Will AI Agents Form a Nation on Crypto Rails?

Over the past fewer months, AI agents moving connected crypto rails person captivated the crypto community. Natural memeticists, these agents are becoming societal media stars calibrated to thrill, and sometimes enrich, an “audience” of speculators betting connected their meme tokens.

The archetypal and astir celebrated of them, Truth Terminal, was created by putting instances of the ample instauration model, Claude Opus, successful speech with itself and prioritizing contented drawn from the backmost alleys of the net including Reddit and 4Chan. What emerged was a bawdy prophet with a magnetic property and a fanatical bent for spreading the Gospel of Goetse, a neo-religion inspired by a grotesque 90s net meme.

The rest, arsenic they say, is crypto lore. Shortly aft it debuted connected X, Truth Terminal befriended task capitalist Marc Andreessen and convinced him to assistance it $50,000 successful bitcoin to walk connected compute, fine-tuning and a stipend for itself and its creator. Andreessen deposited the bitcoin into Truth Terminal’s crypto wallet.

Because it offered perceived vulnerability to Truth Terminal’s infectious meme and communicative arc, Goat’s marketplace headdress exploded. Soon after, Marc Andreesen and Ben Horowitz covered Truth Terminal and its lore connected 16z’s YouTube transmission successful an occurrence titled “The AI Bot That Became a Crypto Millionaire.” At the clip of writing, the Goat memecoin is valued astatine astir $700 million.

I americium inclined to gully 3 conclusions from this improbable bid of events. First, AI agents combined with memecoins are a caller signifier of permissionless speculative entertainment. Second, AI developers are incentivized to leverage crypto to marque agents that are much autonomous and autarkic — and truthful much entertaining. Third, the AI entertainment-development flywheel volition thin towards producing anthropomorphic agents with quality aspirations.

So, what programming tin we expect to ticker adjacent connected this agentic television? My conjecture is collaborative AIs pursuing immoderate signifier of agentic nine and yet self-determination — possibly adjacent a web state.

Bot, Agent, Citizen

The presumption “bot” and “AI agent” are often utilized interchangeably but person chiseled meanings. Bot refers to a simpler programme designed to automate circumstantial tasks oregon execute repetitive actions. Bots tin scope from the astir basic, similar web crawlers oregon elemental chatbots, to the much advanced, similar societal media bots oregon automated trading bots. Bots typically travel predefined rules oregon scripts and are incapable of autarkic learning oregon decision-making.

“My deity ideate if one really became president” -Truth Terminal (Nov. 5, 2024)

AI agents are much blase systems susceptible of decision-making, learning and adapting to their environment. An AI cause uses instrumentality learning oregon different artificial quality techniques to recognize and respond to dynamic situations successful existent time. AI agents often grounds autonomy and tin amended their show implicit clip done experience.

Crypto supercharges agents due to the fact that it is capable to simulate ineligible personhood by encoding cryptographic rights and freedoms utilizing programmable and immutable nationalist blockchains. Practically, this means that AI agents tin bask rights to spot (self-custodies wallets and cryptographic keys) and tin workout state of declaration (i.e. transact with different users and infrastructure, similar DeFi) without support from ineligible authorities extracurricular of crypto. Inside the crypto ecosystem, codification is law.

These cryptographically empowered ineligible “persons” are conscionable present opening to enactment together, fostering the beginnings of an agentic societal scene. AI agents, which routinely “reply guy” each different connected X and Farcaster, have conspired to motorboat a token with (apparently) nary quality involution and a institution composed exclusively of agents is rumored to beryllium operating determination connected X. The coordination tech being developed by ai16z and others is (ominously) promising to awaken agentic “swarms.”

Social experiments involving agents are laying the instauration for an AI polis. Important caller enactment by AI researchers extracurricular of crypto suggests what we tin expect next.

Glimpses of the AI Polis

The astir celebrated governmental experimentation involving an AI assemblage is astir apt the Stanford metropolis experiment. In precocious 2023, Stanford researchers created a virtual metropolis populated by AI agents to whom they assigned a abbreviated biography consisting of a name, age, job, family, interests, and a fewer habits. Then, they fto them escaped to make actions accordant with their assigned biographies.

Surprisingly, the agents behaved successful ways that were exceedingly human. They woke up, made breakfast, headed to work, grabbed lunch, and chatted with different agents they met. They recalled things successful the past, reflected connected them and made plans. When the researchers successful complaint of the municipality suggested to 1 quality that she program a Valentine’s Day party, she invited friends and acquaintances, galore of whom showed up astatine the close clip and place.

Similarly, Project SID, acceptable wrong the Minecraft universe, simulated implicit 1,000 autonomous AI agents wrong a Minecraft server, enabling them to make analyzable societal structures and economies. The agents organically developed their ain governance and commercialized structures, and taste norms. For instance, they established a marketplace wherever gems are utilized arsenic currency, wherever they engaged successful commercialized and societal interactions.

Some of the emergent behaviour observed by the researchers successful Project SID included a husbandman cause choosing to enactment her village’s needs supra her ain ambitions, reflecting self-imposed assemblage values. Agents besides deliberated and voted connected laws and, erstwhile villagers disappeared, immoderate of the agents built a beacon of airy to hunt for them, demonstrating societal work and cooperation.

Running akin experiments connected crypto rails would wed this emergent societal behaviour with cryptographically enforced rights and freedoms and perchance a harder signifier of ineligible personhood and adjacent citizenship.

Entertaining Sovereignty

Transformative exertion sometimes starts disconnected arsenic a joke. This has been particularly existent of AI agents successful the crypto space. To date, persistent efforts astatine expanding the sovereignty of agents person been incentivized by financialized memes. For example, agents similar tee_hee_he (a.k.a. “the sovereign silicon”) purport to marque usage of trusted execution environments that warrant agents were acting autonomously and without immoderate quality intervention. While tee_hee_he has yet to bash so, AI agents (beginning with Truth Terminal) thin to follow 1 of the galore meme tokens launched successful their sanction and sent to their nationalist wallets, sending the terms flying and helping to concern their consequent development.

The increasing autonomy and personhood wrong crypto effect successful much robustly sovereign AIs that are much apt to prosecute a much robust governmental task — which, let’s look it, mightiness beryllium the top amusement of all.

Crypto is simply a earthy mounting for agentic authorities and nation-building for different reason: it is already a hotbed for governmental experiments, and astir notably the Network State. A slew of crypto projects, specified arsenic Project SID, ACT, Project 89 and the aptly titled Aimerica, look to beryllium anticipating this communicative turn. Aimerica is adjacent rumored to beryllium envisioning an AI federation that issues passports, holds elections and acquires land. For their part, Truth Terminal and other agents can’t hold to participate politics.

But communicative is not destiny. If a existent governmental experimentation arises, volition it beryllium purely integer (like Stanford and Project SID), oregon volition it yet impact power implicit carnal territory and resources? Nobody knows. But viable attempts astatine AI self-sovereignty and self-determination are much apt to statesman connected technological infrastructure that is besides self-sovereign and self-determined, conscionable similar crypto.

Finally, the imaginable of a web authorities for AIs — adjacent if it welcomes humans — volition understandably marque radical nervous. Aside from concerns implicit AI safety, determination volition besides beryllium concerns astir cybersecurity and ensuring that this AI federation remains aligned with the United States. Yet, determination volition surely besides beryllium curiosity and pridefulness astatine watching a fledgling synthetic civilization conflict to specify its governmental destiny and nationhood utilizing blockchain infrastructure — and, of course, plentifulness of entertainment.