Thought Network Protocol
Human collaboration enhanced by Artificial Intelligence on Holochain
We've just heard of an exciting new project called Thought Wave by Thought Network Protocol. After our feature article last week on AI and Holochain, we learned of this amazing AI hApp that’s well underway. Sam interviewed two of the project leads and has distilled it here for you.
Thought Network Protocol (TNP) is an agent-centric AI system being built on Holochain which is intended to enhance human collaboration by helping us to ‘translate’ our thoughts into patterns. Using their unique indexing technology they will map human experiences through these ‘Thought Patterns’ and use them as the foundation for bias-free communication. By anonymously comparing users' patterns they foresee the potential for useful personal growth as well as improved relationships and collective deep pattern alignment.
Human expression of thought is ‘filtered’ through the context of our experience. Language, culture, peers, family all affect how we express ourselves. The heuristics, or mental shortcuts, we develop are often in common with those we share the most time with - it’s the language of friends, in-jokes, slang - memes!
Complex communication is the magic that has allowed us to compound our knowledge over time. From oral tradition, to expressive rock art to writing, printing and then digital communications we have recorded our thoughts, and passed them on as they’ve been added to the sum of human knowledge. While our communication has become more complex the method of transmission has become enclosed within centralising technologies like telecom networks, the internet, and social media platforms.
Centralization has served a purpose in the Internet's development. It has enabled opportunities for close collaboration of teams (best at a maximum of 10-12 people) to develop a group culture. Where centralisation fails is at scale. Effective communication starts to decline the further it’s removed from our proximity: our words can be misconstrued, misunderstood or manipulated without the context we can give to provide clarity and depth of understanding.
When considering the phenomenon of social media polarisation we commonly find it’s more about the human need for belonging than actual animosity. As our means of communication is abstracted from the intimate, human level it becomes easier to ‘other’ those who appear different to ourselves. In the Centre for Humane Technology’s film The Social Dilemma, it’s made clear that social media platforms thrive on the attention economy - discord, incessant bickering and self-affirming echo chambers literally drives their economic model.
Our personal ‘reality’ is informed by our interpretation of the unique experiences we’ve had of the world. It’s our physical location, our language, our peers, our upbringing etc that create our world view. Sharing common experiences with our nearest compatriots, we’re likely to find that those further removed have greater divergence from our own understanding of reality.
Thought Network Protocol has been developing their personal AI model for the last 10 years and have purposefully chosen to stay anonymous while dealing with the ethical dilemmas that were thrown up during their progress. Designing and building their prototype as an evolution of communication, they see it as a new protocol, a mechanism to index thought patterns. The team has expert level proficiency in web analytics and with the core creator having had a very successful Google search consultancy. Working with SMEs to billion dollar tech organisations over the last 24 years, they consistently helped their clients to achieve the leading position across web searches.
Now turning their attention to achieving deeper human collaboration they’ve designed TNP on a decentralised foundation of agent-centricity. The team has utilised the benefits of personal AIs, that are run using Edge computing models (such Holo and peer-to-peer frameworks like Holochain) on our own personal computer rather than in ‘the Cloud’. Called ‘Thought Drives’ here's how the team describes the experience:
“seamless interactions with conversational AI, individuals share their thoughts, which are then categorised, analysed, and refined by Intelligent Agents to determine deep patterns of need and value for the individual”.
An Intelligent ‘digital’ Agent within the Thought Drive helps to support our online life. By utilising a similar interface to the conversational AI systems like ChatGPT, the protocol uses our enquiries to train a private, personal, Intelligent Agent.
To create positive feedback loops, TNP enables users to assign value and context to those Thought Patterns, which fulfil their needs best. By learning the values you ascribe over time the Agent will become increasingly more useful to you.
Eventually as thoughts coalesce, comprehensive solutions will form that are capable of solving significant problems and meeting the needs of large numbers of people.
So what does the protocol do with the thoughts you’re sharing? It categorises and analyses them on your computer to determine the deep pattern of need and value for you as an individual. By creating comparable patterns, those who chose to, can compare their own with others who’re also using TNP in Thought Spaces.
Here it’s important to remember all your personal data is kept securely on your device and only shared when you explicitly agree to it, and then it’s anonymised. Maintaining privacy and anonymity is key to building users trust, helping them become more open with their Intelligent Agent.
Thought Spaces, which can be considered as collective pattern , allow you to share your anonymised Thought Patterns. The benefit is that these datasets include a greater number of patterns and the feedback values associated with them. So, by joining a Thought Space, your Intelligent Agent gets access to the enlarged dataset and can analyse the other patterns found there. Then it can identify resources that are likely to match your specific needs best.
“By sharing the experience of Thoughts, feedback determines value, influence and expertise. This supports Thoughts to be filtered, supporting an optimisation of alignment between User needs and Thought value. All information connected is therefore 100% human-centric, validated by human expertise. The Agents then manage the complex interconnectivity of human-generated patterns.”
With a large enough dataset ‘hyper-patterns’ of need and corresponding value are created by aggregating the anonymous data shared by users. These hyper-patterns can be used to align and optimise human collaboration at any scale within the Thought Space - that Dunbar number is no longer applicable!
By offloading the large scale alignment that’s so hard for humans to achieve, TNP encourages us to trust our digital agents. This in turn, encourages us to share more of our own competencies and needs. All the while that we’re benefitting from the ‘expanded cognition’ offered by our Agent we’re helping others by sharing our successful patterns too.
Interestingly social trust may no longer be as necessary in this context; it's supplemented by trust that your Intelligent Agent will help to bridge gaps in your experience. By weighting the patterns that you identify as solving your problems, others' Intelligent Agents can suggest those patterns to them when their needs, also expressed as anonymous Thought Patterns, match.
Choosing to share our Thought Patterns the project creator suggests we could:
“cultivate and deepen our relationships, we enrich our knowledge base, ultimately striving to create a more informed, connected, and optimised reality.”
The Intelligent Agents manage the networking and, as with other agent-centric Holochain applications (hApps) if you choose to leave a Thought Space all of your data goes with you. No-one can access the raw data of anyone else. It’s also important to note that none of the artificial intelligence in TNP is generative. It doesn't produce any type of content.
Supplementing our brain’s complex pattern processing abilities Thought Network Protocol could help us to manage the vastly increasing volume of data and intricate connectivity that’s advancing at pace in our digital age.
For those of you interested in hearing more in the future about TNP, head to their website and add your name to their update list. We'll also keep an eye on this project and share updates as we hear of them!
Useful links:
Thought Network Protocol Website
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Check out this Holochain application demonstration of New York Textile Lab on YouTube!
Working together to develop their yarn and textile raw materials supply chain tracking application. In conjunction with Carbon Farm Network this ground-breaking hApp is one of the most developed, as demo’d above, and is currently being propagated with this year’s products. To get them over line before the end of the season they’re pushing to deliver improvements to hREA to help Carbon Farm Network with their MVP. They are looking to raise $20,000 through their OpenCollective page. The donations will be used for:
Recipes, which are used to create repeatable plans
Upgrade hREA to the current Valueflows spec, and to ongoing Holochain versions
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…Commons Economy Roadmap explores the potential of Holochain, an open framework for distributed applications, to enable the creation of secure and locally-controlled applications (hApps) for the social groups more affected by both digitally-empowered authoritarianism and scarcity of technical expertise and infrastructure.
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