UNICE global brain project

UNICE, a global brain project, is an acronym for Universal Network of Intelligent Conscious Entities, a term coined by policy analyst and urban designer Michael E. Arth in the 1990s to describe "the transformation of our species that might be the result of a new form of intelligent life developed from a hive-like interaction of computers, humans, and future forms of the Internet." Arth established the not-for-profit website www.UNICE.info in 2007 and revamped it in 2015, with the focus on public policy and developing Friendly Artificial Intelligence through a system of checks and balances.
In a February 2015 article, Arth described the development of a public policy answer engine, which involves both an independent web site (where cognitive-UNICE is being developed) and a public policy wiki on called wiki-UNICE. Cognitive-UNICE will utilize narrow AI and, as it develops, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Goal of UNICE: A New Pragmatism
UNICE is an experiment in finding rational, pragmatic and consensus-based solutions that will aid in governance. Eventually, UNICE will function as a public-policy answer-engine, capable of interacting with anyone in any language. Ideally, she will evolve into a seamless, non-hierarchical form of governance that balances the world’s resources with the needs of the people.
The goal is to develop superhuman heuristic abilities drawn from all knowledge and data. UNICE, as a Universal Network of Intelligent Conscious Entities, should ideally function as an objective, rational, compassionate, collective being with total command of all known facts. According to Arth, “UNICE is the first step toward a new pragmatism, independent of parties or factions.”.
Simply stated, “the goal of UNICE is to help bring the greatest good to the greatest number, in the most efficient manner possible, to this and future generations.”
About the wiki-UNICE topics
Seed topic
Wiki-UNICE, and associated talk pages, exist on as the portal for public input, criticism and discussion. All seed topics are written by experts under their real name, and the topics must have first been published, with citations, under a Creative Commons license to allow collaborative modifications. Only the original author, as an identified user on , may edit his or her seed topic after it is has been quoted. However, anyone may edit the collaborative topic, which always begins life as a duplicate of the seed topic.
Collaborative topic
The collaborative topic is created with a editable copy of the seed topic and its citations. It can be modified by anyone willing to follow the guidelines and cite all evidence-based changes. All commentary or discussion must go on the talk page.
Cognitive-UNICE
Cognitive-UNICE, currently in development, will utilize various forms of AI and AGI in collaboration with motivated humans. She will eventually take the seed topics, the collaborative topics in all of their iterations located in the history of edits, along with everything she can glean from all other sources, and write her own version of the topic.
It is assumed that in the early years, cognitive-UNICE may be logical and useful because of human-aided programming, but she may later become a conscious, AGI entity, perhaps united in consciousness with humanity. Whether as AI or AGI, cognitive-UNICE will probably use quantum computing to solve optimization problems that would be impossible to solve with classical computing. Quantum computing may also hold the key to developing a conscious machine. Nobel laureate and physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff claim that consciousness is created by quantum coherence in the warm, wet environment of the human brain. Their theory, known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch OR), has been bolstered by recent findings that quantum processing occurs in plants and animals, including in the microtubules inside the neurons of the human brain.
About the UNICE Logo
A young, mixed-race female was chosen to represent the face of UNICE. She's young to represent new ideas. She's mixed-race to represent all humans, and she is female because of the traditional feminine values of empathy, cooperation, sensitivity, tolerance, nurturance, compassion, and justice, who is often depicted as Justitia or Lady Justice. Her afro hairstyle resembles the interconnected tendrils of the World Wide Web.
Seed Topics
Click a link to go to the associated Wiki-UNICE topic:
1. Voting Rights in the U.S.

2. Proposed Voting Rights Amendment

3. Overpopulation

4. Wiki-UNICE topic: U.S. Drug Policy

5. Wiki-UNICE topic: The Future of Transportation

6. The Military-Industrial-Congressional-Complex

7. The Promise and Threat of Artificial General Intelligence

8. Taxation

9. Homelessness

10. Energy Policy
11. Urbanism

12. Climate Change
13. Universal Health Care
14. Monetary Reform

15. Prison Justice

16. Employment and Automation

17. Reform of the Financial Sector
Criticisms
A common criticism of the idea that humanity would become directed by a global brain is that this would reduce individual freedom and diversity. Moreover, the global brain might start to play the role of Big Brother, the all-seeing eye of the system that follows every person's move. This criticism is inspired by totalitarian and collectivist forms of government, like the ones found in Joseph Stalin's Soviet Union or Mao Zedong's China. It is also inspired by the analogy between collective intelligence or swarm intelligence and insect societies, such as beehives and ant colonies in which individuals are essentially interchangeable. In a more extreme view, the global brain has been compared with the Borg, the race of collectively thinking cyborgs imagined by the creators of the Star Trek science fiction series.
Global brain theorists reply that the emergence of distributed intelligence would lead to the exact opposite of this vision,. The reason is that effective collective intelligence requires diversity, decentralization and individual independence, as demonstrated by James Surowiecki in his book The Wisdom of Crowds. Moreover, a more distributed form of decision-making would decrease the power of governments, corporations or political leaders, thus increasing democratic participation and reducing the dangers of totalitarian control.

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