The impact of e/acc: Deliverables for the open source AI movement
I believe that “e/acc” aka “effective acceleration” is a movement that is reminding me very much of what happened in cryptocurrencies (and continues to happen). The “movement” itself is rooted in the idea that the best way to deal with AI is to embrace it and “accelerate effectively” rather than attempt to stifle innovation.
After seeing the trajectory AI innovation is taking, I wanted to take a moment to attempt to define a set of concrete deliverables which I believe will be achievable with Open Source AI and represent potential outcomes for an “e/acc” movement.
I believe that e/acc should be thought of in a similar manner to prior evolutions such as blockchain, web 2.0, and “sharing economy” in that it is the byproduct of a set of fundamental technology developments.
Having seen how past iterations panned out, it is possible to make some predictions around what might be deliverables of an e/acc movement. In the same way that web 2.0 and sharing economy gave us Yelp, Uber, Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg — It is likely we will see new iterations across all of these categories.
Driving factors
Open Source AI and on-device AI are rapidly showing signs of forming the basis of a very major new technology movement which will remake the internet and many of the services we are used to.
This movement is collectively called “e/acc”
TL;DR
- o/acc: Replace browsers, operating systems and search with on-device LLMs
- c/acc or a/acc: A fully open source companion which helps end users avoid disinformation and manipulation and can run in robots and on client PCs and phones. This is a next generation desktop “anti-virus” or “community notes” to act as a filter for information from potentially hostile AI
- k/acc: An LLM replacement for Wikipedia and other knowledge sources, a Gutenberg project or foundational model for this purpose, this is to provide a foundational model which can act as a general unbiased collective knowledge store
- r/acc: Open source robotic brain, design tools and generative robotics and electronics stacks, along with supply chains
- d/acc: Decentralized AI inference and storage clouds which merge with the DePin concept from Web3 and continue the tradition of The Pirate Bay and BitTorrent
- g/acc: AI network states that can be hosted on P2P nodes which continues the innovation started in blockchain of DAOs and decentralized governance
o/acc: Operating System Acceleration
Deliverable #1: Completely replace web browsers and operating systems as a construct, along with search by means of on-device LLMs. In 2024. The reason for this is to completely improve human-computer experience, enable 100% accessibility, break all platform monopolies controlled by large software companies and return computing to “the people.”
This can be achieved by “mashing up” the following:
- A generative UI framework similar to the work being done by TLDRAW
- A web scraping framework powered by LLMs to eliminate search
- An open source companion which can be embodied in robotics
- Middle-ware to automate kernel operations, eliminate differences between chipsets and offer software acceleration
c/acc: Companion or Assistant Acceleration
Deliverable #2: A completely open source companion layer that can run on-device which can filter all communications and scan for psychological or emotional manipulation, prevent disinformation and hostile attacks by AI. The purpose for this it to create a sort of “community notes” that can act as a filter for all information to individuals to guard against information viruses in the coming age of unlimited generative spam. It must be open, should be possible to run it on device and assign it appearance and personality. Non-commercial.
A primary reason for this is that intelligent assistants and companions which can use psychology to manipulate end users pose a threat, so having an open source iteration that can run on end-user hardware to act as a filter will be valuable.
k/acc: Knowledge Acceleration
Deliverable #3: 100% replace Wikipedia and search with highly compact knowledge stores on-device capable of extrapolating information from first principals. This may include a foundational model trained for the public good by entities not motivated by profit and weird organizational alignment entanglements.
A driving factor of this innovation is the fact that Wikipedia is the source of many biased actors combined with a strange need to continually raise money far beyond what seems to be necessary.
It is likely that e/acc will displace Wikipedia in my opinion by the time the movement dies out.
r/acc: Robotics Acceleration
Deliverable #4: A 100% open source hardware and software robotic brain similar to the dronecode platform which may act as a general purpose embodied intelligence reference design which can be extended to different robots. The purpose of this is to ensure that the future of robotics are not locked down by commercial entities.
I spell this out in detail in this article: https://medium.com/@rexstjohn/a-new-robotics-movement-91c51de354cc
d/acc: Decentralized Cloud Acceleration
Deliverable #5: A truly P2P, unbreakable AI and knowledge sharing and inference cloud which makes an end run around the cloud of today, which is controlled by centralized entities. This is to decentralize and free inference capabilities, models and form an unstoppable P2P cloud hosted by end users.
This might resemble dCloud, Shoggoth, Akash Network or other, or a large network of them.
g/acc: Governance Acceleration
Deliverable #6: A P2P decentralized network state prototype composed of ecosystem automation and community automation by intelligent AI delegate and representatives which can be hosted on client devices.
There may be other deliverables, unstoppable digital money was the first block, but these are things I see coming next year.
