CFP: Blockchain Applications in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science

   AISB 2016, University of Sheffield, Sheffield UK, April 6, 2016 (Dates and Registration Information)

• Blockchain technology (the distributed cryptographic ledger software that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin) is a new and potentially transformative computational technology. One reason is because blockchains are a general computational substrate. Another reason is that blockchains might allow novel solutions to long-standing computing challenges such as the Byzantine Generals Problem. Here blockchains could serve as a secure asynchronous truth-updating system for all nodes in distributed computing networks. Another reason is that blockchains are new class of global infrastructural technology that might facilitate the coordination of much larger-scale projects than have been possible before, for example million-person genome banks. The aim of this symposium is to explore diverse potential applications of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and robotics.
  
  
• 1. Blockchains, AI, and Robotics - One theme of this symposium is Blockchains, AI, and Robotics, which could involve using blockchain software in a number of ways in AI and Robotics applications. In some sense, blockchains are an instant universal VPN or a smarter Internet with greater functionality. Blockchain software systems can be set up to confirm the identities or reputations of transacting agents to different degrees, for example attesting to real-life identities on private chains or pseudonymous identities on public chains. Identity confirmation can thus allow secure value transfer between parties via the software system, without requiring the presence of traditional intermediaries. Additionally, blockchain-based smart contracts might be employed to delineate future commitments, recorded in traditional clocktime, or blockchain computing blocktime.
  
  
• Blockchains might be deployed as a secure cloud-based management system for all manner of robotic and otherwise automated operations, in cases as diverse as manufacturing, hospitals, self-driving vehicles, and home environments. An even wider class of applications might be available for blockchains and artificial intelligence. Blockchains are a secure feature-rich computing substrate in which AI can be more robustly implemented than before. Blockchains might be the safe, auditable, always-on, reputation-connected administration and coordination mechanism for diverse AI applications. Increasingly sophisticated blockchain AI applications might include packages of smart contracts (automatically-executing code) in the form of Dapps (decentralized autonomous applications) and DACs (a long-considered idea in AI, of decentralized autonomous corporations, engaging in a full suite of automated operations including their own self-instantiation, self-management, and self-retirement). Especially useful for AI operations is that blockchain features constitute a system of checks and balances wherein good-player behavior may be enforced.
  
  
• 2. Blockchains and Cognitive Science - A second core theme of this symposium is Blockchains and Cognitive Science applications. Here blockchains might be employed in a wide variety of cognitive science areas. One class of applications might involve the protected data collection and large-scale analytical use of human brain images and connectome files. There could be new ways of simulating and modeling neural activity in blockchain structures. Even more so than with genome files, operationalizing connectome files may require very-large databanks of stored information and secure effective means of accessing them. Lifelogging and brain-logging files might be mapped into blockchain-coordinated storage from the Oculus Rift and other virtual reality and video gaming platforms. Likewise quantified self tracking cognitive and affective state-related data (for enhancement and pathology resolution) could be securely cloud-stored and accessed via blockchains. A second class of applications might involve creating AI thinkers specifically in the blockchain environment by formulating thinking as a blockchain process; blockchain thinking as an input-processing-output computational system. As a general computing substrate, the blockchain architecture might be used to instantiate thinking machines. The objective would be to formulate thinking as a blockchain process, which could have benefits for enhanced human biological thinking and simulation, machine thinking or artificial intelligence, and their combination in BCIs (brain-computer interfaces) and other integrations.
  
  
• The symposium welcomes submissions of both full papers and abstracts addressing these and related topics:
  
• - Blockchains and AI, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Semantic Learning
• - Blockchains and Robotics, Drones, Cognitive Nanorobotics
• - Blockchains and Cognitive Science, Imaging, BCIs, Neuroscience, and Enhancement
• - Blockchains and Intelligent Agent Reputation Systems
• - Blockchains and Smart Contracts, Dapps, DAOs, DACs, DCOs, DASs
• - Blockchains and Mining, Consensus Trust, Automated Algorithmic Execution
• - Blockchains and Virtual Reality, Cloud Computing, Decentralized Trust
• - Blockchains and Complex Adaptive Systems, Computational Complexity, Theory
• - Blockchains and Health: EMRs, Large-scale Secure Databanks, Virtual Patient Modeling
• - Blockchains and Philosophy, Epistemology, Morality, and Computational Ethics



• Submission Formats

• Full talk (20 minutes + question time): full papers of up to 5,000 words
• Short talk (10 minutes + question time): extended abstracts of up to 1,000 words
• Poster presentation: extended abstracts of up to 1,000 words

• References

• Goldberg, K. (2015). Cloud Robotics. Talks at Google. (re: decentralized cloud robotics will be blockchain robotics)
• Swan, M. (2015). Blockchain: Blueprint for a New Economy. Sebastopol CA: OReilly Media.
• Swan, M. (2015). Blockchain Consensus Protocols. Bitcoin meetup. May 6, 2015.
• Swan, M. (2015). Blocktime - Magic Blockchains, but for Time? Blocktime Arbitrage. Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
• Swan, M. (2015). VR Chains and DAC Brains: Upload your Mind as a VR AI DAC. Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.
• Swan, M. Blockchain Thinking: The Brain as a DAC (Decentralized Autonomous Corporation). Technology and Society Magazine, IEEE 2015; 34(4): 41-52.
• Swanson, T. (2015). Consensus as a service: a brief report on the emergence of permissioned, distributed ledger systems.

• Program Co-Chairs

• Melanie Swan, Philosophy and Economic Theory, New School for Social Research, New York, NY USA. Questions?
• Frank Boehm, NanoApps Medical Inc., Toronto, Canada
• Takashi Kido, Riken Genesis, Tokyo, Japan