Cicero: Origins and End Goals

This article is intended to quickly run through what Cicero is, how the project was born, its end goals and the enduring ideals it will always strive to attain.

Inception

After the AI revolution popped off one only needed to look around to see the usual gang of big tech leaders along with the fresh face of Sam Altman making the rounds, acting in the typical self-serving and callous way we've all become accustomed to. Watching them fall over themselves, trying to expand their power and wealth by funneling resources into superficial tools rather than transformative research, it quickly became obvious these are not the actions of benevolent stewards of technology whom they claim to be.

It was apparent, this small gang wishes to hoover up the global economy, along with having our daily lives seamlessly streamed into their data centers, essentially transforming our world into their own personal technocratic fiefdom. Their actions have spoken clearly, they seek to dominate at the expense and to the detriment of their fellow humans while justifying it as needed progression to advance humanity.

They will be straightforward that if and when their goals are realized, tens if not hundreds of millions of jobs worldwide will be automated away, now under the thumb of their expansive data centers. When asked what the solution to the inevitable pain and hardship is, they simply shrug and say, "history proves new jobs always get created", or they state maybe UBI will come into effect. We all know these are merely talking points to placate the audience, and will never be realized.

After two decades of big tech expanding into every corner of our lives with manipulative tactics and algorithmic exploitation, the damage to our cognition, attention spans, and critical thinking is clear. A robust, open-source countermeasure is needed, hence Cicero was born.

Cicero’s Modus Operandi

Big tech aims to leverage the AI revolution so the entirety of your daily life is seamlessly live-streamed to their data centers, while Cicero aims for that data to be streamed to a small server in your closet that is under your ownership, and maybe you even build yourself.

In the early 2000s big tech was required to build out the infrastructure that is now the modern internet, but that is no longer the case. From indexing and searching, to social communication and content publishing, we now have the technology and resources to democratize these fundamentals without influence from a Silicon Valley boardroom.

Cicero aims to provide a self-hosted AI assistant that handles 95% of your daily needs, while also initiating a new private and decentralized layer within the internet that harnesses the fundamentals including secure communication, social connection and compute resources, all open-source, completely free of big tech data centers and manipulative grasp.

Cicero is not here to play AGI, take your jobs, or steal your attention. It simply understands you, learns from you, helps with your digital tasks, all from a secure and encrypted private box that resides in your closet, independent of big tech data centers.

Phase I - Self-Hosted, Robust AI Assistant

Developed in Rust for its efficient cross-platform and zero-dependency nature, key emphasis will be placed on the NLU (natural language understanding) engine. While big tech seeks to brute-force intelligence through sheer data and compute, Cicero understands the key lies within innovative engineering rooted in a highly advanced and contextually aware NLU engine that actually understands what you say, versus simply converting everything into statistical probabilities.

No fancy gimmicks or hype, simple novel and innovative engineering cultivated in a pragmatic open-source software solution that packs a punch. Cicero will:

• understand everything you say through the contextually aware Sophia NLU engine (/sophia/)
• naturally get to know you through Quadris (/quadris/), a novel 4D data structure providing personality profiling and memory across all conversations
• handle your digital tasks via Evolve, the custom text-to-action model and new agentic programming paradigm
• cater itself to your specific needs through the extensible plugin architecture

Cicero's end goal is to simply help make your reality a little less painful and more enjoyable by completing 95% of the tasks you would expect from a typical AI assistant.

• conduct your research and generate custom content
• reach out to your desired contacts and schedule individual or group calls / events.
• collect, filter, organize and summarize your incoming communications.
• place orders on your behalf
• deploy and maintain online operations at your behest.
• curate and draft content at your request

All from a self-hosted box you either buy or even build yourself, with minimal hardware requirements of ~6GB of vRAM, and quietly sits in your residence while all household members connect to it from their various devices. Whether you're at home or outside, you will always have a direct connection to your Cicero box with no reliance on big tech data centers. Employing the modern best security and encryption practices, your data and communication is always properly secured from unauthorized access.

Phase II - Decentralized, Private, Global Communications Layer

Upon gaining traction, and considering the end goal here is "ditch big tech", the natural move will be to allow users to opt-in, and turn their installations into a node on a new decentralized, private and secure P2P communications network that offers all the online fundamentals without big tech.

A plugin named Nexus will be made available, and if installed an anonymized profile will be generated from Quadris and shared across a decentralized P2P network matching you with like-minded individuals and groups. No ads, manipulation or algorithmic exploitation, simply common-sense and open-source matching to help expand your social circle.

Its seamless and non-intrusive integration directly into Cicero's two-way communication flow will make it always available while never vying for your attention. For example, if open to new connections, Cicero may simply inform you one day, "hey, I came across Mark, a 23yo from San Antonio who like you is also into space travel, would you like to see his profile or send him a message?".

Shortly after a decentralized compute network will be activated, overlaid with a privacy focused cryptocurrency akin to Monero but with a more streamlined technical implementation. Users will have the option of providing their idle CPU / GPU resources, completing pending compute jobs in the background while earning cryptocurrency for doing so.

The result will be a new decentralized network allowing people to privately and securely have their compute jobs completed without big tech's surveillance, with the transaction being facilitated through a privacy focused cryptocurrency akin to Monero.

Conclusion

While the big tech leaders have made it clear they wish to transform the world into their personal technocratic fiefdom, Cicero strives to return your data, compute, and most importantly your mental faculties back to your stewardship, where they rightfully belong. Unless you have committed acts of criminality against your fellow human, there should be no data collection, surveillance or coercion within your life.

Subscribe to the mailing list to stay informed of the upcoming general release, download the open-source NLU engine, or join the conversations on the Cicero community forums.

Together, we can return the internet back to its utility function of an open global communications layer, free from corporate manipulation and exploitation.