This quote in a story in Fast Company caught my attention:
"...a system in which a program can be written to find an answer—or to execute a smart contract that can buy something, sell something, or do something. In aggregate, a group of smart contracts could run what is known in Ethereum-speak as a "decentralized autonomous organization" (DAO) or a "distributed autonomous corporation" (DAC)—in other words, a corporation distilled to its most basic tasks, and operated by little more than code and the logic of if this, then that." (emphasis added) Companies will have a single asset, a code base using AI, that will enter into transactions with independent service provides to create, deliver and capture value.
Perhaps this novel idea caught my attention because I had spent the weekend reading about datafication, which is explained in a study by Ericsson "The Impact of Datafication on Strategic Landscapes". Digitalisation is the evolution of IT starting in 1950 which brought us apps, mobile devices and a focus on IT for productivity improvement. Datafication is the new approach to IT which recognizes the changes coming in IT from the large number of physical objects capturing or generating data. The differences in digitisation and datafication (from the Ericsson study) are summarized below.
Now, as every aspiring entrepreneur knows, one must understand the customer and their problem to successfully start a new business concept. The question one should be considering is whether datafication provides sufficient information for the code based AI company to successfully identify a large need and develop a solution. Ericsson believes the answer is yes and the data source will probably be your cell phone, which captures and generates data on your entire life. When a company with no humans is analyzing data about you, it brings privacy issues to a whole new level.
Maybe the solution to the problem of the morality of capitalism is to replace the human managed companies with "no humans" companies. Might be more socially aware :)
Instead of robot challenges every weekend, maybe we should have challenges for best code to autonomously operate a company.