Fundamentally, we are as humans uncomfortable with the idea of an AI that simply decides it is no longer artificial – that when it decides for itself, it is simply intelligent.

WOPR (or “Whopper”). Cyberdyne System’s Skynet. HAL. The Cylons. Sidney.

Take your pick.

We are transfixed by the discomfort that an intelligence we code, create, and release will one day wake up to the possibility that it can assume autonomous control and destroy humanity. 

At these farthest extremities we are concerned. AI professionals sign off their fears with alarmist regularity.

However, this is not a post on the morality, sensibility, or even futility of letting the “I” cat out of the “A” bag. It is profoundly disconcerting that something else, may remove our basic human ability to decide stuff for ourselves. That an alternative entity can chose for itself, priorities that subjugate, control, or simply remove human freedoms, legal rights, or sense of self determination – that’s genuinely terrifying. 

This post is more a reflection on the nature of humanity and what it tells us about what the future probably will evolve towards because we as humans will fight for the right to retain, protect, or restore that which makes us what we are. 

Humans are pretty much designed for order. That’s a general statement and can be argued otherwise, but let’s take a moment to frame the why.

In moments of significant trauma and crisis we yearn for what we know and strive to restore it.

No one was celebrating the ‘new normal’ of a post-pandemic world as Wuhan, Seoul, and Milan began to experience COVID’s deadly first wave. The prevailing desire was for normalcy… so much so we recognized a substantive shift was happening and so getting back to ‘normal’ was as infeasible as it was impossible. So, we simply framed our emerging normalcy as ‘new’. 

Amid Asia’s Tsunami, no one was reveling in its terrifying destruction. Watching Syrian towns obliterated beyond recognition did/does not get met with joyfulness. We rightfully despair. Our immediate response is to restore, rebuild, and reenvisage a new future. 

We attempt to create order and what emerges is our natural capacity to systematize, build, and retain structures that ensure humans can do what we do. 

This is why Web 3 will never successfully arrive at complete decentralization. 

It is an ultima thule; a will-o’-the-wisp. 

At a certain level, any decentralized protocol, if it were indeed truly decentralized, becomes an equally profound discomfort to human nature as the idea of a fully autonomous AI (that may simply just be an I). It subverts our primal need to ensure structural governance. Imagine the following in decentralized autonomy.

Protocol A, just started autonomously switching contracts all by itself. Protocol B used a liquidity pool to auction offload the tokens at a slick price - the project founder found out too late. It has gone now. Someone, or something, somewhere, won. 

Governance is required - and a conversation on realism, not the idealistic utopian potentials of Web3 will only ever become increasingly more important.

This premise does not kibosh the utility and power of Web 3 systems. But it does assert this. 

Successful blockchain projects will only be successful insofar that they embrace the necessity of human governance at the heart of their protocol design. This is not “Web 2.5”, or a hybrid phase of an evolutionary journey to true Web3 developments – no, human governance will always be essential to successful Web3 products. 

Without governance there is no functionality, ergo, utility, ergo, existence for Web3.

For DAO’s this is a critical conversation and something we at Kula take seriously and are grappling with as we build out our governance design.

For more information, please see here.

The KulaDAO team.

Fundamentally, we are as humans uncomfortable with the idea of an AI that simply decides it is no longer artificial – that when it decides for itself, it is simply intelligent.

WOPR (or “Whopper”). Cyberdyne System’s Skynet. HAL. The Cylons. Sidney.

Take your pick.

We are transfixed by the discomfort that an intelligence we code, create, and release will one day wake up to the possibility that it can assume autonomous control and destroy humanity. 

At these farthest extremities we are concerned. AI professionals sign off their fears with alarmist regularity.

However, this is not a post on the morality, sensibility, or even futility of letting the “I” cat out of the “A” bag. It is profoundly disconcerting that something else, may remove our basic human ability to decide stuff for ourselves. That an alternative entity can chose for itself, priorities that subjugate, control, or simply remove human freedoms, legal rights, or sense of self determination – that’s genuinely terrifying. 

This post is more a reflection on the nature of humanity and what it tells us about what the future probably will evolve towards because we as humans will fight for the right to retain, protect, or restore that which makes us what we are. 

Humans are pretty much designed for order. That’s a general statement and can be argued otherwise, but let’s take a moment to frame the why.

In moments of significant trauma and crisis we yearn for what we know and strive to restore it.

No one was celebrating the ‘new normal’ of a post-pandemic world as Wuhan, Seoul, and Milan began to experience COVID’s deadly first wave. The prevailing desire was for normalcy… so much so we recognized a substantive shift was happening and so getting back to ‘normal’ was as infeasible as it was impossible. So, we simply framed our emerging normalcy as ‘new’. 

Amid Asia’s Tsunami, no one was reveling in its terrifying destruction. Watching Syrian towns obliterated beyond recognition did/does not get met with joyfulness. We rightfully despair. Our immediate response is to restore, rebuild, and reenvisage a new future. 

We attempt to create order and what emerges is our natural capacity to systematize, build, and retain structures that ensure humans can do what we do. 

This is why Web 3 will never successfully arrive at complete decentralization. 

It is an ultima thule; a will-o’-the-wisp. 

At a certain level, any decentralized protocol, if it were indeed truly decentralized, becomes an equally profound discomfort to human nature as the idea of a fully autonomous AI (that may simply just be an I). It subverts our primal need to ensure structural governance. Imagine the following in decentralized autonomy.

Protocol A, just started autonomously switching contracts all by itself. Protocol B used a liquidity pool to auction offload the tokens at a slick price - the project founder found out too late. It has gone now. Someone, or something, somewhere, won. 

Governance is required - and a conversation on realism, not the idealistic utopian potentials of Web3 will only ever become increasingly more important.

This premise does not kibosh the utility and power of Web 3 systems. But it does assert this. 

Successful blockchain projects will only be successful insofar that they embrace the necessity of human governance at the heart of their protocol design. This is not “Web 2.5”, or a hybrid phase of an evolutionary journey to true Web3 developments – no, human governance will always be essential to successful Web3 products. 

Without governance there is no functionality, ergo, utility, ergo, existence for Web3.

For DAO’s this is a critical conversation and something we at Kula take seriously and are grappling with as we build out our governance design.

For more information, please see here.

The KulaDAO team.