Is it possible for decentralized autonomous organizations to replace humans?

The original author Andrew Wagner is a decentralization advocate in Vancouver. He is one of the founders of Bitcoin Co-op and is currently working to spread Bitcoin-related ideas in his hometown of Vancouver. This article is translated from his article, the original title is Why We Need DAOs: the Shittiness of Man (Why We Need Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: The Bad Nature of Humanity)

This year, I had the honor of attending the BIL conference in Vancouver, a conference themed around decentralization and open source. Of course, the title of my speech was the blockchain revolution. Everything went very well, but during the presentation, an audience member asked a question that got me thinking:

“Don’t you think replacing humans is a bad idea?” she said, referring to my explanation of decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). “Wouldn’t it be safer to have a human in charge? What if something goes wrong?”

"God, no," I responded with this brief explanation. "It's really annoying."

I don't have enough time to go into this in detail on stage, but I really wish I had. A battle between New Age spiritual types and paranoid conservatives, there are many people who are afraid of the rise of technology. These concerns are not just unfounded, but they are actually counterproductive to human progress. Let me explain why.

People are slow

As a community, we need to come to something like agreement: All of us are deeply inefficient. Whether we're tiptoeing around rush hour traffic or getting off a plane, we tend to do things slowly and in the wrong order, especially when we're in a group.

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations are the answer. Using smart contract technology, they can simulate a company on the blockchain. For example, we can tell it to automatically grant bitcoin loans to people with a good enough credit rating, just like your neighborhood bank. Smart contracts can interact with each other, so entire economies can be built this way.

It will eliminate the bureaucracy that makes life miserable. A single person can only sign or stamp a document quickly, but a computer can sign any document almost instantly. Network communication nodes through the Internet are much faster than human communication through telephone or email. It takes only a few seconds to make a decision that may take several hours of meetings to make in other ways.

Because it is not clear who should do what, sometimes a request needs to go through every corner of the organization before it reaches the right person, which leads to a loss of efficiency for each worker. This is why it takes so long for governments to pass legislation or process documents for citizens. And every automated computer will speed up the assembly line process.

People make mistakes

Every person in the system also increases the likelihood of human error. Documents are always signed improperly or misorganized, and people frequently miscommunicate. Computers, for one thing, are immune to the ambiguity of human language. They are getting better at predicting stocks, diagnosing diseases, and even formulating and testing scientific hypotheses.

Human power structures are not usually meritocratic, not to mention anarchic capitalists and even for-profit corporations, which are mired in a vortex of patronage and nepotism. Even in relatively transparent democracies, widespread voter ignorance leads to the appointment of incompetent officials.

Game theory has a long way to go. We now have video games that simulate running businesses and countries, and their AI is already quite smart. They are already used in the Pentagon and Wall Street, and will soon replace all government and industry administrators.

Even the worst computer on the market is more accurate than a human. The only reason programs make mistakes is because they are coded incorrectly, which is also human error. Eventually, artificial intelligence will take over the programs themselves, reaching a state called the singularity.

People will lie

Simply put, computers do what they are told to do. Humans not only make mistakes, but they often do so intentionally for a variety of reasons.

The most common motivation is laziness. Humans don’t like to work, which is why we need to pay employees, people work because they need to support their families, unlike machines. As a result, we waste three hours a day in the office and perform poorly on every task we perform.

Not only do machines not get tired, they also don’t get greedy. Employees in companies steal resources, administrators embezzle funds, and government officials are often worse. Computers, on the other hand, will never lose your Bitcoins because they want to go on vacation to the Caribbean.

This corruption has reached horrific proportions: more than a quarter of the population pays bribes every year, and in countries like Kenya, the proportion is as high as 70%. We can't really measure its impact, but it is probably the biggest reason for the inefficiency of our current society. Too much power, and we can't trust it.

So what will people do? In a world without corporations and bureaucracies, all manufacturing will be automated and many people will lose their jobs. Coding will be a focus in the school system, but this will not provide enough employment opportunities for people.

The upside is that we don’t have to work anymore: DAOs will do it all for humanity very economically. Basic income will become the standard of economic necessity. People will focus on whatever they are most passionate about, and I think that’s the future we should look forward to.

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