Excerpts of Speech on Token by Dr. Feng Xiao at the 10th Global Blockchain Summit

Dr. Feng Xiao, Chairman of Wanxiang Blockchain spoke about token in the era of AGI during the 10th Global Blockchain Summit that concluded on October 17th. The excerpt is below.

Three Cognitive Revolutions

Recently learned about “three cognitive revolutions” of human history from Harari’s new book “Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI”.

The first cognitive revolution occurred tens of thousands of years ago when language was invented. Language gave birth to the human society where people learned to collaborate and exchange ideas.

The second one took place thousands of years ago when words were formed. With words, people were able to better communicate and pass on their concepts and ideas from generation to generation.

The third one occurred just a few decades ago, with the invention of computer languages and codes. I believe it is also when AGI revolution started, because codes, human languages, and words all act as tools of human cognition and expression.

In the current digital society, algorithms, computing power, and data are regarded as the infrastructure. While in the era of AGI, “Token” is frequently talked about to define certain functions of AI.

Five Stages of AGI Development

OpenAI divides the development of AI into five stages. Two months ago, we just entered the second stage. However, with the launch of OpenAI’s GPT-4 (referred to here as “o1” for brevity), the second stage has been officially achieved. And just a week ago, Elon Musk’s unveiling of the self-driving technology (RoboTaxi) indicates that the third stage is also imminent.

OpenAI defined five distinct stages AI development, from rudimentary chatbots to advanced systems capable of doing the work of an entire organization.

Stage 1: Chatbots, AI with conversational language

Stage 2: Reasoners, human-level problem solving

Stage 3: Agents, systems that can take actions

Stage 4: Innovators, AI that can aid in invention

Stage 5: Organizations, AI that can do the work of an organization

AGI and ASI

There is another way to describe AI’s roadmap, where AI is classified into two categories: General AI (AGI) and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI).

When will we have ASI? In his book “The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology” published in 2005 and his new book “The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI”, Ray Kurzweil predicts we will likely achieve ASI by 2030. But recent predictions reveal that we will likely reach level5 AI between 2026 and 2030, this is when ASI is about to happen.

UBI and UHI

AI training requires loads of data, but garbage data only produce garbage results. Reports show that LLMs tend to collapse if trained by AI-generated data, so we need random data generated by humans, instead of data generated by LLMs themselves with other AIs.

That’s why Universal Basic Income (UBI) makes sense. People provide data that makes AI smarter, and AI produces value to human in return.

Someone also proposed “Universal High Income (UHI)”, which argues that the savings from automation are passed on to consumers

Value Laws in the Digital Age

The digital economy comes with high fixed costs and low marginal costs. This allows valuable products, goods, and services to achieve exponential growth.

The digital economy is beyond time, space, entities, and organizations, that’s why we need blockchain and tokens to ensure seamless payment settlement and asset identification. In the digital world, physical laws may no longer exist, and the factors of production will be algorithms, computing power, and data.

In the digital era, newly created wealth are generally measured in digital form. And token is regarded as one of the parameters.

Types of Tokens

There are four primary types of tokens:

Payment tokens

These tokens are used for payments. Many countries are making laws to issue licensed, compliant stablecoins.

Utility tokens

These tokens derive from computer tokens, representing the right of internet use.

Security tokens

These tokens are related to STO, RWA, DeFi, etc.

Tokens as savings

These tokens refer to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Two Financial Markets Coexists

Bank-account-based financial system and crypto-account-based financial system will coexist, and they are likely to interconnect by 2025 through stablecoins, ETFs, RWAs, STOs, and licensed institutions.