When Bitcoin Meets Artificial Intelligence: Woke Madness or Awakened Sanity?

This is an opinion editorial from Alexander Svetsky, author of “The Uncommunist Manifesto,” The Bitcoin Times and “Remnant Series” and head of development and strategy at Lucent Labs.

I know I know. Your Twitter feed is probably drowning in threads and tips from AI bros who have found 99 ways to save 99 hours every week using ChatGPT or some other list of 99 AI apps.

I’m fed up with it too. Trust me, especially considering that most of these AI “experts” were Web3 “experts” last year, NFT “experts” the year before and DeFi or crypto “experts”. Trend hopping at its finest.

This is not to say that there is nothing of value here to be found. Somewhere below or behind the almost deafening noise coming from these effects lies a potential paradigm shift, and a real set of use cases. Of course, we’ve already seen some.

You can chat with these models to find out the cause of a problem, you can summarize ideas and thoughts, find relationships between ideas, search Some Better information than you can do with Google and of course, build linguistically-functional chatbots. probably the best use case ever dev-accessoriesBut I guess we haven’t seen the “Uber moment” yet.

There is too – somewhere beneath and behind all the horror artificial general intelligence (AGI) and being proposed by folly Bureaucrats and regulators will be – A more human-centred, human-enhancing use for these tools.

The idea of ​​a language user interface as the next step to the thumb tapping we’ve become accustomed to over the past decade is attractive, and we should be thinking about how to innovate these tools.”bicycle for the mind,” as Steve Jobs said about computers. It is vitally important that we push back against doomsday narratives steering the world towards “permissive AI” to prevent such devices from becoming just another appendage of the state .

In this short article, I want to explore the conceptual AI battlefield and its relation to bitcoin. Some very important battle lines have been drawn, and we should all be aware of them.

Bitcoin remains the most important thing in the world

Energy is still the currency of the universe. That is not changing, and will never change. At the risk of sounding too hippy: It’s totally energy.

People often forget this, and this recent AI hype cycle is a clear example. Most people you talk to, even smart people, think AI is the biggest thing in the world today, and it’s mankind’s most important innovation.

I think they are massively wrong. They’re missing something more fundamental.

AI is a tool. When implemented well, it is a very effective tool. But no matter how effective a device it is, it requires energy to run. Yes, it can and will enhance how we use and allocate energy, but ultimately, it is an amplifier. a tool. An “engine,” so to speak.

What is bitcoin?

Well, there’s bitcoin Like energy. Before the sailor-haters out there scream that this isn’t literally accurate: I know! It’s a metaphor, and in my opinion, a useful one., It’s useful because in the same way that we can essentially use energy to measure everything else, money is a measure that helps us (implicitly) account for energy, time, and material resources. .

If we understand that bitcoin, on a fairly long time scale (generationally speaking, not civilizationally speaking) becomes WealthSo here’s the truth that AI people are missing:

Bitcoin benefits from all this, because Bitcoin is the foundation. Whatever happens, every technology, every device, every innovation, increases the total bitcoin pie.

So, don’t sweat it: AI is big, But bitcoin remains king.

Of course, in terms of financial returns, VC money and the like, AI companies will probably outperform both bitcoin returns (in the short term) and bitcoin company returns, but that is to be expected in a fiat world where the hype over sanity prevails. Is. And we experience unusual cyclicity.

AI is also going through a renaissance of sorts, so there’s a lot of buzz. This, over time, will stabilize and bitcoin will become the unit of account, lo and behold, all Real The value generated from AI will ultimately accrue to bitcoin and bitcoin holders.

So, don’t stress if you’re feeling FOMO on AI. Don’t worry about changing your whole life because some ex-crypto-turned-AI-expert wrote a viral tweet telling you about some new, generative AI tool that will make some obsolete and Will make others mega rich.

Slow and steady continues to win the race. Bitcoin remains king.

AI is an amplifier

The second thing we need to understand is this: AI is like computers or any other technology, for that matter.

This is an engine. This is an amplifier.

It will increase madness, folly and falsehood, or it will increase sanity, sanity and truth.

It can be used as a tool of control and stupidity, or it can be used as a tool to rid oneself of pettiness and increase one’s intelligence.

Which direction we end up in is ultimately up to you.

Which tools are you using? what do you demand? Which one are you building? Who are you supporting?

companies like Snapchat is building AI tools To infect your mind with nonsense:

OpenAI is busy securing ChatGPT to the extent that it spends Apologies and ethics over time Than it answers the actual questions.

Bard is also littering the same litterLikely because it has been disabled by the “bias removal” tool and toxicity filter.

These idiosyncrasies only serve to disrupt people’s accepted thought and speech, resulting in the homogenization of thought. This can have two effects. In the worst case, so-called “security concerns” lead to “permissive AI,” which ultimately leads to an Internet that is accessed through chat filters with approved speech conditions. The alternative is to push back and create alternatives. Their ignorance becomes our opportunity. While they focus on awareness, we can build utility and authenticity.

Which brings me to my final point:

We’re in a Global AI Arms Race

The race is between two versions of the world:

1. On the one hand, we’ve woken up to generalist AI, which everyone is forced to use because newly formed regulatory bodies deem them “safe” (see. The ridiculously stupid thing Gary Marcus is doing to set up such a global committee).
2. On the other hand, we have a future of distributed, more sovereign tools that people can choose from, that users evaluate based on what they consider important.

I know what future I want to see, and instead of sitting on the sidelines complaining, I am working toward creating alternative or parallel solutions.

In a future article, I’ll describe what I and some really talented individuals are working on. A beautiful combination of bitcoin as the focal point and AI as the engine.

In the meantime, know this: The battle lines have been drawn.

It’s Iris-Scanning, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) like a world coin On the one hand, OpenAI, versus bitcoin and on the other as a smaller, more precise, specialized and open-source language model is smoothly run by the same leadership.

We all have to choose what kind of world we want to live in. Awakened Madness, or Awakened Conscience? Mainstream and generalized, or local and specific?

In my next section, I’ll present a possible solution, or at least a way forward. Until then, consider deeply what I have said. Don’t be intimidated by all the hype. Stand firm in your convictions, be mindful of the narrative being pushed and prepare for the next fight – because it’s coming.

this is a guest post Alexander Svetskyfounder of bitcoin times And ember app, author of “The Uncommunist Manifesto,authentic intelligenceand the upcoming “Bushido of Bitcoin.” The opinions expressed are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of BTC Inc. or bitcoin magazine,