If humanity were to merge with artificial intelligence (AI) in the future, Bitcoin (BTC) could be the currency of choice for sentient machine intelligence, according to Tether’s chief technology officer Paolo Ardoino.
Ardoino delved into this hypothetical reality in conversation with Cointelegraph journalist Joseph Hall in an interview during the Plan B Summer School in Lugano, Switzerland.
Pick your flag for the team photo!
I channelled my inner @RunwithBitcoin
@paoloardoino channels his adopted country
pic.twitter.com/LN2TBdM84x— Joe Nakamoto (@JoeNakamoto) July 3, 2023
Ardoino believes the decentralized nature of Bitcoin’s protocol makes it the natural choice for AI if it were to adopt a digital currency in the future:
“I think AGI will definitely only choose Bitcoin.”
AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to artificial intelligence that can learn how to complete an intellectual task that humans can perform. The advent of large language learning models like ChatGPT has blown open the potential for AI and AGI to overhaul many industries and fundamentally change how humans carry out a litany of tasks.
Related: AI-related crypto returns rose up to 41% after ChatGPT launched: Study
Ardoino believes the future of humanity may well involve the merger of humans and AI through bionic elements and “augmented brain capacity.” He highlighted Elon Musk’s Neuralink as a prime example of efforts to explore the possibility of enhanced cognition powered by AI technology.
Pointing to movies like The Matrix as popular representations of what a dystopian AI-ruled future might look like, Ardoino suggested that AGI would naturally choose Bitcoin over centralized currencies:
“A machine will always choose something that is fully decentralized that no one can control. If machines have to pay for electricity to work, they will always use something that humans cannot control, and they will use Bitcoin, in my opinion.”
The chief technology officer of Tether, the company behind the largest United States dollar-backed stablecoin by market cap, Tether (USDT), also suggested that AI would not use USDT because of its centralized nature.
The possibility of a future in which humanity coexists alongside AI in whatever shape or form could be as close as 20 or 30 years away, according to Ardoino. However, this could be determined by differing focuses on reverse aging instead of incorporating AI and bionic elements into humans to augment their physical and mental capabilities.
“The future tells me that we are going toward augmented intelligence that will end up with AI co-mingling with normal brains. Maybe that is the future of humanity.”
The likes of BlackRock — the world’s largest asset manager — have earmarked the AI ecosystem as a prime investment opportunity, given its “disruptive” nature. A mid-year outlook report highlighted that gains in the S&P 500 are increasingly concentrated in a handful of tech stocks.
The interview is part of an upcoming Cointelegraph documentary about what it’s like to attend a Bitcoin school. Subscribe here (https://www.youtube.com/@cointelegraph) to watch.
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