[Music]
morning everyone uh bit quieter after
RAV isn't it um I hope you've had a
lovely week um I've had a wild time and
I thought I would take this moment to
talk about some of the bigger ideas in
crypto um I got very excited about this
industry about sort of seven eight years
ago for for a few things and I thought
it'd be interesting to sort of revisit
some of the the the sort of really
interesting ideas part of which is I
think it can coordinate an epistemic
Revolution I'm going to tell you what I
think that means so I'll dig into what
um epistemology is and and kind of um
what I mean by the title and then I'm
going to jump into like prediction
markets and info Finance some mechanisms
for markets some mechanisms for our
minds uh and disc discuss a little bit
about the future of
intelligence so I think we're in a
moment of epistemic Crisis and by that I
mean I think people are losing their
minds um I think people are um starting
to lose grip of reality and I think
we're going to start to see this effect
manifest um over the next few years um
and what I think is happening is there
are kind of epistemology is being
corrupted now epistemology is essenti
like a uh a lens that you put over the
world that views that that shapes and
biases your reality so you have a
concept of reality and then your
epistemology is what you consider truth
within it um so you can consider this
it's like you've put on you know when
you put on Shades right and it changes
the world that's what you your
epistemology is like that but it's the
kind of the entire history of you your
biases who you are what you know what
you don't um and everyone has one of
these has anyone's seen they
live it's a brilliant film it's a banger
watch it uh 1980s John carpet film uh
and basically uh it's a story about this
guy who kind of uncovers a plot uh and
the plot is like these people are trying
to distribute these glasses when you put
them on it unveils the truth uh and he
realizes that everyone is being
brainwashed uh and it turns out there's
kind of like these ghoulish aliens have
taken over and secretly in control of
everything
um and interestingly this is kind of
what people think is happening now
people are collapsing their epistemology
to a reality where there's like a bad
guy um the world is not that simple
right but people want you to believe
there's a bad guy and the bad guy that
they want you to believe right and
that's why truth is under
attack um and I think this is like a
critically important moment
where
um the kind of tools that we're looking
at are just literally brainwashing our
our minds right we are being brainwashed
I know enough about algorithms and
social networks and mechanisms to know
this is true right um we have being
brainwashed every day I don't know how
anyone looks at Tik Tok for longer than
like 10 minutes it's insane uh but these
algorithms are like changing our minds
and they do that because we are kind of
like we are like we are socially
constructed like I used to work in
learning theory for a lot of the time
and um this was was a big eye opener for
me in terms of like how we learn right
we used to think that you would just
learn by just being told stuff uh and it
turns out that the best way to learn is
to learn together right we swap memetic
units we swap memes to each other that
we incorporate into our world viiew
people can literally change your entire
view of the world with a with a sentence
right so we learn from each other and
that's happening all the time um and
increasingly in the modern world the
kind of delug and the information
complex that we're kind of under um is
making us sad and upset and is really
wrecking our heads in uh and I think
this is a big problem um the feeds are
the new Battleground um these two guys
have kind of used these things um to
their own gain in in numerous ways uh
and we are in a world where we're about
to take the breaks off um a lot of the
sort of information World Donald Trump's
talking about like making it illegal to
do moderation basically uh on social
media networks uh and this is a big
problem right so you've probably noticed
that X has just turned into a complete
like hole over the last like year
because they've just taken the breakes
off right and it's just like top grifter
uh every day on the feed uh and the most
kind of like um dopamine inducing
craziness um and the problem is it's
going to get worse uh and it's going to
get worse because of
AI um we now have basically set up a
pipeline of truth that's served up by an
API um someone asked Rachel rosol
yesterday um like what she thought of AI
and she said it she thought it was like
a demon that's been Unleashed uh by
leeching on our uh on our data that's
been scraped from us and she's right um
and like the the reality of it is this
thing has been basically just like the
whole history of human language but in
between it there's a policy filter it's
a new epistemology for the world.org
right um this is a A system that is
filtering our reality and we're
Outsourcing Our Truth to an oligopoly
and they're Waring with each other for
us right to shape
reality so how do we coordinate an
epistemic Revolution where we sort of
create a new lens on the world that is
closer to the truth um and to do that we
need new sources of Truth we need um new
information to look at the world that's
more objective more empirical more
evidence-based more real um uh sort now
the technical bit right
um prediction markets are part of the
answer these have got very hyped
recently I sort of um been working on
these problems for about 10 years but I
joined crypto fulltime four years ago to
build a prediction Market except it
wasn't really a prediction Market it was
a little bit different um but the
reality of it is there's a lot of work
to do we've got a little with the hyped
cycle is in full effect or just was
because of prediction markets but very
incomplete mechanisms in my mind um the
oracles are very optimistic um and yeah
like really optimistic and the reality
of it is prediction markets put a bounty
on the generation of new information and
if we get this right then there's a
large enough market um that the oracles
are created for that market that
actually have to research which reality
we are in um so there's a lot of work to
do on the oracles um we are we need to
get better at curating predictors like
plutocratic um approaches to prediction
markets is like the one coin one vote of
dows um there are better ways for doing
prediction markets we need to create out
who are the good predictors uh Crowds
Are Not wise but there is wide people in
them you need to find them um we need to
get better at asking questions we've had
one big prediction Market because of one
question that was made for us um and you
know they died four years ago cuz that
was the only question that anyone that
was found that was interested in this
Paradigm um so we need to get better at
asking the questions and we need to
worry about incentive compatibility and
this is a kind of game theoretic idea
where there's like is is everyone
revealing their true preferences to the
market via the incentives and actually
there's people in that game like market
makers and Bots and airdrop Farmers that
are messing with the signal um and we
need to worry about the Dark Side of
prediction markets some of these things
have pretty dodgy and weird outcomes
that uh you should be worried about
um and we need to find ways of stopping
that from happening and liquidity is the
major limitation right we had one
massive liquid prediction Market this
happened four years ago and then it went
dead again right and that was because
you need a certain amount of liquidity
in the market to get out what you need
so I think info Finance might be the
answer and what's interesting about this
is vitalic has basically exploded the
concept of prediction markets created a
new idea called info finance and
underneath it there's a whole design
space of things that you can use
incentives for generating new
information um I designed one of these
about four years ago um little one of
the first mechanisms I'm going to show
you um essentially you mint an ID uh the
reality of it is there are many
realities in front of us right a lot of
prediction markets essentially have this
binary Choice um so instead of voting
with who's got the most money this is
who gets an identity you can express a
preference across a list of realities in
this case a bunch of Market assets um so
you quadratically vote on these sort
your preference and you go into a kind
of
um like competition with other people so
every identity essentially votes on what
they think is going to happen in the
next day uh we use market prices because
that's what we actually have oracles for
uh and then we find out who the winner
is um and essentially what you get here
is a kind of history of uh everyone's
predictions over time uh what we built
here is a permissionless protocol if
everyone anyone wants to hack on this at
like eth Global join this group or just
contact me after um but essentially what
we've got here is a system where we know
exactly who made good predictions over
time on chain um and now anyone can
interpret that data and find out who the
good predictors are so the next sort of
wave of of prediction Market mechanisms
need to go beyond Market mechanisms
right because they're not that incentive
compatible we all know the amount of
dodgy stuff that happens in amm there's
me there's slippage there's all of these
things uh that are impacting the
collective intelligence in the system uh
we need to start thinking about
reputation systems to find out who the
good predictors are um and we need to
incorporate like prediction histories uh
and and think about sequentialized
prediction markets there might be an
absolute genius in that poly Market uh
Market who knew what was going to happen
and it kind of like there was one guy
who literally went out and did on the
ground ethnographic research and put $4
million on it and made tons of
money right that's the guy you want in
your next prediction market and you want
to amplify their signal right there
might be people that smart who don't
have $4 million to AP into like Trump
coins right so how do you find them um
also we've got like AI as players in the
game right another vitalism but this is
definitely going to happen we're going
to get AIS to play in the game and look
at how everyone else plays and aggregate
the intelligence across the market and
be a player themselves uh importantly we
need to validate this stuff
scientifically um because people are
already thinking well like poly Market
is truth now um and in fact it got one
thing sort of right um and there is
things to it but like we are far from
proving that these and Know No One
Believes In collective intelligence more
than me but we need to empirically prove
these things as as as as real and valid
and not get too overhyped about them uh
and we need better articles and better
tokens um here's a less talked about
prediction Market Geo bodden
token um now is this a rug or did it
predict brion's resignation like months
in advance um the reality is we don't
know um because most meme coins are like
bad memes generally uh and like nearly
all rugs um but they could be prediction
markets right if the meme of Biden was
actually a true meme of it and not Geo
bodden token and its market price was
reflected to what was happening in the
relevance of Joe Biden over time maybe
it would contain information that would
be super useful so actually we need like
an infinite Garden of these
mechanisms um which yes this is becoming
a kind of like Zeitgeist thing right I
believe in infinite games and what we
need is many many new mechanisms all
trying to tackle these problems uh but
to get to that we need to completely fix
the market structure now I don't think
I've got time to do this because I need
to talk about decentralized AI um but
basically we've got a whole load of
problems in the market structure we need
to stop thinking tokens as Equity we
need to find a line Capital uh and
frankly the way the market is structured
at the moment keeps out not just an
infinite Garden of mechanisms but any
mechanisms we don't have any apps not we
had one app that's done well right so
the market structure is completely
broken this has annoyed me so much um
that I'm trying to basically like smash
this to bits with a bunch of like tools
for like opening up um the market
structure I there's no reason to me why
projects can't be launched completely
onchain all the way through so
completely decentralized Capital
formation all the way through to token
launching and like not touching the real
world in any way I don't see why that
can't happen um this is a bunch of
mechanisms uh that I made for these
things this one's quite fun um and that
one um but yeah I'm going to Swit on but
if you're interested in like mechanisms
and how to like break uh apart this kind
of like Market structure uh join joers
in that group uh I'll be going through
kind of a range of mechanisms for how we
can do this
stuff um now I've got about five six
minutes to to talk about AI uh this is
something I believe knowledge is the
most important commodity on the
planet um and the sort of project that
I'm interested in working on next um is
called fact um and I'm interested in
Building Systems about the deliberation
of Truth um and how we might go about
doing that so the mechanism I mentioned
earlier um is a slightly more broader
mechanism I consider it a kind of core
primitive in in my sort of design space
and essentially I call it semantic
ballot voting essentially you have like
a list of tags anyone can s uh put a tag
that's a meme it's a uh unit of meaning
it's an ontology um it's it's whatever
you want it to be could be a proposal it
goes into a list hence a ballot and then
you vote on it to sort it by preference
um and then essentially that allows you
to aggregate the preference of meaning
across many
participants um but the interesting
thing is is if you give those people an
AI now to now talk about those hashtags
you generate a really complex data set
which is actually a kind of semantic
graph and the mind of a da um this is
like Wikipedia for AIS right it's a
complete mess no human could be able to
read it but it's absolutely lovely for
LL
um so now if you just imagine a da um
like a good one uh nice and simple u a
community of people um it's token gated
you can only see what's inside if you're
in it um it's Sovereign it's
decentralized um it's social and
consensus driven um it's a community of
people and they're all equipped with
tools to govern an AI many of the tools
I was just talking about
uh and each other right so they are
basically in a group and they're
governing a model together so not one
that Sam's governing one that that group
is governing on a topic um and in this
group um those people are basically just
chatting they're curating they're
governing and all of that is their data
they own it they control it uh and they
can monetize it if they want but
essentially what they what they can do
is then leverage an AI system to create
something that's a bit like a hybrid of
like Reddit and Community notes right
but in that specific topic so
mimetically anchored in an ontology uh
and what they're engaging is is a kind
of like what I call semantic governance
which is um essentially debating
meaning um so I think this is
potentially a new kind of name
space uh where we kind of build this
kind of like conceptual playground where
people can connect it with other bits of
meaning and you create a network uh so
each of like these semantic nodes
represents a unit of meaning um and then
we can use this is this actually a great
governance mechanisms for Dows by the
way um because Dows typically have this
perfect open scope decision making where
anyone can make a proposal about
absolutely anything which doesn't happen
in
organizations uh organizations have a
scope and they bound their decision-
making to particular themes and
ontologies um and we don't right right
so what we need to do is like
semantically anchor what it is we do and
what we don't do um and that will kind
of help us with Dows um I also think
this is the approach for um unifying
expert systems which is basically the
one like super creative thing in experts
an AI system has ever done is move 37 um
in the game of Go uh where Alpha go
beats uh the world's best go player it
create it played in a way that no one
has ever done before and llms simply do
not do that
um so what we need is to kind of unify
expert systems through these kind of
neuros symbolic
approaches um and you know I believe
doing Dows in practice right we do lots
of stuff you know I think there's like
Dow governance uh use cases emerging and
like protocol Dows and defi but it's
really time to start taking these to the
people um so we've been trying to like
onboard people in citizens assemblies uh
and give them access uh to a quadratic
voting app and getting them to create
these data sets and our goal is to
create um a agent for those people
called London voice and it's kind of a
digital representative of those people
um it's difficult like Real World
Adoption is hard my wonderful co-founder
Matt sent 50,000 invites to the people
of London to get them to a Citizens
assembly and we got 12
hits um it's really bloody difficult um
literally Flyers through their door with
an invite um 50,000 it's hard work but
we need to do it um so really what we
end up here is like a a a a tag a
semantic tag an ontology London what
does London mean the people of London
decide what London means and they create
a data set uh it's rather sci-fi
sounding semantic hypergraph um but
essentially what our goal is is to
create a voice uh for those people and I
think this kind of ontological
engineering is what going to make
alignment
legible um so using this kind of tools
you'll be able to find out who is
aligned with you and potentially this is
the way that we can do new kinds of
public goods funding um so where this
goes next is
basically um you need a governance
system for this kind of stuff there's
some of those tags you probably don't
want on your network so this is a kind
of swarm of Agents so imagine a swarm of
Agents with a group of people with each
one a kind of Federated structure uh
that kind of governs that Network and a
sort of deliberative council structure
um which essentially grows exponentially
and this scales by the Fibonacci
sequence so you keep adding these
communities to sort of decentralize the
overarching governance layer uh and what
this gives us is potentially factually
accurate Generations because you can uh
root queries across this network of
experts and synthesize queries generated
by genuinely independent Minds so what
that means is that every concept can
have a dow there will be thousands of
dows a day and every Dow will have an
agent um so really what I think we could
end up with is a kind of social network
of AI powered Dows where each of these
communities um uh are are building their
own AI so what do we need we need more
mechanisms we need more Innovation we
need good token economies and we need to
leverage AI that we control and govern
in our own Dows uh and we need to do
what we need to do is build systems for
planetary scale decision- making to help
us get find new spaces to figure out how
the world is working thank you very
much thank you so much Nick I see that
the intersection between Ai and web 3 is
a really hot topic because we've had so
many questions about it so let's start
with the first one what's the metal
layer risk or benefit of an AI model
guiding the scope of decision making
that's a very interesting question um
there is risks and benefits you're quite
right um so I think the benefits is that
we can build like like the models should
be designed by by The Taste and and
needs of that group right so we're
creating a kind of new epistemology for
that group a shared framework of reality
a way of looking at the world a way of
synthesizing information uh and that
pluralism that difference in opinion in
the way that data is rified to a group
of people is incredibly valuable and in
fact is the point uh the risks are is
those people might be mental right and
they might do some absolutely crazy
stuff that you just do wouldn't want
perfectly synthesized in an AI and like
the prediction Market things you need
the governance aspect on top of
it moving on to the next question how do
you think we can use AIS in a more
Collective way such that it protects us
from the dangers that centralized AI
will likely bring what could their
governance look like um again wonderful
question and and like this is exactly
what I want to be EXP exploring probably
for like the next 10 years right at the
moment AI is a very sort of like um
unidirectional it's a onetoone
relationship uh We've yet to even crack
open the design space of what it looks
like for our group of people to leverage
and uh and and an AI and how they do
that is through governance it's like for
me it's the perfect use case for Dows
right it's a killer use case for Dows
and I think the um that is the question
precisely the question that we need to
explore and crack open um so really what
you need is these pluralistic decision
Mech mechanisms and lots of like
deliberative decision- making and
building data pipelines and then finding
ways for people to own that data and be
rewarded by it the system I'm designing
I want to be able to give people to pay
people per the generation as their llm
is used we need to find ways instead of
just stealing people's data uh and
monetizing Humanity without their
consent we need to find ways of people
doing that yeah I really like that idea
of building the incentive structure in
to make sure people are being paid for
the work that they are doing exactly
exactly all right is there a scaling
prerequisite for the AI models to work
does it work with just 12 people are
there any self- selection bias issues
really wonderful question these by the
way um actually you'd be surprised right
a lot of the feedback I've had with this
is people going oh you need like
billions of tokens for AIS to work not
the case at all actually you can can
actually get incredibly good outcomes
with like 12 people especially if you
like this is like one of the core things
right because what we've got is this
incredible like block and Deluge of of
data
uncurated build from the internet that
is what these bolt models are and
they're all like fil filling it up with
like we've got trillions of data points
it's absolutely brilliant and it's like
all garbage right and and like the
reality of it is if you have highly
curated data set that's structured in
these kind of like ways that the people
have carefully fine-tuned it you can use
things like rag which just brings out
the data that humans have curated for it
so actually what you get is this like
hyp specialization I think you can beat
GPT on topics like I asked you know when
did Biden resign for that go Bowden
thing and it said Biden's still the
President right like the reality of
these things is that what we need is
realtime AIS and that's what you can get
with 12 people you can curate a topic
and say What's Happening Now basically
mhm and we have a little bit of time for
the final question um so they were
asking is the data factually accurate or
socially accurate because social
consensus does not necessarily equate
the truth thank you for these questions
absolutely wonderful all of them um the
answer is is like truth is a social
consensus problem right like it's a kind
of uh meta stable thing that means that
when it can be like Disturbed and we
switch into to a new equilibrium like we
used to think that Earth was the center
of the universe right like facts are a
social consensus problem and what we
need to be able to see is what do people
think the truth is and be able to look
at the deliberative Providence all the
way back and have that be your judgment
call on whether it's truth or not all
right thank you so much Dr Nick let's
give a round of applause to him our next
talk will be on