> software would benefit humanity as a whole the most
Easy. I will just emulate what the richest man in world did:
- either an open AI Foundation (= OpenAI) but it will be truly open source 100%
- or an open social network (= twitter) but it will be truly decentralized and public 100% (whatever that will turn out to be)
I think the richest entity in the world also spent a lot of time on an eerily similar design research in the last century. Unfortunately, they stopped at OSI layer nb.7 (This one looks like a part of an 8th)
The entity is of course the US Government, and the decentralized network is OSI 1-7, also known as...
(Trying to expand so I don't get down voted)
For what purpose?
However, platforms is what benefit humanity the most, the same way they benefit all the top technology companies (they are all "platforms" first)
Suppose you look at the environment (nature) as a platform. You will never ask: For what purpose? Of course, Life is the purpose.
The right question is: should it be privatised ? Well, in the case of the environment, you know what a Yes for an answer has brought us…
The thing about nature is that it's also above/beside us, it has no defined ruler, we don't have control over it.
Technology / platforms are our own creations. own creations need to be controlled and guided, at-the-least just to ensure lights stay on; and humans are fallible. The argument goes that if someone has control over it, they are allowed to exert that control.
Now you can simply say "I will control it" or "my chosen governance will" or "it's democratised rotating name list" or whatever, it's still going to be an aspect of human control, and humans will always have an "in group" and "out group" to them, the platform will benefit humanity the most (for the in group).
I wonder if there's a way to make a "decentralised" platform. using your open source twitter as an example, go a step further and have:
* anyone can contribute code. as long as PR automated checks go green, it can merge?
* Then we must ensure that we have checks that all new code is not malicious, has testing, has documentation, etc. -- as part of the automated process?
* PR automated checks might run every day and delay themselves for a year to ensure that others can observe the code changes? (and do what? they can't block it, they can only put in a contingency plan ?)
I think we're trying to near towards making our own creations here where there's a "tower of babel" or "icarus close to the sun" vibe.
Also, how High-level (AI) Automation will interact with that High-level decentralization could indeed lead us toward that "Icarus close to the sun" vibe. (is that what you meant ?)
I say: Let's not rush ourselves. we are still all too frail. we are still stuck with elective democracy and corporate capitalism [1] for the foreseeable future.
And Nature, as the ruler, has its secrets.