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Coding for a Cause

How can you make good through ones and zeroes? I don’t know yet. I do know that the internet has changed humanity for the better, allowing for immense information transfer across the planet. As we move towards a more connected future, the supply of new technology and the demand for more data are increasing substantially. When the Internet first entered the public scene, many thought it would become a catalyst for tolerance—Instead, we’ve discovered that allowing individuals the privilege of remaining pseudo-anonymous creates cesspools of intolerance and forms tightly knit groups that are weary of outsiders. Internet communications may have increased the volume of communication, but it’s difficult to prove that they’ve had any non-negligible effect on humans’ tendency to exclude those who don’t satisfy their social prerequisites. How can we change this?

There are a multitude of major problems that humanity must overcome to survive the next few hundred years. Active effort must be put into encouraging individuals to work together towards a common goal. If participants were each willing to add a small amount of effort, then we, as a race, would quickly be able to overcome the issues facing humanity. Such an organizational method does not yet exist. If one of these catastrophes strikes, our race is doomed because of our reluctance to trust and cooperate. Before humans can become a quasi-permanent interplanetary species, we first must learn to at least tolerate one another. The fate of our species depends on it.

How can code help us meet these ends? The internet provides us with an immense opportunity to direct our large communication value into work structures that allow for more close and concise cooperation. The key to unifying the human race is definitionally inhuman. Artificial intelligences can break big problems into smaller ones and recombine them to create an end product in the most efficient way possible. Imagine an artificial intelligence with the task of maximizing efficiency per price for any given project/object. Such an intelligence could delegate tasks to individuals (or other machines) based on personal skills. In such a model, humans from across the world would depend on one another to meet an end goal. Given that dependence is a key factor in the equation of trust. If we can encourage individuals to trust one another in this way, I believe we can encourage more humans to live kindly

Best,

Aaron E. Lebel