemingly disconnected ecosystems all cease to function optimally once they cross the threshold of 150 members. An average individual has the capacity to maintain stable relationships with 150 people at a time without having to rely on a more restrictive set of rules, laws and social norms. But the internet, which started its journey as a collaborative tool for academics, has enabled human networks to extend far beyond the limitations of Dunbar’s number. Yet, business relationships still require trust to be established, contracts to be drawn and money to move through the legacy, manual banking system.
Until now.
Cryptocurrencies have enabled a way to communicate value across the internet, while smart contract technology could automated the legal and administrative processes necessary to facilitate functional cooperation. Since commercial collaboration can finally occur without the prior establishment of a formal business relationship, scaling human cooperation networks is now possible.
Downgrading the Role of Trust When Forming Networks
Trust is the glue that binds commercial relationships and corporate enterprises together. Whether established by means of a handshake or formally enforced through legal contracts, fostering trust is the initial step in any collaborative venture between two individuals or entities. Blockchains replaced trust with consensus, enabling a network of potentially adversarial peers to agree on the updated state of a distributed ledger. While building mutual confidence between network stakeholders is crucial to a healthy culture within a blockchain ecosystem, it is no longer critical to the forming of a business relationship.
Many industries could see fundamental structural changes by embracing the collaborative force of distributed networks, including the following four:
- Gaming
- Digital Art
- Supply Chain Management
- Healthcare
Multi-Layered Gaming
Sandbox games, which include Minecraft, Red Dead Redemption and Fortnite, have long since morphed into a fully-fledged movement. With over $1 billion generated from in-game purchases alone, Fortnite is the standard bearer for the popular gaming genre. Over 200 million registered users spend on average 6–10 hours a week immersed in its complex digital universe. Players battle zombies and each other in a quest to accumulate valuable V-Bucks that can be exchanged for cosmetic items, known as ‘skins’, which allow them to customize their avatars and virtual universes. They are free to customize their universe and select whichever task they wish to perform. Successfully completing these tasks earns players virtual currency rewards which can be redeemed at the in-game store. However, these universes are disconnected from real-world economies and each other. Multi-layered games could join parallel gaming universes together, enabling the free flow of value across different universes. An avatar on one sandbox game could be transported to another universe, exchanging the user’s experience and accessories for assets of similar value on the new platform. Furthermore, value accrued throughout the gaming experience can, once tokenized, be exchanged for real-world financial assets allowing gamers to profit directly from their skills and experience. Game developers could incorporate components of other titles into their application gameplay without establishing any formal business relationship. Its as if they were simply downloading a widget.
Art Dealing On Chain
Despite numerous international acts and agreements aimed at solidifying digital intellectual property rights, the ease with which one can produce an identical copy of digital work has led to widespread copyright infringement costing the US music industry $12.5 billion a year. For content creators producing works of art, film, photography and literature, it is frustrating watching their work pirated at their own expense. Artistic ideas do not flourish in a vacuum and artists often integrate the art of others into their works. Whether its a video producer who wants to incorporate an edgy graphic into their promo video or a podcaster wishing to add a catchy jingle to their intro, the scope of artistic expression is enlarged when creative minds can leverage one another. Using a blockchain-based solution will introduce scarcity in the realm of digital information, allowing only those with the express permission of intellectual property right holders to reproduce content. Authors and artists can link every unique copy of their work to a particular token and associate said token with a set of rights. With the rights to copy digital files transcribed on an immutable, transparent blockchain, the risk of piracy is drastically reduced. Allowing artists the opportunity to purchase the rights to reproduce a piece of content increases the potential for creative collaboration.
Integrated Supply Chains
Not only do blockchain-based supply chain management solutions improve dramatically on paper-based systems, but managing warehousing, inventory and logistics using a distributed network allows interoperability between the various stakeholders in a supply chain. The entire lifecycle of a supply chain shares a single source of truth on the blockchain, enhancing transparency and efficiency as each unit of raw material or finished product can be tracked in real-time. For example, Alice is the socially-conscious owner of a bicycle store in her hometown. She is adamant not to sell any products that were manufactured or assembled by child labor or underpaid workers. By logging onto her supply chain application, she can track the history of each bicycle all the way back to the manufacturer of the bicycle parts. Each part is represented by a token on the blockchain and comes programmed with a ‘fair trade’ flag indicating whether or not the conditions under which manufacturing took place meet her social criteria.
Decentralized Genetics
In a rare display of consensus between the Trump administration and its predecessor, Secretary of Veteran Affairs Robert Wilkie announced that veterans will have no-cost access to genetic testing as part of the Precision Medicine Initiative introduced by President Obama in 2015. Science had progressed in leaps and bounds since the first ‘draft’ genetic sequence was generated at a cost of ~$300 million in the year 2000. Now, for only $200, an individual can read the 6.4 billion DNA base pairs that comprise their body’s operating code. Maximizing the utility of the genomic data collected requires collaboration and sharing across the healthcare industry. A genetics blockchain configured with varying permissions would grant researchers, doctors and government agencies access to patient data on a need-to-know basis. Researchers can query the data collected by the Department of Veteran Affairs to detect the early onset of diseases without being able to view a patient’s personally identifiable information. Doctors can then utilize these findings to take preventive measures to reduce the risk of illness. Enforcing permissions for access ensures patient privacy is respected throughout the process.
E-Everything
Playing a word association game with the word “computer” will immediately conjure up the image of a machine with a screen and a keyboard made out of aluminum, steel and plastics. Yet in the days before every household came equipped with a PC, the word ‘computer’ referred to a human profession involving mathematical computation. Computers were used to compile trigonometric tables, catalog astronomical data and even assist in the war effort by calculating ballistic tables during World War 1. When electronic data processing machines first began to creep into commercial life, they were dubbed ‘electronic computers’. These mainframes made reliable computation cheaper and quicker by several orders of magnitude. Just as number crunching roles were offloaded to the PC, the legal and administrative tasks associated with forming a business relationship can now be performed by smart contracts, making commercial cooperation instant and trustless. The future of business involves autonomous cooperation agents that are fast, cheap and super efficient. Just like we cannot begin to conceive of a world without electronic computers, the e-laywers and e-adminstrators will be a crucial component of the industries of tomorrow.
