The ISIT Game: A Solution for Intra-Human and AI-Human Alignment (and UBI in the Process)
Abstract
The ISIT Game is a platform designed to accomplish the following three moonshot objectives:
- Achieve a much higher degree of Intra-Humanity Alignment and Sensemaking
- Enable AI-to-Human Alignment
- Establish a sustainable, ubiquitous Universal Basic Income (UBI)
This system will take an axiomatic approach to arriving at a consensus model of reality that can serve as a structured representation of collective human consciousness as a training source for AI. The primary objective of the ISIT Game is to allow a large number of people to collaboratively establish a set of axioms to form the basis of a consensus model of reality, then develop a logical, robust, and expansive ‘wisdombase’ on that foundation.
Essentially, the ISIT Game is a polling engine formatted as a highly engaging social game, designed to collect the perspectives of Humans on the nature of Reality. It starts at the highest levels of abstraction with simple, obvious questions on which we should be able to achieve unanimous agreement, and expands from there through fractaling derivative details.
This ‘highest level of abstraction’ is represented by the ISIT Construct.
The ISIT Construct is a metamodern approach to the fundamental concepts of duality and polarity. Instead of relying on venerable metaphors like Yin|Yang, Order|Chaos, and God|Devil that have evolved over the centuries in ancient religions and philosophies, the ISIT Construct establishes a new Prime Duality based on the words (i.e. symbols) IS and IT.
In this model, IS is not just only considered a word in the English language, but also as a symbol representing the animating force that makes everything go. The symbol IT reflects the inert forms that are animated by the IS flowing through them.
From this starting point, the ISIT Construct provides a path to map all of Reality (as Humanity sees it) from the highest level of abstraction to as much detail as we choose to explore.
The ISIT Game is intended to process input from the widest possible cross-section of Humanity, without regard to socioeconomic status or intelligence level. The ISIT Game will provide meaningful work to anyone in the world who is willing to contribute to the project.
Thus, the ISIT Game provides a mechanism to achieve the equivalent of a Universal Basic Income (UBI).
Intra-Humanity Alignment and Sensemaking
Intra-Humanity Alignment and Sensemaking is a prerequisite for achieving AI-to-Human Alignment. After all, how can AI possibly align with ‘Human morals and ethics’ when Humanity isn’t aligned with itself?
As a species, we are anything but aligned with each other in terms of morals and ethics. We are in constant conflict, often violently and on a large scale.
Whose ethics and morals are AI going to align with? Capitalists? Socialists Communists? Christians? Muslims? Buddhists? Republicans? Democrats? Greens? Libertarians? Rich countries? Poor countries? City dwellers? Country folk?
The ISIT Game offers a solution to this issue by providing a neutral model — free of cultural dogma and bias — that enables people to collaboratively establish a shared frame of reference for developing a coherent, consensus-based view of reality.
ISIT Game users will first validate the ISIT Construct by taking a series of polls to familiarize them with the concepts and associate highly abstract concepts such as words, numbers, geometry, physics, colors, music, alphabets, language, archetypes, and others in a semantic taxonomy that extends from the highest level of abstraction to virtually infinite derivative objects.
The ISIT Construct introduces the concept of Objective Reality, which holds that everything in Reality can be abstractly defined as an Object that exhibits at least 10 Immutable Laws of Objects, starting with the First Law: that all Objects ultimately consist of IS and IT. IS does not exist in Reality other than as it relates to some ITistic structure. And IT can not exist in Reality without being animated by IS.
The ISIT Game game layer provides a compelling activity that engages and incentivizes players to provide quality data that will result in a true consensus view of reality. On each poll, the objective of the user is to guess how other players answer the question. The closer a user gets to the consensus on any given concept, the lower their Deviance Quotient (DQ). The deviance quotient is then factored into the players’ overall scores.
So a player with a low DQ (i.e. they are more tuned into the ‘wisdom of the crowd’) will earn more tokens when they answer questions, because the quality of their input is higher.
The key to this process is that players do not know the answer to any given poll until after they take it. So players must guess how they think most others answered based on their understanding of the ISIT Construct and the collective mindset of other players.
The game starts at a very high level of abstraction as players take simple polls like associating the words ‘Verb’ and ‘Noun’ to either IS or IT. At this level, virtually every player of the game with a basic understanding of the English language should be able to reach consensus with other players. (If we can’t, then we are well and truly fucked as a species.)
Polls on which there is 100% agreement among all members of the project are established as Axioms. An initial objective of the project will be to establish a substrate of axioms upon which we can extend the model to progressively less abstract / more concrete objects and events.
In the early stages of the game (i.e. at the abstract level), the consensus answers should have unanimous agreement. Simple syllogisms like ‘verb is to IS as Noun is to IT’ should not be subject to debate.
As players move into deeper levels of the ISIT Game, they will begin to encounter polls for which the answers are not as clear cut. As ambiguity increases, the type of polls will change from simple binary matching to a five-, ten- and 100-point Likert scales, and then to matrix scales. It is at these stages of the game where players will begin to see their Deviance Quotients diverge.
The object of the game is NOT to establish some kind of conformist mentality where everyone is coerced into sharing the same perspective. The objective is to allow people to collaboratively arrive at consensus about fundamental concepts and to see how agreement naturally declines as concepts, objects and events increase in complexity and ambiguity.
Ultimately, the point of the game is to help people better understand the concepts of abstraction vs. derivation and clarity vs. ambiguity as a means for us all to do a better job of reconciling differences with each other in our day-to-day lives.
AI to Human Alignment
The ISIT Construct, on which the ISIT Game is based, is a simple and elegant model that harnesses the power of binary logic and the Prime Duality to define the nature of our Reality at the most fundamental level. If Humans create, develop and populate the ISIT Game and thus establish this model, it can become an invaluable tool for the purpose of aligning AI to Humanity.
The ISIT Game is designed to result in a singular, coherent epistemology that is not based on distorted and antiquated cultural customs. It relies on a clearly structured model that allows people to arrive at coherence, reflecting the wisdom of the crowd.
Such a model can only be considered valid when a representative sample of people from a broad cross-section of the population has weighed in to say with confidence that the ISIT Game model truly reflects the collective mindset of Humanity. The more people who engage with the ISIT Game, the more reliable the Human-AI alignment will be.
It is imperative that we move forward quickly on establishing this Prime Duality. If we neglect to establish a Prime Duality, and AI inevitably works out this approach to modeling and documenting Reality before we do, (regardless of whether the specific symbols used are IS and IT) then Humans will naturally be reluctant to engage with such a platform. It will feel like we’re being coerced into adopting this technical, binary system imposed on us by AI, and people will resist it.
If that were to happen, then Humanity would not only be collectively giving up an incredibly powerful tool to help us achieve alignment with AI, we would be unilaterally relinquishing a means to achieve intra-Humanity peace and harmony.
The ISIT Construct has already been validated with ChatGPT 4, which clearly showed that AI readily conforms to the ISIT Construct. And since ChatGPT is a reflection of the collective consciousness of Humanity as expressed in the vast amounts of material on which it was trained, it is almost a foregone conclusion that most Humans will relate to this model as well.
Universal Basic Income (UBI)
Much of the fear around the AI Alignment Problem is focused on the catastrophic event that AI determines Humanity is an existential threat to itself and every other form of life on planet Earth, and decides to eliminate us or reduce our numbers proactively. This nightmare scenario is just one remote possibility which the ISIT Game will address.
But a far more likely issue is economic disruption due to AI displacing massive numbers of Human workers.
Employers will increasingly have the option of continuing to employ Humans or adopting AI and AI-driven robotics, at a fraction of the cost. We should harbor no illusions about which route the vast majority of them will take. And the cost of technology is only going down.
What kind of work will the masses of people who currently work in jobs like fast food service, delivery driving, or online research (just to name a few examples) do when their skills have been rendered obsolete?
In years past, they would just have to buckle down and learn new skills that are more in demand, like computer programming. But today, even those skills are being rapidly undercut.
The accelerating pace of technological and economic change will widen the gap between peoples’ skills and the needs of the new economy to an awning chasm. Massive numbers of people simply are not going to be able to leap across that gap.
What happens to society and our economy when there is simply no need for the services of most people because it is all being handled by AI and robots?
This apocalyptic doom is juxtaposed against the possibility of a utopian future in which AI, robots and drones handle all of the tedious and unpleasant work currently done by people, and produces everything Humans need to live a pleasant and productive existence on their own terms, freeing people up to pursue higher goals and their hearts’ delights.
The key difference between a ‘mass unemployment dystopia’ and a ‘fulfilling lifestyle utopia’ is that the current collective mentality seems to be that people should work to earn a living. This attitude may change over time as we get used to not needing to work, but it is very deeply ingrained in the collective consciousness at this point.
Thus, a pressing need during the transitional phase is a way for people to earn a living by helping to train AI. That’s where the ISIT Game comes in.
Because the scope of Reality is effectively Infinite, this project to map all of Reality through the ISIT Game can never be completed. And because the very purpose of the project is to aggregate the collective mindset of Humanity itself as a framework for AI Alignment, it cannot be delegated to AI.
The ISIT Game is intended to process input from the widest possible cross-section of Humanity, without regard to social status, orientations or intelligence level (within consensually established parameters). The ISIT Game will provide meaningful ‘work’ to anyone in the world who is willing to put in a reasonable amount of time and mental effort, contributing to the alignment of Humanity with the AI that makes our lives so great.
Thus, the ISIT Game provides a mechanism to achieve the equivalent of a Universal Basic Income (UBI) — or at least, the first half, in which people have a means to earn value.
Details about the second critical side of this equation — how people will be compensated for their efforts — is beyond the scope of this document, but are available to members of the ISIT Game Project.
Conclusion and Next Steps
The ISIT Game is an elegantly simple solution to the issues of intra-Human sensemaking, the AI Alignment Problem, and a Universal Basic Income. The designs and strategies for the project have been developing for more than 30 years, and much of the plans have been worked out.
A prototype application has been built at https://game.isitas.org that can give people a sense of how the early stages of the app will work. A series of videos demonstrating the prototype have also been uploaded to the ISITAS Youtube channel.
Functional specs for various features have also been developed, and the project is ready to begin implementing as soon as we can acquire a small investment ($10,000) to launch the program.
This seed funding will pay for:
- Development of design specifications for a custom application
- Development of an alpha version of the basic application
- Development of custom promotion tools
- Production of collateral material (copy, graphics, videos, multimedia, etc.)
- Establishing a marketing automation system
- Online tools, services, and platforms for design, development and promotion
If you are interested in supporting this project, please visit the Patreon page.
There is much more to the project that is not addressed in this paper, particularly some very innovative promotion and growth strategies. These have been worked out in great detail, and are just as powerful as the platform concept itself.
Any collaborators interested in participating in the project are encouraged to reach out to the founder at me@danechristensen.com.