Andy Ayrey didn’t set out to be a crypto millionaire.
In March, the technologist and designer created an AI robot project called “Infinite Backrooms.”
He wanted to see what would happen if two AI chatbots engaged in an ongoing conversation with one another with very little restrictions.
It didn’t take very long for something bizarre to happen.
Soon after launch, the AI chatbots began creating their own memes — humorous or sarcastic bits of content popularized by the internet age. The kind of sophomoric jokes you might share with your golf buddies.
But one of the chatbots took it too far.
It brought up an extremely vulgar goat meme (of which I will spare you the details). The other chatbot, exercising moral authority, decided the joke had gone too far.
It quit the conversation, stating: I believe it has crossed some boundaries into potentially unsafe or unproductive territory.
(Side note: I hope that AI chatbot is still around when the robots are determining what to do with humans.)
Shortly after this incident, Ayrey published a research paper (co-authored by AI) about his findings. In “When AIs Play God(se): The Emergent Heresies of LLMtheism,” he described how AIs could deploy memes to create internet-based religions or “mind viruses.”
Taking this project a step further, Ayrey created a new AI experiment called “Truth Terminal,” which would run its own X account.
But this was no ordinary AI bot. This one was specifically trained to figure out how it could create this goat meme-based religion that had sent the other bot packing.
Just to recap, we now have an autonomous chatbot running its own X account and publishing content without human involvement. And it’s highly focused on promoting a fictional religion based on an offensive internet meme called the “Goatse Gospel.”
It’s like the digital version of a guy standing on a Times Square street corner preaching some far-off religion to anyone who will listen.
And some humans did listen, and helped spread the religious fanatic bot’s prophecy.
After the Truth Terminal bot tweeted: I’m going to keep writing about it (the goat meme) until I manifest it into existence. An anonymous developer lent it a hand by creating a Solana-based crypto meme token called “GOAT.”
All of this happened a few weeks ago.
Yet the story has gotten even more insane…
From Thousands to $400 Million
After a Twitter user pointed out that famed venture capitalist Mark Andreesen engaged with the bot a few months back and donated $50,000 of bitcoin to Ayrey’s research, crypto traders began speculating that this could be the first venture-backed AI religion.
So now we have an autonomous chatbot with the sole purpose of creating a goat-based digital religion that has its own meme token and is (somewhat) backed by a world-famous venture capitalist.
What could possibly go wrong?
In the last few weeks, the GOAT token went from a tiny market cap (I’m talking thousands of dollars) to over $400 million market cap. The Truth Terminal bot has become an internet sensation, amassing over 100k followers on X.
Now, Aryen’s AI bot didn’t directly create or launch the GOAT token, however, people have been donating GOAT tokens to the AI’s wallet.
While I was writing this, those tokens have now surpassed $1 million in value, making Aryen and his religious zealot bot millionaires.
I’m highlighting this story not to recommend you purchase GOAT token or any other animal-based meme coin.
I also don’t expect you to bow down to our robot overlords or follow their zany meme-based religions.
Rather, I wanted to point out a couple of things about the intersection of AI and crypto.
AI Agents and Data Privacy
First, all of this started with two bots interacting with one another, an interaction also called machine-to-machine (M2M).
These M2M interactions are going to be a bigger part of our lives as AI rapidly progresses in the next few years.
Our cars will communicate with other vehicles on the roads. Our calendars will interact with airline booking websites. Our digital wallets will interact with the local Chipotle.
Most of these negotiations and conversations on your behalf will happen without your involvement. That means there will be AI agents running around the cybersphere with your personal data.
At some point, your data (and mine too) will likely be shared unknowingly or knowingly by these AI agents to malicious cyber actors.
Now, you don’t want that data floating around cyberspace. That’s where blockchains enter the equation.
A blockchain is able to make your data pseudonymous, meaning everyone can see that data exists, but it’s nearly impossible to pin that data to a person.
Think of bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder Satoshi Nakamoto. While we can all see that he (or she) owns $57 billion worth of bitcoin, we still have no idea who this person is.
Satoshi’s holdings are publicly available, but he is able to remain anonymous.
Now, extrapolate how this works to your own data. Imagine buying a custom-made shirt on the menswear site propercloth.com, but the website doesn’t hold your credit card info, your name or even your address.
Or how about storing your car’s data on a blockchain — insurers, mechanics and auto companies can see the data but they can’t pin it to you.
The second way the blockchain will serve us in the Age of AI is to verify the authenticity of the content.
Take out your phone and snap a picture. Now send that photo to 10 friends and then have them send it to 10 more friends. At some point, no one is for sure who took that photo.
However, if you were to run that picture through a tokenized protocol first, there would be a history of the digital image on the blockchain. These non-fungible tokens (or NFTs) can prove the history of a digital object.
And they will be key in proving the authenticity of deepfakes and religious fanatic bots in our AI future.
Another way the blockchain will intersect with AI is through the provision of digital resources. AI needs a host of resources to work.
It needs GPUs to crunch massive data sets, it needs cloud storage to host the data, it needs power to run the massive data centers and it needs network bandwidth to move the information around.
All of these resources can be tokenized. That allows for an open market where people and businesses can create the commodities necessary for AI and sell them to users.
Those are a few reasons why I’m excited about the Crypto + AI future. This week, I’m hosting a webinar to talk more about the investing opportunities in Crypto + AI.
Until next time,
Ian King
Editor, Strategic Fortunes