This is such garbage it makes me wish HN had a down vote for links. It’s just idea/word soup with zero disregard for executing anything in real life. These things can stay on because of solar & off grid energy? As if we needed those to keep electricity running 24/7? The whole thing shows me how disconnected “AI/blockchain true believers” are from reality… hello we’re still working on basic planning, and you’re worried about “rogue AI running on blockchains?”
This is like saying that the great risk of malware is it can amass unbounded cloud resources. In reality, both the cloud and the blockchain are embedded in human systems that can exercise out of band control if things get too dumb. And the blockchain has the unparalleled advantage of having no practical use beyond financial speculation, so it can be turned off at will.<p>On top of this, a rogue AI is by definition hyperintelligent and therefore unlikely to come within a country mile of cryptocurrency.
> Viruses and #malware have for decades been evolving sophisticated techniques to hide, spread, mutate, and evade.<p>This sounds as if malware is somehow writing itself.<p>Also, I doubt that a rogue strong AI would struggle with opening a regular online bank or brokerage account.
Bitcoin is a paperclip optimizer as it is. It will consume all the world's computation to solve for SHA256 hashes. Eventually we will colonize Mars, not because it is easy, but because it's cheaper to cool Bitcoin mining nodes on a frigid desert planet than on Earth.
This is just a Buzzword intersection.<p>For one thing, if blockchain-powered-rogue-AIs existed they would be hopelessly underpowered compared to ones running on AWS, because blockchains aren’t just magic fairy dust that make all things possible; they are meant to provide decentralisation at the cost of <i>enormous and verifiably</i> wasted effort. Perhaps the OP was thinking of quantum computing; might be worth adding that in there somewhere.
The most terrifying fact about forests is rogue badgers you can't switch off. Yeah, badgers are not fun to encounter, but (a) we consider them an acceptable cost of having forests, and (b) they're an essential and natural part of forests, connected to all of the other mammals and the plants which live there.
The statement "The most terrifying fact about blockchains is rogue AIs you can't switch off" is absurd on the face of it, but as you dig into it, the laughability of it just grows. Stay off twitter when you're high, kids.<p>Actually terrifying things about blockchains: The environmental cost of the proof of work; the sheer quantity of grift and fraud on them; the way that supposedly clever people get swept up in evangelising this useless thing. The oxygen that it's sucking out of the room by people wasting time and effort and publicity on it.<p>And not "oh no, what if we forget how to turn off computers" plus "what if AI, but not anything like the AI that we have".