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Time for Change: How will globally distributed crypto-technologies impact nation-centric professional registration for Engineers.

Former Community Member
Former Community Member

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By the year 2020, the digital universe will grow to 44 zettabytes—that’s 10 times the amount of data that existed in 2013. By then the amount of data that is tagged and open to analysis will grow by 35 percent—to 16 million petabytes of potentially usable information. Every organization wants to turn this ever-increasing influx of data into valuable information that can be used strategically.



David McQuiggan



David McQuiggan



In the UK, professional registration is awarded by licensed bodies who represent the Engineering Council, based on knowledge, competence and commitment to professionalism. In other countries, professional engineers are licensed by the state. The question for discussion is: will distributed crypto-technologies be adapted to augment, compliment or ultimately replace centralized registration of professional engineers in the UK or other nation states, as exemplified by emergence of:



  1. Curiosumé (an open source specification for the analog-to-digital conversion of knowledge asset objects, designed as a system to replace the résumé as a means for describing the interests, skills, experience, and abilities of people —  it functions as a secured personal digital API),

  • Quant (cryptographic tokens of value generated by a series of claims and verifications submitted by engineers in a delegated proof-of-stake algorithm vs Bitcoins proof-of-work), and,

  • CoEngineers.io (a shared distributed ledger of integrated engineering knowledge embodied in a distributed global network of engineers, The CoEngineers.io platform,which claims to be the “First Blockchain Developed by Engineers for Engineers,” and seeks to use distributed ledger technologies (DLT) and complex multi-agent game mechanics to distribute two cryptographic value-tokens which represent quantity and quality of engineering claims. The underlying concept is that engineering requires separation of responsibility and chronological verification and that the practice of engineering can be modeled as a “chain of interdependent blocks.”  Think of a Blockchain distributed ledger, a shared ledger where a consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data is geographically spread across multiple sites, countries, or institutions in a decentralized manner.

In many nations, an engineer is not required to be licensed in order to be employed as an engineer, and the employer is liable for proper engineering judgment of the employee. However, in many countries, an engineer seeking to enter into private practice or perform public works, must, by law, become registered in their discipline, but with no mobility to perform professional engineering work, internationally without additional licenses, despite the laws of physics and engineering principals remaining unchanged across national borders.  Each nation establishes their own “standard” for registration to use as a rule or basis of comparison in measuring or judging capacity, quantity, content, value, or quality. For professional engineers that usually includes: education. experience, examination and character.  Problems with centralized registration or licensing of professional engineers include:



  1. No international comity for the engineering profession

  • Large engineering tasks often require international mobility, computer literacy, modern quality training, professional accountability, technical competence, bi-culturalism, and bi-linguality, but no centralized and globally recognised professional registration body for professional engineers working internationally exists, and, if it did exist, the professional engineering mobility standard would likely be the lowest common denominator acceptable to member nations.

Conversely, cryptographic value-tokens which could represent quantity and quality of professional engineering claims generated in a blockchain, and verified/validated by a large network of peer engineers from around the world, in a delegated proof-of-stake algorithm, might ultimately fulfill that role in away that is acceptable to legislators, regulators, institutions, international clients and their underwriters of financial risk.



An interesting and thoughtful paper that touches on this subject is:Blockchain Technology: Implications and Opportunities For Professional Engineers  – National Society of Professional Engineers; 2015-2016 FinTech Task Force; July 2016 Daniel R. Robles, P.E., Chairman Keith Beatty, P.E. William Begg, P.E. John Conway, P.E. David D’Amico, P.E., F.NSPE Mark Davy, P.E., F.NSPE, Rick Ensz, P.E. John Evangelisti, P.E. Bart Hogan, P.E. Bradley Layton, Ph.D., P.E. Tom Maheady, P.E., F.NSPE Robert Uddin, P.E. Chad Williams, P.E. 



David Mc Quiggan



Please refer also to this short article of mine printed  in the Journal of The Society of Professional Engineers in the year 2000  :



https://image.slidesharecdn.com/printed … 1395588367



  • How will globally distributed crypto-technologies impact nation-centric professional registration for Engineers.



    It won't, by any significant amount, in the near future.
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    I think it will become significant within this decade, that is, 2020-2030, instead. 2020 is the turning year for many changes around the world and anyone staying back ( that is losing the step) to these ineluctable changes is destined to disappear or left to survive in a corner.

    So for the young generations of engineers is a MUST to keep up with these changes and the various Professional Engineering Organizations around the world as well!
  • So far, blockchain has been mostly hype.  In our increasingly cashless society, more and more transactions are being done every second by Visa and Mastercard.   They carry out far more transactions than Bitcoin, without bogging down in the way that Bitcoin has.  They can do that because they do not use blockchain - instead they have a small number of dedicated trusted servers.  No problems scaling the network.


    A distributed engineering blockchain would require proof of work and a web of trust.  Otherwise, I could set up two servers, one generating claims that I have done valuable work for somebody, and the other verifying that I have done the work.  Within a weekend, I could be the most experienced engineer on the planet.
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    True! But such a trust could be reached with the rise of Webs 3.0 and 4.0 both forecast to come in existence within this decade.
    https://www.finextra.com/blogs/fullblog.aspx?blogid=3003
    https://flatworldbusiness.wordpress.com/flat-education/previously/web-1-0-vs-web-2-0-vs-web-3-0-a-bird-eye-on-the-definition/
  • The challenge is: what is this process (whatever the technology) looking for? Can we define a set of rules for it to look for? No we can't - I'm basing that assertion on the fact that we're forever arguing over the content of UKSpec, and then how we interpret that content! If that's the case then Plan B: can AI learn for itself what a "professionally registered engineer" looks like and start selecting them? So far the evidence I've come across is that this is a very risky approach because it is so dependent on the source data fed into the application - chances are that in the UK at the moment it would decide that (e.g.) only middle aged white men with a certain cultural and educational background could be CEng (which would rule me out, only 2 out of 4!). The infamous Amazon recruitment programme is an interesting test case https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight/amazon-scraps-secret-ai-recruiting-tool-that-showed-bias-against-women-idUSKCN1MK08G


    I see the challenge far less about how and where the information is managed, and far more about how any AI is applied to that information. Without an extremely intelligent approach, people that don't exactly fit the profile fall by the wayside, and the case that Simon mentions becomes a reality - those whose only skill is driving the virtual system survive undeservedly.


    Now I must admit, I would love to see effective AI managed and interlinked professional registration, there are plenty of problems with the human assessment and communication process, but at present and for the foreseeable future I'd rather have a human I can argue with about it!


    I'm very much coming to the conclusion that such systems are brilliant for advisory systems (e.g. I am a huge fan of Google Maps, which must have extraordinary analytics behind it), but pretty useless for control systems where there is a human element (my, admittedly rather petty, pet hate is automated lost luggage tracing systems - helpful humans are MUCH better at this stuff!)


    But interesting to think about, thanks for posting this, it does help think about the question "how would such an ideal system work" - whether it's virtual or human based.


    Thanks,


    Andy
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    Towards a world managed by Algorithms?
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/gerogebailey1/2018/11/15/the-golden-age-of-algorithms/#62e41b722179
    https://blog.growthinstitute.com/exo/algorithms
    https://www.wired.co.uk/article/algorithm-watch-tv-predict-future
    https://lithub.com/autonomous-everything-how-algorithms-re-taking-over-our-world/
    https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2017/06/27/algorithms-will-core-ai-powered-future-care/



     

    But also:

    Warning from Elon Musk About AI : Global Race for A.I. will be the Most Likely Cause of World War III -And Russian President Vladimir Putin said( on 2017) that the First Global Leader in AI would “become the Ruler of the World”.


    https://www.rt.com/usa/401957-ww3-ai-musk-strike/

  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    More:



    Stephen Hawking Finally Revealed His Plan for Preventing an AI Apocalypse








    The Late renowned scientist warned that we need to be ready for the robots.
    https://futurism.com/stephen-hawking-finally-revealed-his-plan-for-preventing-an-ai-apocalypse




  • The odds of a worldwide governing body being set up to oversee AI developments is negligible.  The USA wouldn't allow it because they hate international governance of their business interests.  China wouldn't allow it because it takes power away from the Chinese government to make their own decisions.
  • Why not make a start by setting up Commonwealth professional registration for Engineers. Begin with UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.  Add India, and South Africa eventually, and draw in engineers from other Commonwealth counties as the confidence grows.  Eventually USA and China will have to take notice.

    Alan Spinks, Member, NZ
  • Former Community Member
    0 Former Community Member
    That's a very good idea,in my opinion! Italy is trying to do the same thing by joining Engineers by all Mediterranean Area that are the ones coming from South Europe and Northern Africa to form a strong block against the Northern Europe ones! Sadly considering that Engineers remain their worst enemies, I think this be a good move to put in act. A strong Commonwealth Engineers Organization speaking with a only voice would better represent  Engineers coming from these countries and it would be highly respected all over the world. Continuing to think to a free professional practice to exercise not only in Europe but also all over the world is pure utopia, that is, it will never happen!