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The crypto space is fascinating. It incorporates so many personalities, beliefs, world views and wackadoos.
One person may be focused on their sense of self sovereignty, while another just wants pictures of apes.
One person may be looking for the next big pump and that's all, while yet another is far more concerned about passing down a lasting, safe asset that won't be confiscated by their government.
I want to focus on one of those interesting areas where I admit, Gordon sees things from a few angles and none of them are perfectly crystal clear. The title already gave you a hint, but the idea of crypto as technology is, in many ways, in sharp contrast to the ideals underlying, which makes it a truly fascinating space. It's no wonder governments aren't sure how to a) profit from it, illegally if necessary while simultaneously b) seeking ways to regulate the freedom out of it so they can entrap every citizen and control their behavior.
We have technology that can stand for freedom. You can make a best-guess at programming economic freedom and philosophy into a money, or let's say digital value system, and set it loose to see where the experiment takes us.
Without going on and on as Gordon often does, I'll now bring in A.I. (henceforth to be AI for less effort).
Artificial intelligence is running aspects of our lives we barely pay attention to, but it will only increase in significance. As our governments start rolling out their CBDCs, realize that the same back door pathways they utilize for their gain will surely get programmed into our next form of official fiat at will, and I seriously doubt any public concern will be factored in.
AI is going to have a serious influence on the lives of our children as they grow up. While much of the work force is concerned about automation tasks, self-learning software, losing jobs to robots and the whole 'ooooo it's a sentient being does it have feelings?' thing, (trust me, under U.N. global governance, AI will be given more rights as personhood than actual people)- it's not hard to believe that time is short for us to become prepared for how this technology might be used more against us, than for.
The real center to this quest is to ponder how deeply crypto developers will seek to merge the potential of AI with programmed governance. In crypto, we all give a lot of thought to issues of centralization in coins, exchanges, and greater society. We all ponder just how democratic processes should be, and to what degree programmed consensus should be 'THE' thing, or simply 'A' thing that guides a project's ethical pathway.
There are many, myself included, that will tell you, the longer you're in crypto, the more likely you are to deepen in your appreciation for the excellent simplicity of Bitcoin's initial creation. The idea of getting things right, setting it and forgetting it, would lead one to believe it's better if decisions, even democratic ones, are made before the crypto actually goes live and can be interacted with, listed on exchanges where it then becomes an investment tool.
AI is being built deeply into software as a means of self-correction, pre-programmed self-learning, and routines most of us aren't even aware of. If you think about the future tech AI intentions behind Google, where it is imagined to be that extra member of your family, of the 'really quiet and possibly psychotic' roommate that simply listens for questions to know what people are thinking, wondering, questioning, etc. and simply being there on-hand to insert itself for answers. Kinda creepy, not my cut of tea, but some people are gonna love it.
What about building intelligence into the way a decentralized tokenized project operates? I can think of so many directions for this, and I know it is something being considered by numerous projects. I can see it being algorithms that learn from the human beings that vote on certain upgrades, additions or changes, and predicting future upgrades and adaptations based on popular input. I can also see programming a decentralized platform with centralized decision making, where AI is essentially a coin's own CIA, determining what it would like to do based on covert data collected.
I won't go digging too deeply in this post, because I want to focus on the main ironic contrast, and that is many of the things that make us embrace the potential in decentralized blockchain technology are very much in contrast to things we don't like, mainly centered around over-reaching governments, stepping on our privacy rights, determination made without our consent, mandates, etc.. If you think about fact-checker cancel culture, a coming global form of Chinese social credit system, the online gulag telling on neighbors, dividing people by those who go along and those who actually know how to properly question science... these are things most of the crypto community is not a fan of.
Google studying us, while we use it to study other things- not fun. Even if it is meant to be predictive to make search better, it is also something sold to foreign governments and corporations, much like demographics and conversations on Facebook.
AI is a powerful and fascinating tool, and some of the best thinkers on the topic warn that we need to gets systems and safeguards in place before we achieve what we set out and actually make intelligence that is automatically a threat to us.
You can see the contrast, where we love tech that can be designed to intentionally prevent systematic authoritarianism, and we tend to hate tech that becomes smart enough to pull a psyop on us, controlling our behavior and steering society. How far should we consider the roles for AI in actual crypto governance, adapting, tweaking, changing, self-learning? Is it possible that an important project, much like the greater AI potential issues, might just decide to shut investors out? I don't know... seems like anything is possible, doesn't it?
Anyway, it's just food for thought. Gordon's taking fancy to the keyboard this weekend, so I'll plan to shoot more of these out.
Thanks as always for reading- you make it worth the time!
And for now, Crypto Gordon Freeman... out.
