Personal Preference Bot Nets and The Quantification of Intention

dana-edwards (74) in steemit • 8 years ago

Personal Preference Bot Nets and The Quantification of Intention

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"Personal preference agents" are software autonomous agents (most commonly known as bots) that act on behalf of the individual. So if you for example tell your "personal preference agents" your needs such as a shopping list, the "personal preference agents" would automatically pursue tasks using AI to fetch whatever is on the list.

In the shopping example this would mean you would not have to spend time shopping and you would not be susceptible to vicious subliminal ads. It would save scarce time and attention for the human being by delegating AI to useful tasks.

Value is produced by services which save time or attention

The more time a bot saves, the more value the bot adds. The less scarce attention a human being has to spend on mundane tasks, the more value a bot adds. This simple equation can allow you to measure how much value a particular bot is adding or taking away. If a bot is spreading advertisements which are unwanted then it's noise, it takes away value, it makes it harder to find truly valuable content. Beneficial bots should do the exact opposite of spam and should always seek to add as much value as possible to Steemit and to their owner(s).

Intent casting 101

Traditional literature would call the "personal preference agents" a conditional preference network or in the generic sense a software agent network. Doc Searls calls it intent casting in his video on the subject. The main idea of Doc Searls's intent casting is to create an intention economy. Personal preference bots would be a means of bringing the decentralized "intention economy" to netizens.

The "personal preference agent" would be a particular kind of software agent which can accept preferences by the person and using AI seek to meet those preferences by connecting to various different external networks, blockchains, the web, etc.

The idea is each netizen should have the capability to utilize personal preference bots / "personal preference agents". These bots would then interact with multiple blockchains, multiple APsI or network interfaces so that for example the bot owned by Alice could contact the bot owned by Bob over any open protocol in automated fashion to relay an encrypted message, conduct a trade/transaction, or coordinate as a swarm (a sort of collective transaction). This would give each netizen the swarm intelligence capability and empower netizens.

References

Falkinger, J. (2008). Limited Attention as a Scarce Resource in Information‐Rich Economies. The Economic Journal, 118(532), 1596-1620.

Schatten, M., Ševa, J., & Tomičić, I. (2016). A roadmap for scalable agent organizations in the Internet of Everything. Journal of Systems and Software, 115, 31-41.

Searls, D. (2012). The customer as a God. The Wall Street Journal, 1-4.
Searls, D. (2013). Eof: Android for independence. Linux Journal, 2013(227), 9.

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8 years ago by dana-edwards (74)

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sauravrungta (77) · 8 years ago

It is quite interesting to realise that we have the software capabilities to automate our lives. We just need hardware technology to catch up. Once that happens, we will have world's first truly intelligent robots. You think life is pretty automated now? Wait till that happens!!

Great post! Cheers :)

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1 vote

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toroiskandar (53) · 8 years ago

Excellent post!
cool
thank you @dana-edwards

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1 vote

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dcsignals (40) · 8 years ago

As I am not a robot and do not function according to rigid pre-defined rules, I don't always know my preferences in advance.

I don't want my life automated away, as I quite like having a life.

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3 votes

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williambanks (69) · 8 years ago (edited)

@dcsignals you sorta missed the point. A system like this learns and adapts. It's an assistant, similar to Siri but more personalized, more tuned in with your actual needs and not busy selling your secrets for extra $$$.

When the TV remote was first becoming a thing my grandfather would rant that it made no sense to have such a thing because all you had to do was get up and go turn the knobs yourself.

Progess is trying to make people's lives easier, more comfortable and more fulfilling. It's not like there is a conspiracy to replace humans. It's just that if a task can be automated it should be.

A perfect example. Alice uses SMS as her prefered method of communication but Bob prefers email.
Alice can be cognizant of this fact, or her phone can. If Alice has to be aware of this, then she must send Bob an email. If she sends him a text he might get pissed.

If her phone can be aware of it then all her phone needs to do is know bobs phone and ask it "hey alice has a message for bob, how should I send it"?

Alice doesn't need to worry about the message carrier and can focus on the message content, same with Bob.

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4 votes

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dcsignals (40) · 8 years ago

"It's just that if a task can be automated it should be" - This is the attitude which really scares the bejesus out of me. Just because something can be done, really doesn't mean it should be done. I can burn my house down, but it wouldn't be a good idea.

When creating a new technology it is no longer enough to just do it because you can, people need to also consider whether or not its a good idea (and if there are reasons why its not, whether there is any mitigation against that).

Your first example is not valid. A TV remote automates a dull repetitive task and does so in the moment. It is a tool not dissimilar from a hammer. A bot which makes decisions on your behalf rather than just doing your direct will is a totally different matter. I am also disappointed by your use of your grandfather to paint an implicit ad hominem attack against me as being a relic of a bygone era with no valid argument to be made today.

Your second example is more interesting and is indeed less offensive to my sensibilities than I had imagined, but at the same time doesn't include the use of AI as mentioned in the article. The introduction of AI I would imagine means something along the lines of noticing than a person acts like they prefer email and then using that information without the person specifically requesting to only receive email. I find this concerning mainly because it takes a one dimensional view of reality and then traps people within that bubble whilst also failing to know about the innevitable exceptions. For example, maybe bob prefers people to email him because he tends to get more details in an email than an SMS - your system ruins this. Maybe he generally what he really likes it to receive a response in the format he sent in - so one day he sends an SMS but your system has already put him in the email pigeon hole so he gets an email response. I could go on for a long time but I'll stop there.

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2 votes

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williambanks (69) · 8 years ago

@dcsignal First off allow me to apologize. There literally was no intent on my part to offend or to offer an ad hominem in any form. This is mature discourse.

The example was intended to convey that what at one time seemed like something that humans "ought" to be doing, is now something that we do infact rely on technology for.

Automation of dull repetitive tasks is a synonym for AI. It's just the degree of inference that really makes the difference.

Look forget the word AI in any of this. It paints too broad of a swath and frankly we'll never have AI because we keep moving the goal post.

I have a phone and I'm sending you a message. You have a phone and your phone is aware that you are presently at work. Instead of "i'll text you".
I just decide I'm going to send you a message and let the phones sort out the details.

The only thing that is happening is that when it comes time for message delivery, your phone tells my phone "He's in a meeting right now, would you like his email address instead?"

What you are automating away here is the receptionist who would be doing this task. You don't need to be shoehorned in and frankly if people like dana and myself are doing our jobs correctly you should never ever feel that way.

Just like you used to program your phone with speed dial settings, and keep a Rolodex for less frequent numbers. You now have a contact list built into your phone. You already have the ability to put your phone on meeting mode and in most cases it will direct calls to voicemail automatically. So you tell your phone, "Hey I'm in a meeting now". Your phone then reports back to my phone the way that you would prefer to be reached.

It's not just that no one is forcing it on you. It's that it should be at least as natural a tool to use as another human being. That's the I in AI here. You're literally surrounded by it. Your microwave has a popcorn button right now. But really good microwaves could scan the UPC as you're putting in the bag and find out what the correct settings are to pop your popcorn to optimal efficiency. That doesn't mean that you wouldn't be able to stop it on your own though.

@dana-edwards I do wonder if maybe dropping the term AI and using more precise terms might be in order. Automated Assistant. Independent agent system, support vector machine, software based remote controller, might help people digest these topics easier without being biased because of the movie view.

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2 votes

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dcsignals (40) · 8 years ago

No problem, I understand...you want to suggest that this is just another quantitative evolution of technology and there is no more reason to oppose it than there would have been for any other technology. Personally I see the potential in AI for the automation of decisions rather than actions, which to me is not a quantitative but a qualitative difference.

There is good evidence that we are already suffering from adopting technologies indiscriminately, just because we can and because they are more advanced technologically we assume they must be better. For example, worker productivity in industrialized nations has gone down dramatically, and continues to go down every year. The latest thinking is that this is because businesses bring in new tech which takes ages to learn, break often, last a few years before a new system comes out and its obsolete, and only offers small advantages which do not make up for all this. I am not against technology any more than I'm against food, but I think we should be more discerning in the way that we are with what we choose to eat.

The example you give seems good, but I don't see how that uses AI. I suspect that what the post is about really does use AI which does make it a different thing - but I wouldn't suggest anybody drop the AI term because most people are fine with it and cynics like me will only think you are trying to hide something. ;P

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ramta (67) · 8 years ago

Very good explanation. Than you, it opend my mind more.
That is how we want it to be in the real world. Sometimes something is not how we want it. Then we change it, trying to make it better. In the end we succeed.
That is how we do it with everything. []
So we do the same with Personal Preference Bot Nets.
Have a nice day everyone :-)

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1 vote

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cyrusxir (42) · 8 years ago

This kind of thing isn't necessarily being forced on you. It is entirely your choice on how you delegate your work to a bot and how much you use its work.