Cryptocurrency with a Conscience: Using Artificial Intelligence to Develop Money that Advances Human Ethical Values

Abstract

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are offering new avenues for economic empowerment to individuals around the world. However, they also provide a powerful tool that facilitates criminal activities such as human trafficking and illegal weapons sales that cause great harm to individuals and communities. Cryptocurrency advocates have argued that the ethical dimensions of cryptocurrency are not qualitatively new, insofar as money has always been understood as a passive instrument that lacks ethical values and can be used for good or ill purposes. In this paper, we challenge such a presumption that money must be 'value-neutral.' Building on advances in artificial intelligence, cryptography, and machine ethics, we argue that it is possible to design artificially intelligent cryptocurrencies that are not ethically neutral but which autonomously regulate their own use in a way that reflects the ethical values of particular human beings -or even entire human societies. We propose a technological framework for such cryptocurrencies and then analyse the legal, ethical, and economic implications of their use. Finally, we suggest that the development of cryptocurrencies possessing ethical as well as monetary value can provide human beings with a new economic means of positively influencing the ethos and values of their societies.

An appraisal of ethical issues and the effect of artificial intelligence on the cryptocurrency market

“…While Cryptocurrency has positive effects on the economy in some countries it has also facilitated criminal activities over time like Terrorist financing and the illegal sale of weapons which is harmful to individuals and has also been used to cause harm through the use of ransomware which encrypts user credentials and ransom has to be paid before it is released [21].…”

On the Convergence of Artificial Intelligence and Distributed Ledger Technology: A Scoping Review and Future Research Agenda

“…However, the authors do not discuss in detail the functionality and security aspects of their ML-based governance. Gladden [40], on the other hand, discusses ethical aspects about cryptocurrencies governed by an AI system. The author claims that such a system can positively influence the ethos and values of societies.…”

Decolonization in a Digital Age: Cryptocurrencies and Indigenous Self-Determination in Canada

“…Drawing on the example of automated trading systems that rely on artificial intelligence to guide economic exchange, Matthew Gladden explains that, together, computer scientists and ethicists can create AI software that is capable of ethically constraining cryptocurrencies. Thus, rather than focussing solely on the financial aspects of exchange, a community currency programmed to promote certain values could, quite literally, reject transactions that contravene the ethical principles programmed into the coin (Gladden 2015, 87-88). For Gladden, the prospect of fusing a community cryptocurrency, such as MazaCoin, with AI intended to ethically constrain the coin’s use offers a powerful mechanism not only to affirm and promote a community’s ethical values and goals, but to create “new communities of economic solidarity” around a shared set of principles to which users of the coin subscribe (2015, 93).…”