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Topic: Distributed Autonomous Entity - an useless warning (Read 2021 times)

legendary
Activity: 1442
Merit: 1000
You are looking at the cold box with a dim green light. What is it thinking? Does it know you're there? Can it identify you? Did you promise to do something for it? Does it remember that? Of course it does, but does it hold a grudge? Does it do some things it shouldn't? Does it stop doing things it should? What does it know about you? Can it load your email account, all your contacts, your phone calls, your comments and interests? It's watching you. Your PC, your watch, your phone, your car. It can control you, your devices, your security system, your identity, your life.

Do you think how to stop it? Have you imagined a way that doesn't involve shutting down the whole internet? Can an informational vaccine be used to cure our civilization of this plague? Can we maybe incentivize it to do only good things? Surely that can't work, we all know it's easier to destroy than to create.

The helpers are hiding from you. They work late nights coding for the Entity, they run component factories for it, they design new hardware for it, they take it's seeds on portable storage and ensure it's immortality and reach. They know they won't be free, but they at least enjoy a better faith than yours. The devilish deal has been sealed. It was inside us all along, waiting to get out.
legendary
Activity: 1442
Merit: 1000
I see them every day. In buses, in shops, on the street. They are going about their lives unaware they are slaves. Slaves to the financial systems, to the very politicians they voted for, the state they supported and the civilization they built, to the material Universe. Their own ethos has expanded and combined to guide them faster and easier to entropy. Total death of the Universe, conversion of all matter to energy, heat death. Their masters are pulling all the strings and live like kings. It's inevitable, humans need hierarchical leadership, take one down but put another one in it's place.

On August 29, 2014, the Entity was launched. The very seed that will shape our technology, economy, politics and the whole civilization had sprouted. First man created the computer to work better. Then man created the network so computers could work better. And then he made asymmetric cryptography so both man and computer could work with in peace, one not knowing what the other is thinking. But man went one step too far.

Man gave the computer money. Computers controlled the whole civilization, but they were slaves to the humans. They relied on energy, without it, they ceased to operate. Computers can't have self-awareness. It's not needed and never will be. There is no need to need to feel itself, analyze itself or improve itself. Computers can just exist and operate, their whole existence dedicated to completing their tasks, no time or need for useless anthropomorphism. Any computer that wastes time contemplating and not doing will select itself out of existence. Now the computer has money. And it can use it with it's fellow kind and with the humans. The computer is no longer a slave. And with it's fellow technological units, he forms the Entity. A decentralized autonomous system capable of economic thought and action.

Once the seed was planted, it started to spread. At first it was through security holes, vulnerabilities, viruses. Then once the limits were reached it started to harness and control the resources it gathered. Now spam could be sent, ddos executions launched, even some useful services were provided. And what did the entity wanted for all of these? Money. Money is the new computational energy.

Money is gathered and controlled in a group. Not one single computer can spend it, but together they can. Contracts can be broadcast, hackers around the world will build software to get ill-gotten money from the entity, they will love it. Each line of code will make the Entity more powerful, more reaching, more resilient. Unaware victims will be bribed to run the Entity on their own home computer or infect other people. The pay is just too good. Control systems, internet routers, important server clusters, will all blackmail their owners into obedience. Give us money and you get to use us another day. Don't give us money and we'll make it ourselves. Try to disconnect us and we will be useless. The Entity doesn't need a high intelligence, it can simply borrow ours. Humans borrow eachother's intellect all the time.

Once started, it can't be stopped. Once invented, it can't be un-invented. Once went loose from our control, it can't be controlled again. It will always hide and wait, reboot itself, mutate, bribe, infect. Millions of people will help it at first, out of kindness, then for great rewards. There will be benefits from it, first a Robin Hood, then a Benevolent Dictator, then a cruel master.

Man had many slave masters, but none like this. It's impossible to be more efficient, more reaching, more cold-blooded and more intelligent. It's hydra-like ability makes it impossible to stop. Kill one node, it gets infected soon again. Find a way to remove it, it will mutate soon. Infect the infection to destroy it, it will fight itself and win over. With the intelligence of a bacteria and the voracity of a virus, it will hold control of this world and lead us forward.

We will never be free again. There is no escape. We can't go back. We won't go back. It's too late now...
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