It's been a bad year for cryptocurrencies, with prices falling and people like SBF imprisoned.
Cryptocurrencies and startups have responded by turning heavily to artificial intelligence, experts say.
They warn that a constant flow of crypto refugees could fuel a growing AI culture war.
At the 2021 crypto convention, Celsius co-founder and CTO Nuke Goldstein could barely contain his excitement for the brave new world of blockchain.
"When you work in crypto, you work on a roller coaster, it's fun, but it's crazy," he said in a video posted on Celsius's YouTube channel . "But every morning you wake up and know you've changed the world."
Two years later, it's fair to say that Goldstein has lost some of his enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies.
Celsius went bankrupt in 2022, with several clients losing thousands of dollars in the process , and Goldstein now has a new job: CEO of AI marketing startup Raver.AI , which promises to "unlock the power of AI."
Goldstein is one of the few figures in the cryptocurrency world moving rapidly toward artificial intelligence. With cryptocurrency funding drying up and FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao facing arrest or criminal charges, many are now trying to reinvent themselves to take advantage of this burgeoning new technology.
In November, Paul Hsu, founder of cryptocurrency-focused venture capital firm Decasonic, told the Wall Street Journal that 20 of the 200 cryptocurrency startups the company reviews each week are moving toward artificial intelligence.
"I think it was a natural progression for a lot of people after the cryptocurrency crash last year," Jacob Silverman, a journalist and author who covers the cryptocurrency industry extensively, told Business Insider. "A lot of it is just chasing money."
Pour oil on the flame
Artificial intelligence is widely considered a world-changing technology, with some warning that it could one day lead to the extinction of humanity .
Experts told Business Insider that the influx of crypto refugees could fuel an already heated debate between those pushing for faster AI development and those ensuring the technology is developed responsibly.
“People in the cryptocurrency world certainly have a sense of mission, and some truly believe that if you convert the world to Bitcoin, you will somehow solve most of the world's problems,” Silverman said.
"But that level of messianism and utopianism is really high in AI 12. It really feels like they think they're doing something very important," he said.
Guillaume Verdon fits this description. The former Google engineer founded AI startup Extropic in 2022, according to Forbes, in part with money raised through a side business in NFTs .
Verdon, who writes under the pseudonym "Beff Jezos" on his ).
Verdon told Forbes that the "Jesus" persona does not reflect his true personality and describes himself as "just a good Canadian" who wants to build a better future.
In general, effective accelerators believe in uncontrolled technological progress as quickly as possible , regardless of the impact on society.
"The goal is to accelerate us towards a kind of capitalist utopia, where technology is given free rein over regulation and control," says Benjamin Noyce, a professor of critical theory at the University of Chichester who has studied acceleration extensively.
The AI Culture War
Effective acceleration of artificial intelligence means a long race to create AGI, or artificial general intelligence, a hypothetical model of AI smarter than humanity. This is at odds with AI safety advocates, who warn it could have devastating consequences.
As a result, ee/acc enthusiasts tend to be very anti-regulatory, something they share with the crypto enthusiasts now flooding the AI industry.
Molly White, a former software engineer and crypto researcher, told BI that “crypto and e/acc people overlap a lot.
"I think the ideology fits very well with parts of cryptocurrency ideology, as well as meme culture, which is a big part of cryptocurrency," he added, referring to the toxic online platform on which Cryptocurrency advocates often turn to regulators. . and the skeptics.
This overlap was evident at a recent "unofficial" party for OpenAI Developer Day attendees, which featured pop star Grimes singing "fast or die" and the libertarian: "walk." I saw a crowd of enthusiastic sprinters under elegant banners . The “about me” tagline is popular among cryptocurrency enthusiasts.
The party was sponsored in part by Extropic , which Verdon attended according to Forbes and which he described in a Facebook post as the beginning of the "cyberpunk SF counterculture scene."
Fears for the future of AI
E/acc has gained several high-profile backers over the past year, including seasoned investors and early cryptocurrency backers Marc Andreessen and Garry Tan.
This online ideology has also fueled debate over how tech companies can safely develop AI, with advocates like Verdon attacking OpenAI's board of directors as "whistleblowers" and, after temporarily ousting OpenAI CEO Sam Altman , progressing in the artificial intelligence they prevented.
Noyce warned that an ideology emphasizing Terminator-style apocalypses and superintelligent machines could replace the very real practical concerns of artificial intelligence with more unrealistic science fiction scenarios .
"The big ideas of science fiction are what make acceleration attractive. There's a kind of glamor and excitement that attracts these billionaires and tech geniuses, that gives them a sense of status and philosophical power," Noyce said.
"I think the problem is that maybe real science and real knowledge of things gets drowned out in this conversation that has the appeal of science fiction," he said.
As Silicon Valley and the world grapple with these very real concerns, it seems unlikely that the influx of former cryptocurrency enthusiasts will do much to quell the AI culture war.
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