1/ AI and Crypto, Part 1...

1/ AI and Crypto, part 1 (NFTs) We are going to have to break this down into multiple more simplistic threads I think because there are many different topics here. Today, we will just talk about NFTs I will first share my priors (View Tweet)

2/ Priors ✅People are using AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) as a short-hand for ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence). ✅In my model, AGI is human-level capabilities but faster, quicker, cheaper. ✅This is 100% going to happen and going to happen pretty soon. (View Tweet)

3/ The "doom" scenarios are about ASI -- intelligences so beyond us that they will, undetected, simultaneously, create biological compounds to kill us in 1-shot, nanobots to turn us into paper clips, and the machines to run power generation and chip manufacturing without us (View Tweet)

4/ My gut sense is that GPT4 and GPT5 are still pretty far away from that. They may have digital superpowers but physical world automation is still very wonky and I do not see, particularly obviously, how a GPT5 could build a drone army undetected overnight. (View Tweet)

5/ For now the "bad" scenarios are more "human in the loop" scenarios. If you run dangerous physical infrastructure (nuclear weapons or facilities) or BSL-4 labs, yes, you should probably lock down your processes even more and prepare for very realistic phishing. (View Tweet)

6/ "but 6529, can I tell you about exponential growth and the AIs coding themselves?" Yes, yes, I know. I read Kurzweil 20 years ago, Yud a few years ago and so on. I think LLMs are very impressive but the leap to physically capable machines is not trivial and (View Tweet)

7/ quite difficult to happen instantly, working in secret, with no factories actually functioning. Once we have functioning humanoid drones, self-driving cars and so on, there is better chances for the ASI to do the "one and done" surprise attack. Famous last words, I know. (View Tweet)

8/ I also suspect that, if there is a stable equilibrium, it is AGIs/ASIs guarding against other AGI/ASIs, not that we will be able to prevent the models from emerging. But, again, neither here nor there. I don't have any special insights on the above. (View Tweet)

9/ So the background of this discussion for the period when: ✅ We will have intelligent machines ✅ They will work primarily in digital realm ✅ They will work autonomously or hybrid with us ✅ They are not superhuman ASIs (I will leave what we do with the ASIs to others) (View Tweet)

10/ The conditions above are sufficient for societal disruption in all the normal ways. ✅ Many white-collar professions will lose their moat ✅ We will be in a world of infinite "content" and bots ✅ Humans will use these tools for their purposes, social construction (View Tweet)

11/ In this world, what does crypto mean, what does crypto do? Well, lets start with our world, the world of NFTs. What NFTs can provide is what they always provide - provenance. (View Tweet)

12/ I assume MidJourney v11 and Dall-E 5 will be able to create infinite perfect CryptoPunk clones or beautiful Fidenzas or great Meme cards. If you come from the non-NFT, non-crypto digital world, this is a disaster! How do we know what is "real?" (View Tweet)

13/ My brothers and sisters in NFTs, you know this topic is already solved. If a cryptopunk is from the punks contract, it is a cryptopunk. If it is on social media, on a different contract, or anywhere else, that is cool, thanks for the homage art, MidJourney. (View Tweet)

14/ Imagine a world a bit more open-minded to NFTs where your ENS is your cross-platform identity and handle. Any application can verify who you are and what you did (mint NFTs, buy NFTs, deploy contracts and so on) (View Tweet)

15/ In that world, not only existing collections like The Memes can extend comfortable in the knowledge that they are "the real ones", 6529.eth could launch "anything else" and we know who did it. (View Tweet)

16/ "Wait, does provenance matter? What if the AIs do better work?" Well, I think some 100% AI artists will be big hits and I welcome them But also in many intangible goods, provenance is everything. People don't advertise their fake Louis Vuitton bags. (View Tweet)

17/ Humans strive for some type of in-group identity. It is built into our DNA, it is how we survived the savannah Whatever the context, whatever the era, whatever the absolute level of wealth, humans form in-groups and out-groups, organize on shared identities and communities (View Tweet)

18/ I believe the same thing will happen here. There are 100,000,000,000 beautiful AI NFTs minted? Super, great, more visual beauty in the world. But will it mean that some NFTs won't be valued more than others? Ah anon, there will always be something "rare" (View Tweet)

19/ Imagine on Jan 1, 2024 - 10 glitch art AIs start dropping billions of great glitch art NFTs per year, both on social media sites and as NFTs. We are in the Glitch Art singularity! In that world, is a 2018 @XCOPYART NFT more or less valuable? (View Tweet)

20/ I don't think this analysis is particularly hard, it is completely obvious in NFT land, that in a world of infinite "content", provenance will matter more, not less. This will not be obvious in non-NFT land. Most people are still before even their RCSA phase (View Tweet)

21/ I will say it again in a different way. "Content" may be infinite, but human attention is not and the human attention follows "power laws" for reasons not changed by AIs. And provenance will matter more than ever. (View Tweet)

22/ Some practical thoughts. We are still (just barely) before the explosion of AI content. I think that establishing yourself now is probably (?) valuable. Get your ENS address, mint an NFT, do something now before the tsunami. It (may) be useful later. (View Tweet)

23/ Implicit in this thread is that the AIs will NOT go in a few months from: "Can make a convincing human portrait photograph by "averaging" what they saw on the internet" to "Can manipulate atoms themselves instantly and globally by new methods unknown to man" (View Tweet)

24/ Lastly, what about "commercial" content creation? e.g. you need a decent looking logo for your new small business and today you would pay a graphic designer $1,000 for it. This will fall to the AIs, there is no doubt about this. (View Tweet)

25/ If you want to make art, as always, you need to bring meaning. General technical competence will not be sufficient. At the high levels, of course, it never was. 🫡 (View Tweet)