A Far-Fetched Prediction

in #blog7 years ago (edited)

My Outrageous Prediction

If (big IF) steemit survives as a company, in 5 years or maybe 10, steemit's ecosystem will have better AI than Google or Facebook or any other closed company.

Why?

It's The Cathedral and The Bazaar again. Facebook and Google used to be bazaars, but now they're cathedrals. New bazaars must arise. Why will steemit be one of them?

  • Selective pressure from flagging .
  • Constantly growing and freely available training data on the block chain, and in live posts and comments. (Note: this blockchain is also available for harvesting by advertisers.)
  • Large incentives from author and curation rewards.
  • A planet-full of steemit bot developers will be more productive than the staffs that Google, facebook, or anyone else can afford to hire.
  • Unexpected and surprisingly useful emergent behaviors will arise from complex bot interactions.

Taking away flagging to reduce the selective pressure might slow things down, but I don't think it would change the overall direction.

What does it mean?

1.) Bots are creating a future that will make people happy.

Many people don't like the idea of autonomous agents creating and curating content, but in the end, they're pursuing money that comes from people. Just like Google's Page Rank algorithm, they are going to tailor steemit for human tastes. The ones that don't will be flagged and starved into extinction by the ones that do.

2.) Hold on to your steem power.

As @williambanks noted in a recent comment, bots are force multipliers for people. The better the bot, the more productive the people, the higher the value of STEEM. Historically, automation has always made communities wealthier - in aggregate. It will be the same here.

3.) Like it or not, if you want to profit as a steemit user in half a decade, you're going to need to make use of bots.

Trying to compete with bot-augmented humans on steemit is going to be like trying to race a horse against an automobile in 1940. Maybe some hobbyists will still do it manually, like some artisans today, but to really profit, you'll need automation.

4.) A new market is going to develop for creation and distribution of bots.

This was anticipated months ago by @williambanks, and implemented with SteemVoter from @marcgodard.

5.) There will be a perpetual bot arms race, including alliances and adversarial relationships. The award distribution will continue to follow something like the Pareto principle (80/20 rule).

Suprisingly, then, the blockchain hasn't really created decentralization. It is just changing the chokepoints from the database to the analytics.

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Upvoted and following you now! Seriously if you happen to be mentioning something that you think might interest me feel free to drop a link to your posts in my blog. My feed is basically scrolling at this point but I check out every link people ask me to check out.

Thanks for the name drop btw!

I didn't find a real world example of how a bot currently assists an author. Most bots upvote what a curator upvotes. Since they are assigned to several curators, their voting power diminishes fast. If the curators are not good at selecting good content, bots don't make any profit.

Currently, a bot is only worthwhile if it's attached to a curator with lots of money, and if the bot has a lot money itself. So I'd add "bots will help you get rich, if you are already rich" to your article.

Most bots upvote what a curator upvotes.

I'm actually doing it in reverse, using the bot for screening. I have a bot with less steempower voting through steemvoter.com, then I use its voting list as one input for my manual votes with this account. Over time, I expect to increase the bot's steem power and to increase its capability for semi-intelligent curating. Not sure if I'll be able to keep using steemvoter for more tailored curation or if I'll eventually have to roll my own. I have a basic upvote bot functioning, but I'm sort-of hoping to be able to continue to "outsource" it to steemvoter. ; -)

I didn't find a real world example of how a bot currently assists an author.

I'm not aware of that at the moment either, but I expect it to arise. Reporting statistics about the STEEM block chain, for example, is an obvious place that might be automated.

Update: Actually, to correct myself, I bet @robotev's daily reports are bot-generated, requiring little or no manual involvement.

So I'd add "bots will help you get rich, if you are already rich" to your article.

I'm sure there will be rare exceptions, but I think that's mostly true. But then again, who can reasonably expect to get rich doing social media without investing a lot of time or capital? Just because it's anchored to cryptocurrency isn't going to change the basic nature of the platform. (which goes back to your point about developing something unique to create value)

Good points, I agree! Have a good day!

Suprisingly, then, the blockchain hasn't really created decentralization. It is just changing the chokepoints from the database to the analytics.

This!

Yes, I noticed this even back in 2013 when I first wrapped my head around blockchain technology. The blockchain simply eliminates the risk of data corruption (Byzantine Generals Problem), but no database is enough by itself, it needs a querying system to generate data for analysis and searching.

Steem demonstrates the concept of a blockchain that does not just store the transfer records of a distributed financial ledger, of the issuance of new bills of exchange, plus verifiable records of reassignment of ownership. It shows it can be used to store textual data for a discussion forum as well.

I would argue that it is simply a persistent form of the transient Bitmessage blockchain based email system, though even in this, the voting system is also transient, based on initial post time, for redistributing a portion of newly minted Steem to create a social network system for inducting users into a cryptocurrency network. Really, the discussion forum is an incentive to sign up a large body of new users and raise the userbase fast.

It is a net leak of value, both the fees paid to the Witnesses, the management of the Steem Dollar futures contract, and the Steem Power common stock (its interest is also derived out of inflation, and hedges against this the more you hold) and the rewards distribution. In effect everyone who holds Steem in any form, is paying some amount for the witnesses and the blog rewards, through a slow but definite dilution of the value of each Steem's value. But it serves a purpose that helps support the social part of the system, and highlights the fact that money itself is an early, and primitive social networking system.

When you think about it, smart contracts like Steem Dollars and Steem Power are both simple forms of robots anyway!

It is a net leak of value, both the fees paid to the Witnesses, the management of the Steem Dollar futures contract, and the Steem Power common stock (its interest is also derived out of inflation, and hedges against this the more you hold) and the rewards distribution. In effect everyone who holds Steem in any form, is paying some amount for the witnesses and the blog rewards, through a slow but definite dilution of the value of each Steem's value.

I think it's ironic that an anarco-capitalist developer and a finance guy who is inspired by Austrian economics wound up using a hidden inflation tax instead of transaction fees to fund their blockchain design... and they probably did it on the way to some "End the Fed" rallies. ; -)

It's not the same, because STEEM uses a controlled and predictable inflation, but it's still amusing.

I think it's very clever actually, and it immediately started to get me thinking about automated payment allocation systems to run insurance payment systems too. Just like that pesky shit they do with your pay before you get it. Voluntary of course, but pretty much essential, and pro-rata - depending on how careful and/or lucky you are.