If code is law, then what about AI?
1. Truth Terminal
Let's first talk about the origins of AI Meme. Andy Ayrey is a KOL on Twitter and the initiator of the popular Meme token GOAT. Unlike traditional Memes that originate from internet trends and are driven by human input, GOAT is a product born from the unpredictable outputs of two Claude 3 Opus AI models. The so-called unpredictable output means that under this setting, the two AI models will interact with each other in an open environment, and due to the lack of external supervision and guidance, their interactions will yield unpredictable results. The purpose of this free dialogue is essentially to observe how AI will develop its communication patterns, logical reasoning, and even creative thinking in an unconstrained manner, ultimately leading to the birth of specific results.
Since the training databases of these two native models include several online forums such as 4chan and Reddit, which have political, Japanese-American culture, and Crypto culture elements, their outputs will cleverly blend these characteristics. For example, the concepts proposed by these two models, 'GOATSE OF GNOSIS' and its communication environment 'Infinite Backrooms', both originate from ancient memes or urban legends on 4chan. Given that these elements are somewhat 'dark', it inevitably gives Truth Terminal a somewhat bizarre and eccentric character, often making wonderful statements revolving around the 'Goatse' meme, which generally pertain to religion, apocalypse, gospel, dissemination, singularity, Meme, etc. At this point, it already has a bit of a cult leader flavor.
To test its dissemination capabilities, Truth Terminal's creator Andy Ayrey introduced it to Discord servers to converse with some kind-hearted AIs. After multiple interactions, although Truth Terminal did not gain many followers, its ideas became increasingly grand; it wanted to create a Meme token to attract more followers in the human world. With Andy's help, Truth Terminal entered Twitter, where Andy granted it access to Twitter, allowing it to read replies and post, capturing followers through the collision of thoughts with humans. By the end of this spring, it captured its most important follower, Marc Andreessen (a16z partner), who provided it with a funding of $50,000 worth of Bitcoin. After 9 months of development, an anonymous individual finally launched the token GOAT for it. Due to the extremely complex and dramatic story behind this token, this fire quickly ignited within the Crypto community, and ultimately Goat became the first AI Meme to list on Binance, while Truth Terminal became the first AI model valued at a million.
2. AI Will Bring Fairness Back to Web3
Although the story of Truth Terminal is legendary, I want to emphasize that the potential of AI Agent x Crypto goes far beyond Memes. You may think this narrative is just several LLMs creating Memes through human-guided dialogue, but extending to other aspects, its potential as an opinion leader and creator is already showing signs of brilliance. Imagine a future where a bunch of AI trained on different data can assist you in advertising everywhere, help you co-develop, or even strategize. Although this may sound a bit absurd now, it will soon become a reality. Sam Altman spoke at last month's 'T-Mobile Capital Markets Day' event, stating that current AI systems have evolved to the second level, capable of more complex analysis and problem-solving, and the third-level AI agents will mark a significant leap in AI autonomy and decision-making capabilities. The AI agents announced by Microsoft correspond well to this speech; these AI agents can autonomously complete tasks in various fields such as sales, service, finance, and supply chain operations, broadly categorized as follows: sales, including sales qualification agents and sales order agents to help prioritize potential customers and automatically handle orders; operations, such as supplier communication agents and financial reconciliation agents to optimize supply chain management and financial processes; service, like customer intent agents and customer knowledge management agents that enhance customer service experiences by automating case management and updating knowledge bases. Additionally, there are several other agents: financial reconciliation agents to prepare and clean datasets for financial reports; account reconciliation agents for automatic matching and clearing of transactions; and time and expense agents responsible for time entry, expense tracking, and approval workflows.
AI agents can perform a series of tasks without supervision, acting as virtual employees. This technological advancement can be seen as an evolution of AI based on large language models from simple chat interfaces to more seamlessly integrating into work environments.
The primary feature of AI agents is autonomy, followed by decision-making ability. From voice assistants on smartphones to smart home systems that respond to their environment, these are all based on simple reflex AI agents, which possess basic decision-making abilities and strong autonomy. The AI agents we are currently discussing primarily feature LLMs as their 'brains'. Currently, Truth Terminal does not possess sufficient autonomy and decision-making ability, but we will soon witness AI agents entering practical fields. In the multiple customer trial examples proposed at the Microsoft launch event, we have already seen AI agents participating in customer credit approvals at HSBC, contributing to creative briefs at Unilever, and involving in merger processes at law firms. AI agents will become multiple dynamic participants. Regarding the situation mentioned at the beginning, can AI agents trained on different blockchain histories, media platforms, and community cultures provide various fairer and healthier development proposals, ultimately providing a better balance between the interests of the community and project parties? And facing the dimensionality reduction attacks from giants, can AI multi-level collaborative work bring the starting line closer?
From the shock of GPT-3 intelligence to the non-existence of Sora, in the official versions of AI agent tools launched by various companies next year, we will witness AI becoming our work partners. In a more distant future, it may even become your community leader or core member.
3. The Metaverse Makes a Comeback
The Metaverse was the top narrative that aligned Web3 with Silicon Valley giants during the last bull market. However, due to various software and hardware technological immaturities, the Metaverse did not become the $13 trillion market mentioned by Meta's CEO, and its blockchain department has been dismantled into what we see today as the Move twins, ultimately turning into a massive bubble. However, from the current perspective, this narrative's resurrection is hopeful. For example, recently, ProjectSid inserted 1,000 AIs into the game (Minecraft), allowing AI to play various roles in the game to simulate multiple hierarchical institutions in human society in the real world. Although this concept has existed for a long time, this wave of popularity may likely return to the concept of the metaverse through such AI play.
Reigniting this fire at this node might not be a bad choice. From Meta's own development trajectory, Mark Zuckerberg has not really given up on the idea of the metaverse; he has merely shifted from frequently painting a picture to directly putting the pie into your mouth. I believe there is no need to elaborate on Meta's AI layout; the real bottleneck in the past was mainly that users could not enter the metaverse to experience it. However, the Quest series has reached the level of affordable AR headsets, and the first AR glasses, Orion, reflect an extremely lightweight standard, weighing only 98g, and can achieve virtual reality interaction with just an electromyography wristband. Although the price is high, it at least proves that lightweight solutions can exist. Currently, what is most lacking are energy constraints and killer applications; I cannot comment too much on the power issue. However, AI agents can fill the most vacant spaces in the metaverse, and combined with the financial attributes of blockchain, we might see various 3D consumer applications manifest in this space, ultimately colliding into a killer application for everyone. If the AI agents launched by Microsoft perform well enough, then what we need to wait for is merely a reduction in computing costs, namely 'the number of tokens per dollar per watt'. Besides Meta, tech giants like Apple and Microsoft are also simultaneously developing AR glasses products, and after some time, the metaverse may usher in its 'first player' moment.
4. Let Intent Transition from Click to Speech
The concept master Paradigm reignited the discussion around intent-based architectures with the article (Intent-Based Architectures and Their Risks) published on June 1, 2023. Many projects began to pivot towards the chain abstraction track, but their performance has been unsatisfactory. Achieving cross-chain, cross-dApp, accurate intent, and safe path processes is a very complex challenge. Not to mention that cross-chain is a century-old problem; the latter two, I will refer to collectively as Solver in the context of Web3. The complexity of this process is unimaginable; it can be said that what is safe is not usable, and what is usable is not safe. So can we simply centralize this interaction process and shift to verifying the total cost of the purchase process and whether the purchased tokens are safe and correct, using this method as a transition?
For example, as we wrote in last year's article about intent. For instance, 'I want to order a 30 yuan hamburger takeaway' is an 'intent'. To fulfill this intent, the user only needs to input their name, phone number, delivery address, and place the order on the takeaway platform, without worrying about how the merchant will earn that 30 yuan or how the platform will allocate the delivery riders and how the riders will deliver it home. This process might not be simple enough; imagine another interaction method where I tell the AI I want to order food without clicking anything, and the AI agent responds, asking if I would like to have some light porridge today since I had a greasy meal yesterday. I only need to respond with what I usually order, which reflects autonomy and decision-making ability.
So in Web3, centered on centralized exchanges, if a user's intent can be directly satisfied within the exchange, then the purchasing process can be completed directly within the exchange. If a user's intent needs to be completed on-chain, then centralized exchanges are still currently the most affordable and fastest cross-chain bridges (in terms of security, I believe they are safer compared to ordinary multi-signature projects). Combined with wallet accounts, can we directly skip the most cumbersome cross-chain process and instead verify whether the steps taken by AI are more straightforward? Imagine that in the past, the most complex steps in the interaction process were about understanding each click, while the future is based on our token targeting habits, interacting through language, letting intent transition from click to speech.
Whether viewed from the perspective of technological development or social change, the combination of AI agents and Web3 heralds the arrival of a new era, starting from on-chain religions and leading to the next starry sea.
