This is sort of the premise of Ethereum. Ethereum is supposed to be a better Bitcoin, with lots of bells and whistles. More scalability, with a not-fully-replicated blockchain, programs which represent contracts stored in the block chain, and other gimmicks.
I think someone should try Etherium in a MMORPG before using it on real money.
Is often the most short site solution, and over looks a lot of problems with the underlying block chain. Permance of publicity is messy when applied to electronic information.
I don't understand the insistence that robots in the future not be specialized. Quite the contrary, I think they'll be highly specialized, and the ant metaphor agrees.
I agree that the phrase "non-specialized" is a bit tricky. Ants are mostly non-specialized in structure (there are only a handful of forms within the colony), but individuals take on specialized behavior based on the conditions that their put in. I think stem cells could be a better metaphor.
I had posted a discussion to Reddit[0] about a year ago that touched on a similar idea. Its a model for AI using a community of simple IA that as a whole becomes the AI. It injects social behaviours into the IA to govern how they interact with the community and to allow bias to develop among groups, and domain proficiencies to develop within individual IA. Because I envision the model being distributed, the proposed implementation includes a blockchain-like ledger of points of confirmed knowledge. I'm really not all that knowledgeable on the subject of AI but given the relevance and knowledge of HN I figured I'd toss it here to see if anyone wants to read a wall of text and give feedback. I have a backlog of books on AI I want to read, so if there's anything you'd like to add to my reading list after skimming through the idea I'd appreciate any suggestions :)
This is almost already considered (as others have mentioned) in Etherium and related bitcoin-related thinking - lookup "Decentralized Autonomous Corporations". The part you're adding is the incarnation (or maybe "inferriation"?) of the DCA into a robotic body, which is a pretty nifty connection.
I think someone should try Etherium in a MMORPG before using it on real money.