AI x Crypto x Telegram———Ton ecosystem will become a UBI distribution platform for internet users worldwide.
The universe believes in encryption.———— Julian Paul Assange
Between 1946 and 1953, after World War II, the Macy Conferences in New York, initiated by Warren McCulloch and the Macy Foundation, became one of the first interdisciplinary research organizations. Fields like network theory, cybernetics, information theory, synthetic intelligence, brain neuroscience, psychology, anthropology, and mechanical engineering collaborated across disciplines, leading to a paradigm shift that laid the theoretical groundwork for key scientific technologies we have today, like the internet, artificial intelligence, blockchain, and robotics.
Norbert Wiener published his monumental interdisciplinary work “Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine,” where he coined the term cybernetics. “Cybernetics” comes from the Greek word kybernētēs, meaning “to steer” or “to govern.” Wiener believed that biological, mechanical, and social systems are all feedback regulatory systems made up of information (data). Cybernetics blurred the lines between machines and living beings and challenged the notion of human cognition and behavior as purely subjective, marking the beginning of posthumanism. Recent news has shown that AI-simulated silicon-based life forms have developed neural networks that closely resemble those of carbon-based life, supporting Wiener’s core ideas in cybernetics. Of course, Wiener also predicted unemployment issues in the era of AIGC.
Wiener, as a student of Bertrand Russell and influenced by John Dewey’s progressive thought, predicted the future of cyberpunk, suggesting that the digital process opened by cybernetics is like Pandora’s box, stating, “A huge issue we must confront in the future is the relationship between humans and machines.” In “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society,” Wiener accurately described the wave of layoffs among middle-class white-collar workers, writing, “Under the chaotic conditions of a capitalist market, the development of automation will lead to a new industrial revolution that will make moderately intelligent people redundant, putting them in a dead-end situation.” Wiener also remarked, “The only way out is to establish a different kind of society, where human life is not evaluated as a commodity, but valued for its own sake.”
We live in this crazy age of AI acceleration.
The competition for performance rankings of large language models heats up every day; the struggle over GPU production capacity resembles a colonial power struggle; the middle-class white-collar jobs are being ruthlessly wiped out, with illustrators, doctors, traders, and corporate employees resembling laid-off workers from the “Rust Belt”; AIGC models are replacing user-generated content models (PGC, UGC), turning data workers into data refugees; the economic crisis caused by unemployment feels as urgent as a nuclear war, with new products, models, and features being released at a relentless pace every day…
AI is trained using vast datasets: the collective human knowledge inherited from structured sources like Wikipedia, Reddit, and academic papers; large-scale data annotations by workers from developing countries based on human cognition; user interactions that optimize the model; and the embodied data samples from content creators—like interaction habits, binge-watching short videos, social media, and online shopping. Because AI is a product of humanity’s collective labor and wisdom, the value it creates should benefit all of humanity.
Internet platform products equally tame creators and consumers as free data laborers. Web 2.0 giants squeeze everyone’s data labor results, collect them in centralized servers, set up barriers, sell advertisements, and charge users.
In 2021, the global gig economy platform market was valued at $14.75 billion and is expected to reach $92.89728 billion by 2031, with a compound annual growth rate of 20% during this forecast period.
Simply put, gig economy workers are those who engage in freelance or part-time jobs, enjoying more independence and flexibility. According to research from the World Bank, the gig economy accounts for 12% of the global labor market, with 435 million people involved in gig work. The gig market has become an important channel for job creation and income generation, with flexible workers becoming key players in economic and social development. However, challenges such as job and income instability and inadequate protection of workers’ rights are common issues in the gig market.
The characteristics of the gig economy are:
- Large Market Share: According to World Bank data, the global gig economy has a 12% share of the labor market, generating $5.4 trillion in revenue in 2021, which represents 5.6% of global GDP. In the more mature U.S. market, Upwork’s “Freelancing in America” report shows that in 2022, 39% of the U.S. workforce engaged in some form of freelance work.
- Younger Generations Are More Accepting: Among the U.S. workforce, 43% of Generation Z and 46% of millennial professionals are freelancers, seeking greater flexibility and work-life balance.
- Rapid Growth in Developing Countries: From 2021 to 2022, the number of freelancers in North America grew by 14%, whereas in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the largest digital job platforms saw a 130% increase in job openings.
- Fast Growth of AI-related Jobs: Comparing Q1 2023 to Q4 2022, the number of AI-related job postings has surged by over 600%. (@starzqeth, 2024)
- Income instability, lack of social security, uncertain political orientation, and weak risk resilience make it easy to become a victim of climate change and economic crises.
Crypto used to be a tool for resisting authoritarianism, but now it has become a battleground for geopolitical struggles and financial giants. In 1992, Timothy C. May published the “Crypto Anarchist Manifesto,” and the cypherpunk movement emerged from the hippie culture of the West Coast. The cypherpunks foresaw a dark future, and cryptographic tools provided everyone with a means to defend against authoritarianism, safeguarding citizens’ privacy and data.
The user data sovereignty concept promoted in the current web3 industry is a corrective response to the feudal lord model of data in web2. Thanks to blockchain technologies like asymmetric encryption and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), there are already many web3 products on the market that protect user privacy, avoid exploitation of data labor by tech giants, and shape individual data sovereignty. When individual data sovereignty becomes widespread and implemented, it can evolve into a collective data sovereignty, with tokens from the web3 financial system serving as a universal basic income (UBI) for data creators across different AI sectors, helping to offset potential economic crises caused by mass unemployment.
The TON ecosystem is becoming the tech and financial-inclusive infrastructure for internet users worldwide.
In September 2023, Telegram officially announced that it views TON as its Web3 infrastructure. Within three months, the TVL skyrocketed 20 times to over $600 million, and the daily active address count even surpassed Ethereum for a while. With Telegram’s massive user base of 1 billion, the TON ecosystem is experiencing a Jurassic explosion of users, developers, and applications. Telegram is anticipated to become a world-class foundation for social media, inclusive finance, and privacy security.
In recent years, Telegram and TON have seen explosive user growth in developing countries like Russia, India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and South America. White-collar workers in Tehran, Iran, are using TON mini-App to make some extra cash on the subway, while street vendors in Cambodia are handing out flyers with Telegram QR codes. Users in the Middle East can easily access Web3 information in Arabic. The TON ecosystem is becoming a universal tool for people in the Global South, enabling them to earn a living, gain technical skills, and explore new ways of life through The Open Network.
OpenAI recently released the most detailed quantitative sociology research report on UBI, highlighting that some UBI recipients use the funds for health, care, leisure, learning, exploration, and personal development, which helps reduce the gap between different social classes. UBI is a social investment and serves as a lifeboat for protecting vulnerable groups in the age of AI acceleration.
The human perception and creativity in specific social contexts are irreplaceable. Humans produce quality niche datasets through data labor, which then trains specialized AIGC to generate profits. These profits are distributed directly to data labeling users in the form of tokens, completing a public social value loop for UBI, thus avoiding the economic crisis brought on by mass unemployment.
AI technology will create ore technical interfaces to help ordinary creators; Web3 will promote data sovereignty and support community self-governance through more products, incentivizing data creators to join the web3-AI economic system, allowing more data creators to use their data as production resources to create value and generate more public goods for human society, addressing the economic crisis of AI accelerationism.
Data assets are the most important means of production in the cybernetic era, as everyone has their own purpose, and web3 data sovereignty will safeguard the inherent value of individuals. Beyond the mature markets of North America and Asia, we hope that Web3 tools can help marginalized groups who have been sidelined by traditional finance, transcending any barriers of ethnicity, nationality, or language, with AI empowering all of humanity. At its core, this returns to the fundamental narrative of Web3, which is to protect the value of each individual.
In 1972, the geek culture realized the huge potential of personal computers for individual empowerment and social progress, believing that network sharing could bridge the gaps caused by racial, class, and gender inequalities. The communications journal “People’s Computer Company” wrote in its inaugural issue:
"Computers are mostly used against people instead of for people; used to control people instead of to free them; Time to change all that - we need a… Peoples Computer Company.”
References
https://www.businessresearchinsights.com/zh/market-reports/gig-economy-platforms-market-106156
https://www.web3brand.io/p/ai-crypto-telegram-typox-protocol