All of this will be based on the exchange of information. Not just technical information—robots will need to develop and maintain economic relationships. Whether for a parts order or a service agreement with another company, many aspects of their work will revolve around currency transactions. Human operators will be too slow to oversee these transactions, which we can expect to happen at 20,000 transactions per second (assuming there is at least one robotic device per person). Therefore, for the future we are building, we will need to invent not just robots—but robot money and robot markets.
Like with any other economy, the robot economy (or robonomics) will need to solve the problem of trust. It might seem that the very act of carrying out transactions in the digital world is a solution to the trust problem. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Automation can help find and fight fraud, but it can also create super-efficient scam agents. What’s more, transaction costs can spiral out of control when high-frequency algorithms begin to act opportunistically. The cost of verifying that a contract has been properly executed is another problem. In the world of people, the outcome of a transaction is confirmed by the contract signatories. How autonomous agents will do that is not so clear. [...]
Blockchain offers another important advantage: It can help organize how robots do their work in the first place. Experts in the field of robotics have long been exploring the problem of finding the best way for a set of robots to accomplish a common task.1 One of the potential solutions is a market mechanism, leveraging game theory, decision theory, and economic mechanisms to assign work.2,3 Blockchain can help build this mechanism, and enable the precise planning of tasks, evaluation of results, and distribution of resources. [...]
The volume of goods and services produced by man will undoubtedly fall significantly, but not to zero. At the same time, the value of man’s economic output will drastically increase. Hand-made goods will gain luxury status, meriting a special label—“Made by Human.” Eventually, this will apply to creative activity, too. Work that involves one man or woman supporting another, and which cannot be simply automated, will start to receive governmental support, along the lines of a universal basic income. In the end, being an ordinary, honest, and aware citizen will become a job in itself, and one that we can all aspire to.
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