Nature is the cradle of civilization. Nature 1.0 is seeds & soil. Nature 2.0 adds silicon & steel. AI, blockchain, IoT towards abundance. Keynote address at Startup Energy Transition (SET) Festival, Apr 16, 2018, Berlin, Germany Related blog post: https://medium.com/@trentmc0/nature-2-0-27bdf8238071

1. Trent McConaghy
@trentmc0
Ocean | BigchainDB
Nature 2.0:
The Cradle of Civilization
Gets an Upgrade

2. On the IoT,
nobody knows
you’re a toaster

3. But what is this?
Robot? Plant?

4. What do you call
a forest that
owns itself?

5. Can a wind farm own itself?
How?
Can that help redefine our
relationship with energy?

6. How we can transition from
scarcity to abundance?

7. Nature 1.0

9. Nutrients

10. Rain

11. Sun

12. Symbiosis with
animals

13. No ownership
No identity
No money
No scarcity

14. No ownership
No identity
No money
No scarcity
It just is.
Self-sustaining
Anti-fragile

15. Ever-higher levels
of integration.
From beasts 
ecosystems
Each ecosystem
just is.
Self-sustaining
Anti-fragile

16. Mother Earth =
our planet’s
ecosystem.
Nature is the
cradle of
civilization.

17. Yet often we fall
short.
Does tech have
anything to say?

18. Blockchain
(and ways to frame it)

19. “A Chain of Blocks”
-Block = list of transactions, where tx = “create asset” or
“transfer asset” action, digitally signed
-Chain = linked list, where links are hashes
Header
Tx1
Tx2
Tx3
..
Header
Tx1
Tx2
Tx3
..
Header
Tx1
Tx2
Tx3
..

20. “Database with blue ocean benefits”
• Decentralized
• Immutable
• Assets

21. “Trust machine”
because it minimizes
trust needed to
operate.
It’s more socially
scalable. (Ref Szabos)

22. STORE OF VALUE
Bitcoin, zcash
FILE SYSTEM
IPFS/FileCoin, Swarm
DATABASE
BigchainDB, OrbitDB
BIZ LOGIC
Ethereum, Dfinity
HIGH PERF.
COMPUTE
TrueBit, Golem, iExec
STATE
PolkaDot
DATA
TCP/IP
VALUE
Interledger,
Cosmos
COMMUNICATIONSPROCESSINGSTORAGE
“Emerging Decentralized Stack”

23. Bitcoin incentivizes security = hash rate = electricity
Result: > USA by mid 2019!
Get people to do stuff
By rewarding with tokens
“Incentive Machine”

24. “Public Utility Network”
Self-sustaining, anti-fragile

25. A computational process that
• runs autonomously,
• on decentralized infrastructure,
• with resource manipulation.
“DAO: Decentralized Autonomous Organization”
It’s code that can own stuff!
Aka “good computer virus”

26. “Life Form”
-Ralph Merkle
“Bitcoin is the first example of a new form of life.”
“It lives and breathes on the internet. It lives because it can pay
people to keep it alive. It lives because it performs a useful
service that people will pay it to perform. … It can’t be stopped.
It can’t even be interrupted. If nuclear war destroyed half of
our planet, it would continue to live, uncorrupted.”

27. AI
(and ways to frame it)

28. “Replicates human cognitive
behavior” [Turing test]

29. “Can do tasks that only a
human could previously do”

30. “Can do a task at speed /
accuracy / capacity not
possible by a human.”

31. “A set of tools”
• Classification
• Regression
• Knowledge extraction
• Optimization
• Creative / Structural design
• …

32. “Embodied agents” (AGI)

33. AI * Blockchain:
AI DAOs

34. “An AI running on decentralized processing substrate”
<or>
“A DAO running with AI algorithms”
Definition of AI DAO

35. The ArtDAO
1. Run AI art engine to generate new image,
using GP or deep learning
2. Sell image on a marketplace, for crypto.
3. Repeat!

36. 1. Run AI art engine to generate new image,
using GP or deep learning
2. Sell image on a marketplace, for crypto.
3. Repeat!
<Over time, it accumulates wealth, for itself.>
The ArtDAO

37. 1. Run AI art engine to generate new image, using
GP or deep learning
2. Sell image on a marketplace, for crypto.
3. Repeat!
<Over time, it accumulates wealth, for itself.>
<It could even self-adapt: genetic programming>
The ArtDAO

38. AI DAO Arch 1: AI at the Center

39. AI DAO Arch 2: AI at the Edges

40. AI DAO Arch 3: Swarm Intelligence
Many dumb agents with emergent AI complexity

41. Angles to Making AI DAOs
• DAO  AI DAO. Start with DAO, add AI.
• AI  AI DAO. Start with AI, add DAO.
• SaaS  DAO  AI DAO. SaaS to DAO, add AI
• Physical service  AI DAO

42. Giving Personhood to an AI DAO
With Today’s Laws (!)

43. AI IoT
AI DAOs
Nature
Blockchain
How to unify?
Sustainability

44. Nature 2.0
=AI DAOs 🚀🚀

45. Self-driving,
self-owning cars

46. Self-driving,
self-owning trucks

47. Self-owning
roads

48. Self-owning
wind farms

49. Self-owning
grid

50. Nature  Machines:
Self-owning forest “Terra0”

51. Machines  Nature:
“Plantoid”

52. Ever-higher levels of integration
From beasts  ecosystems
Connected via IoT / M2M

53. No ownership
No identity
No money
No scarcity
It just is.
Self-sustaining
Anti-fragile

54. No ownership
No identity
No money
No scarcity
It just is.
Self-sustaining
Anti-fragile

55. This is
Nature 2.0.
An upgrade to the
cradle of civilization.
Bio + machines
in symbiosis,
simply providing.
Towards abundance.

56. Conclusion

57. In Nature 2.0,
no one knows
you’re a forest

58. In Nature 2.0,
no one knows
you’re a grid

59. You just are.
While you simply provide.

60. Nature is the cradle of civilization.
Nature 1.0 is seeds & soil.
Nature 2.0 adds silicon & steel. AI, blockchain, IoT
towards abundance.
@trentmc0Trent McConaghy h/t Jan-Peter Doomernik