Description
TL;DR
Symbiocracy aims to integrate non-human voices into governance, leveraging AI and blockchain. The "Rio Sagrado (Sacred River) AI-Avatar", a SymbioTotem multimedia installation, represents this vision by interacting with its environment and the community. Moving into Phase 3, the project will shift from commercial LLM APIs to local LLMs and enable these systems to enter into smart contracts, rewarding sustainable actions with SymbioTokens. This initiative promotes the Rights of Nature and aims for autonomous eco-representatives.
Introduction
We at Sympoiesis understand that the more-than-human complexes that make up life on Earth have valuable contributions to governance related dynamics, even more so in the context of the ongoing climate crisis. That is, other living beings have much to say about the choices we collectively make - especially those that affect multiple lifeforms sharing the same space, even if temporarily. And they do so not just as simple cold data providers but as sentient and conscious members of their communities. The big challenge is that, with modernity, we have lost the habit of naturally perceiving, interacting with, and internalizing their voices.
In this sense, Symbiocracy represents a deep inquiry towards ways of engaging with the more-than-human pluriverse, in order to propose interfaces that enable sensory-intuitive interactions and interspecific deliberative processes. An inquiry that is ever more practically relevant in light of advances in the Rights of Nature movement, substantiated by attribution of legal personhood and rights to non-human beings in many different countries. Whanganui River and Urewera Forest in Aotearoa New Zealand, and Komi-Memen River in Brazil to name a few.
The paths for this new kind of engagement with the more-than-human pluriverse can be approached through various forms. At Sympoiesis we are currently exploring how modern science and technology can be a vehicle for such, and thus a medium for the human reconnection with their own nature.
SymbioTotem and Rio Sagrado AI-Avatar
(Rio Sagrado AI-vatar physical sculpture meshed with the River's waters)
In the official first Zuzalu Quadratic funding round we presented the SymbioTotem concept: "a multimedia art/science installation designed to engage communities and facilitate interspecies interaction by interpreting and presenting local ecological data in a relatable manner." Since then, the "Rio Sagrado AI-Avatar" has been the primary proof-of-concept for the SymbioTotem. Rooted in Zuzalu Montenegro, this political AI-vatar has been the test-ground for the consolidation of the technologies and community practices most appropriate to bootstrap such systems. And thanks to the financial support from the Zuzalu community we have been able to continue developing the project, which is currently on Phase 2 (Beta), featuring:
- Continuous community engagement around the cultural and legal recognition of the River as an entity of right.
- A LLM model instructed to represent the river informed by 30+ articles on the river watershed and dedicated sensors for live environmental monitoring. Accessed via:
- Webpage interface
- WhatsApp interface (+554196638496)
- Voice based in site interface via a physical sculpture (crafted by a native artist), that highlights the river's biodiversity and hosts the embedded computer system for the AI-vatar.
With its modular and open-sourced codebase, the Rio Sagrado AI-vatar's backbone can be easily adapted to other implementations. In fact, conversations have started towards other applications for rivers in Brazil and Aotearoa New Zealand. At the same time, we are especially eager to the moment in which we will be able to deploy such tech at a Zuzalu event, materializing our vision for the SymbioTotems to "encourage the integration of environmental considerations in future Zuzalu events and the broader community, perhaps via the granting of citizenship status to nonhuman entities."
Towards Symbiocracy
With the ongoing Phase 2 (Beta) deployment of the Rio Sagrado AI-vatar/SymbioTotem we are drafting next steps for Phase 3, whose intent is twofold:
- Move away from API-based (especially commercial) LLM services towards local LLM approaches;
- Enable such systems to enter into contracts with the community (both local and global), in benefit of the source entity(ies) they represent. These contracts would be intermediated through the "SymbioToken" - a name agnostic on-chain currency incentivizing ecological preservation and community engagement by rewarding participants for sustainable practices and contributions to environmental projects.
Our infrastructural blueprint for this new phase is the following:
At a local (in-machine) level, The Rio Sagrado AI-vatar/SymbioTotem system would:
- Store data (lists) for: 1) Community crowdsourced bounties in benefit of the River (e.g. cleanups and tree planting), with ideas gathered through the avatar interface itself; 2) Verified web3 wallet addresses of "River Guardians" - users who care about the River and have been onboarded into the project; 3) A history with past completed bounties.
- Maintain a balance/accounting sheet with existing resources in Funds Basket for the Avatar
At the Blockchain level, the system would:
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Have a Smart Contract that both issues SymbioTokens (collateralized by Funds Basket) and distributes them to contributors's wallets as triggered by sensor related events. For this, our ongoing research is leading us towards the use of the Celo chain (due to value's alignment around Re-fi principles - and the existing MiniPay app infrastructure).
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Have a Dapp interface through which "River Guardians" could check their balances, transact tokens to each other, withdraw to fiat, etc. For the development of both the smart contracts and the Dapp itself, we are considering the use of Moralis' tech stack.
With all of this setup, we hope to develop a protocol for enabling on chain AI-vatars/SymbioTotems to perform autonomous information request<>action<>assessment event cycles on land, (or “autonomous action-inquiry”) as representations of the ecosystems' through which they are connected to.
Zuzalu Q2 Funding
Any funding we receive through the Zuzalu Q2 round will be used towards R&D for Phase3, especially what concerns blockchain technologies, like the development of the SymbioToken Smart Contract and associated Dapp.