This is an opinion editorial by Aleksander Svetski, author of “The UnCommunist Manifesto,” The Bitcoin Times and the “Remnant Series,” and head of growth and strategy at Lucent Labs.
I know, I know. Your Twitter feed is probably drowning in threads and tips from AI bros who discovered 99 ways to save you 99 hours a week using ChatGPT or some other list of 99 AI apps.
I was hurt too. Trust me, especially considering that most of these AI “experts” were Web3 “experts” last year, NFT “experts” last year and DeFi or crypto “experts” before that. Trend hopping at its best.
That’s not to say there isn’t value to be found here. Somewhere beneath or behind the almost deafening noise coming from these influencooors there is a possible paradigm shift, and a real set of use cases. We’ve seen it, of course.
You can chat with these models to reason a problem, you can summarize thoughts and ideas, find connections between ideas, find the others information better than you can Google and, of course, create more linguistically-functional chatbots. Perhaps the best use case so far is dev assistant tools, but I know we haven’t seen the “Uber moment yet.”
There is also – somewhere underneath and behind all the scary talk of artificial general intelligence (AGI) and the nonsense proposed by bureaucrats and would-be regulators – a more human-centered, human-enhancing use for these tools.
The idea of a language user interface as the next step from the thumb tapping that we have been used to for the past decade is interesting, and what we should think about is how to make these new tools “bicycles for the mind, ” said Steve Jobs about computers. It is very important that we push back against the doomer narratives that lean the world toward “approved AI” to avoid such devices becoming yet another appendage of the State.
In this short article, I want to examine the ideological battlefield of AI and its relationship with Bitcoin. Some 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 will not change, and will never change. At the risk of sounding like a hippie: It’s all loud.
People often forget that, and this recent AI hype cycle is a clear example. Most people you talk to, even smart people, think that AI is the biggest thing happening in the world today, and that it is the most important human innovation.
I think they are wrong, in a big way. They are missing something more fundamental.
AI is a tool. When used well, it is a very effective tool. But no matter how effective a tool is, it needs power to run. Yes, it can and will improve how we use and allocate energy, but ultimately, it’s an amplifier. A tool. An “engine,” so to speak.
What is Bitcoin?
Well, Bitcoin is like strength Before the Saylor-haters out there scream that’s not literally accurate: I know! It’s a metaphor, and in my opinion, a useful one. This is useful because, in the same way that we use energy to measure everything, money is a measure that helps us (really) account for energy, time and material resources.
If we understand that Bitcoin, on a long enough time scale (generationally speaking, not civilizationally) will be MONEYthen here is the fact that humans are lost to AI:
Bitcoin benefits from all of this, because Bitcoin is the foundation. Everything that happens, every technology, every tool, every innovation, expands the total Bitcoin pie.
So, don’t get it wrong: AI is great, but Bitcoin remains king.
Of course, in terms of financial returns, VC money etc., AI companies tend to outperform both bitcoin returns (in the short term) and also Bitcoin company returns, but that’s to be expected a fiat world where hype prevails over health, and we experience abnormal cyclicality.
AI is also going through a renaissance of sorts, so there’s a lot of buzz. This, over time, will strengthen and as bitcoin becomes the unit of account, lo and behold, all Granted value generated from AI will eventually accrue to bitcoin and bitcoin holders.
So, don’t stress if you’re feeling AI FOMO. Don’t worry about changing your whole life because an ex-crypto-turned-AI-expert guy wrote a viral tweet telling you about some new, generative AI tool that disable some and make others mega rich.
Slow and steady continues to win the race. Bitcoin continues to be king.
AI Is An Amplifier
The second thing we need to know is this: AI is like computers or any other technology, for that matter.
It’s a machine. This is an amplifier.
It will increase stupidity, stupidity and lies, or it will increase goodness, kindness and truth.
It can be used as a tool of control and madness, or it can be used as a tool to free oneself from minutia and for the development of one’s intelligence.
The direction we take ultimately depends on you.
What tools do you use? What are you asking for? Which one did you build? Who do you support?
Companies like Snapchat are building AI tools to pollute your mind with nonsense:
OpenAI is busy policing ChatGPT to such a degree that it spends more time asking for morality than answering actual questions.
Bard, likewise, regurgitates the same kind of garbage, presumably because it’s been neutered by “bias removal” tools and toxicity filters.
These absurdities only serve to restrict the accepted thought and speech of the people, resulting in a homogenization of thought. This can have two effects. In the worst case, so-called “safety concerns” will lead to “approved AI” which will eventually lead to an internet accessible through chat filters with approved speech conditions. The alternative is if we push and build alternatives. Their ignorance becomes our opportunity. As they focus on being awake, we can build functionality and reliability.
Which brings me to my final point:
We’re in a Global AI Arms Race
The race between two versions of the world:
- On the one hand, we have woken up, generalist AIs that everyone is forced to use because the newly formed regulatory bodies deem them “safe” (see the funny work done by Gary Marcus to establish such a global committee).
- On the other hand, we have a future of distributed, more sovereign tools for people to choose from, which the user evaluates on the merits they deem important.
I know what future I want to see, and instead of sitting on the sidelines complaining, I work on creating alternative or similar solutions.
In a future article, I will put what myself and some talented people have been working on. A beautiful marriage of Bitcoin as the focal point and Ai as the engine.
In the meantime, know this: The battle lines were drawn.
These are iris-scanning, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) like World Coin on the one hand, conveniently run by the same leadership as OpenAI, against Bitcoin and smaller, more precise, special and open-source language models on the other.
We all have to make choices about the kind of world we want to live in. Has madness awakened, or has sanity awakened? Mainstream and generalized, or local and specialized?
In my next piece, I will present a potential solution, or at least a way forward. Until then, think about what I’m saying. Don’t get confused by all the hype. Stay true to your convictions, stay alert to the narratives being pushed and prepare for the next battle – because it’s coming.
This is a guest post by Alexander the Greatestablished the The Bitcoin Times and The Amber App, author of “The Non-Communist Manifesto,””True Intelligence” and the upcoming “Bushido Of Bitcoin.” The opinions expressed are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
