Ok, I’ve made this new thread for discussing AICON. Well, merging some concepts from Netec into Fractal Cosmos is probably a good idea, because it makes Fractal Cosmos so much denser, richer, and perhaps even more realistic. Netec 2045 was maybe overly optimistic about what was possible in a short frame of time, but a lot of the concepts probably make sense.
That said, I expect AICON to emerge out of the efforts of the anti X-risk community (MIRI, Future of Humanity institute, and so on), which also includes a lot of transhumanists, in order to protect humanity from the dangers of hostile / indifferent AGIs. AICON will probably go through several different stages:
Stage 0: Pre-formation (2010-2040)
At this stage, there is no AICON, but precursor organisations that try to set up national and global countermeasures against the threat of dangerous AI. This stage has started in our decade and will last about to the end of the Second Cold War
Stage 1: Formation (2040-2050)
It’s probably the end of the Second Cold War that the formation of AICON becomes a possibility. The dangers of AI (but not full AGI yet) would have been demonstrated by the powerful narrow AIs and some precursors to full AGI that were used in the Second Cold War (also called the Cyber War). After the war, the UN will probably be reformed, or replaced with a more agile transnational institution that has some real global power. AICON will be its chief tool to safeguard humanity from the dangers of hostile AI / AGI. At the formtion stage, AICON is merely a network of organisations that watch over AGI research. Research into peacenets is done by AICON, but they are still mostly a theoretical concept that is experimented upon.
Stage 2: Peacenet (2050-2070)
At this stage, AICON employs distributed AGI agents that watch over other AGIs and themselves. It’s an AGI panopticon that tries to keep all AGIs peaceful. These attempts aren’t fully successful, as the first AGIs start escaping into space during the 2060s.
Stage 3: Para-military power (2070-2100)
With the final collapse of the c bloc and the emergence of the Solid Collectives, global politics change quite a bit. The transnational institution funding AICON becomes more powerful through the global dominance of system D. AICON is expanded into something like an anti-AGI military, and the necessary equipment to fight rogue AGIs within the solar system. It tries to remain neutral to human affairs, though.
Stage 4: Crisis (2100-2110)
The prolonged suppression of advanced augmented intelligences cause increased civil discontent with AICON and its methods. As moderated AGIs have been living with humans peacefully over decades, and humans are slowly becoming increasingly sympathetic with their plight – and their own, since humans aren’t allowed to enhance themselves without limit either – calls to reform or even disband AICON become louder and louder.
Stage 5: Dissolution (2110-2120)
The direct and indirect influences exerted on AICON by the newly emerging system V factions, combined with the pre-existing discontent with AICON, leads to its disbandment and replacement with a cluster of new peacenets that are established along system D and system V faction lines. That will become a relatively chaotic and unstable regime, but it enables a lot of dynamism and unprecedented progress.
Eventually, after the Femto Crisis, the trans-faction peacenet Cosmoshield will take over the place that AICON has held for so long, but without suppressing superintelligence. Cosmoshield is a much more “pure” peacenet in the sense, that its sole purpose is really to maintain peace, rather than being co-opted for political purposes (like anti-AGI sentiments) like AICON has been.
Finally, after the wise take over power in the 23th century, Cosmoshield will be controlled by the wise and renamed into Wiseshield.