AI is Artificial Abundance, Crypto is Artificial Scarcity

A technological dyad. Digital homeostasis.

Cryptography proves ownership, secures your information, constrains access: not your keys, not your data or coins. Digital scarcity.

AI relies on free, open access to data for its training, allowing it to create a content deluge. Digital abundance.

AI and crypto, digital abundance and digital scarcity, are so poetically at odds I can’t help but view them as competing Darwinian forces. Symbiotically antagonistic, a technological dyad. I see these creations as evolutionary extensions of human cognition. They should be viewed as competing forces in a biological organism. Contrasting each other to create a kind of digital homeostasis. Similar to how the body has mechanisms in it to maintain equilibrium, balancing extremes to keep things steady.

It's too serendipitous that both technologies happen to be at roughly the same gestation cycles too. Both have permeated the public conscious, we understand their power and application, but they’re not scaled yet, imperfect, and not completely ready for prime time. But it’s very clearly not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when’ for them.

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Human Made is the New Organic

People will probably one day seek out content uninfluenced by AI in the same way that antique and art collectors do creations from certain eras.

Eventually there will be such an overabundance and saturation of AI-generated content that pure human creations will be seen as novel artifacts, a sort of coveted collectible. A rare genuine expression from a quaint time when expressions were an anthropogenic, thoughtful act, made more valuable by their imperfections and human peculiarities.

The same way people enjoy vinyl albums even though an MP3 is technically superior. How we watch Magnus Carlsen play chess even though the computer is indisputably dominant. We want to hear the artist singing at the concert, not lip-syncing. We’re nostalgic creatures that seek human authenticity and human emotion.

Large language models (LLMs) will eventually exist in a feedback loop of sorts where the majority of data they’re trained on was itself generated by other LLMs. Average people, of which most are, will provide average prompts and get average output. This feels like a cycle destined for predictable, factory-made, rote, bland content. The internet will be positively swimming in unremarkable digital abundance.

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AI is Artificial Abundance

The value that we ascribe to many things is the perceived amount of time and effort someone put into making it (known as the Labor Perception Bias). This doesn’t apply to all goods obviously, however for creative output it’s where a lot of the “value” comes from.

Writing in particular is a domain where much of the ascribed value stems from the appreciation that someone dedicated time and effort generating it. You appreciate hand-crafted stitching and hand-drawn masterpieces more than a paint-by-number-style screenprint churned off a factory floor, even if they’re both visually comparable.

AI will dilute this effort signal. It will saturate us in mediocre content that’s mostly similar to the content it’s been trained on. It will make it nearly impossible for humans to perceive the amount of effort or creative energy that went into something.

If everyone has access to the same LLMs and AI tools, then there is no competitive advantage to using them. It becomes something of a baseline where you need it to compete, but your unique abilities are still the things that shine through.

Imagine if it was a requirement that every NBA player used steroids, and they all used the same drugs in the same quantities. What would happen? Everyone’s athletic abilities would increase, but the idiosyncratic talents of players would still be the differentiating factor. If everyone stands on a 6-inch block, then everyone is 6 inches taller; you are not competitively advantaged by it.

You can’t juice your way to Steph Curry’s jumpshot. Take as many steroids as you want, you won’t be able to see the court and pass like Steven Nash. No performance-enhancers will give you Tom Brady’s brain.

This means that unusual, original creators will become more prominent, especially if the creator can prove he made it ‘by hand’. The mediocre creator is in trouble, the exceptional one will be amplified.

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Crypto is Artificial Scarcity

There’s a well-known take that “AI is communist, crypto is libertarian”. What it functionally means is these two technologies provide a symbiotic yin-yang to each other via their contrasting strengths. The tech equivalent of “unstoppable force meets immovable object”.

There is no physics rule or law of nature why bitcoin is capped at 21 million. With a tweak of some code we can modify the amount of Ethereum in existence to trillions. You cannot do these things with gold or things that exist in the world of atoms. But in the land of bits you can, so what constrains it?

The artificial scarcity that cryptography brings to the financial world through DeFi can be abstracted onto human creations. Human-made output can be proven as anthropogenic and original, allowing content to be verifiably linked to its creators.

You don't need to detect or combat AI deepfakes (likely an impossible task). You simply need Proof of Provenance. If someone famous or notable says something digitally, signatures must accompany it. If it's authentic, it has a cryptographic signature you can verify. Otherwise your default assumption is it's fraudulent. No Proof of Provenance = do not believe

Or just how we stake ETH to secure Ethereum, a creator could stake a tokenized form of his reputation (an NFT, tokens that come from a known wallet of his, etc.) behind content he produces, claims he makes, or anything that he wants to be identified with.

Like signing an onchain transaction, creators can cryptographically sign their output with a PGP or ECDSA-style signature to confirm its genesis. This is already commonplace on the dark web and DeFi, and it will become standard practice someday to help us navigate the AI downpour.

AI will flood the world with ordinariness. Most people will not be able to differentiate themselves in this sea of mediocrity, because definitionally most people are mediocre. Digital abundance.

Crypto will act as a ship atop these mid waves. Cryptography facilitates proof of origination, permitting us to readily discern and verify content and claims as authentic. A compass to navigate the AI deluge. Digital scarcity.

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