Why AI Needs Bitcoin to Survive | Dhruv Bansal

Dhruv Bansal (0:02)

Bitcoin feels alive, but not intelligent, and AI feels intelligent, but not alive. What would it mean for them to be together?

Could it be both? And is that scary or is that actually common? In a world where AI realizes that what it wants more than anything else is Bitcoin, that it wants it as much as your body wants glucose, Bitcoin is going to be very valuable. The one that picks the hardest currency probably survives, right? Because if it does things that we don't like, if it acts in ways that its owners or its controllers don't like, can't they just take away stable coins? Can't they just take away access to its bank account? Even if it doesn't have a survival instinct, even if it's random, the one that happens to pick Bitcoin will be more fit.

Danny Knowles (0:51)

How are you doing, Dhruv?

Dhruv Bansal (0:51)

I'm doing very well.

Danny Knowles (0:52)

Good to see you, man.

Dhruv Bansal (0:53)

Likewise.

Danny Knowles (0:53)

It's been a little while.

Dhruv Bansal (0:54)

It has, yeah.

Danny Knowles (0:56)

We were at the Imagine If conference this morning. I saw you speak.

Quite a speech. We're going to get into some stuff.

Dhruv Bansal (1:03)

Okay.

Danny Knowles (1:03)

This is the best, or at least my favorite example of why AI and Bitcoin might have a sort of symbiotic relationship. AI might need Bitcoin. And you hear it quite a lot, but I think you've thought through it more than most.

Dhruv Bansal (1:16)

I've tried to, and that word symbiotic is very appropriate.

Danny Knowles (1:18)

And so we're going to get into that in detail. Because you had nine minutes on stage and you were rushing through it.

Dhruv Bansal (1:23)

I did.

Danny Knowles (1:23)

We've got as much time as we need now.

Dhruv Bansal (1:25)

I'm excited.

Danny Knowles (1:26)

Why don't we start with why you wanted to do this? Because on stage you were saying, we need optimistic stories.

Dhruv Bansal (1:33)

Yes. Yeah, I agree. I think it's true of Bitcoin, it's true of AI, it's true of humanity in general. I think without good stories to motivate us, kind of lose our way sometimes. We give up. We don't keep fighting. And I think sometimes Bitcoin doesn't have the right stories in front of it. And this has been a hard year in Bitcoin. I think a lot of Bitcoiners have seen themselves fall out of love with Bitcoin, if you like, and become obsessed with AI. A lot of people who want to stay in Bitcoin are seeing people they respect and look up to kind of get fascinated by Bitcoin, or excuse me, by AI. Bitcoin meetups are disbanding around the country as people realized that they were mostly just talking about AI when they went to those meetups. And it kind of felt even at Unchained that some of the shine was coming off of Bitcoin in favor of AI. And you know, I like AI too. I use it all the time.

I feel empowered because of it, but I don't think I want to work on AI. I think I want to use AI to solve problems in Bitcoin and for my company and in my life.

And like many people, also, I think when AI really started to grow a few years ago, it was scary. And when they started doing math and talking in words, how much longer before really bad things happened? And then I realized, what was I doing there? I was pattern matching off of stories that I had been told and seen in science fiction that really didn't align with what the real development of AI appeared to be. And I think for the last few years, I've been searching for a better story to tell myself, to feel better about what's happening in the world, but also one that I think can be inspiring, both for those in the field of AI, as well as for us Bitcoiners. And I think I found something that I like, and I tried in eight or nine minutes today to get through some of it on stage.

I'm excited to get through it here with you.

Danny Knowles (3:19)

Do you think if we get a little bit woo here?

Dhruv Bansal (3:21)

Yeah, let's do it.

Danny Knowles (3:22)

We need the optimistic stories because otherwise we end up treading the path that we've seen on the movies in Black Mirror and things like that. It's like that seems inevitable, and therefore people start building those things. Correct. We need to tell better stories.

Dhruv Bansal (3:32)

Yeah, there's a certain sense of it becomes inevitable. And I think new stories give us new goals and new ways of dealing with what's happening.