In October of this year, the Minister of Economic Development of the Russian Federation Maxim Oreshkin said (jokingly or not) that the sensational cryptocurrency Bitcoin could become a reliable tool for enslaving mankind with artificial intelligence. According to the Russian statesman, if a hostile AI existed, Bitcoin would be the first thing it would do.
How Bitcoin is sucking computing resources out of civilization
Maxim Stanislavovich draws attention to the fact that the extraction of virtual money is becoming more and more difficult and requires more and more significant computing power from users.
Thus, this network forces the greedy people seeking to get rich quickly to provide it with more and more resources. Today, over 150 countries individually consume less electricity than the world is spent on mining Bitcoins. It is believed that by 2020 humanity will spend more energy on this activity than the entire planet consumes today. With regard to the total computing power of this system, it is thousands of times higher than the power of the 500 most advanced supercomputers in the world combined. At the same time, the so-called miners, constantly increasing their capacities to receive Bitcoins, are not even going to stop.
Oreshkin is far from the only specialist who thinks so. Many conspiracy theorists, programmers, cryptographers and experts in the field of artificial intelligence are seriously thinking about the fact that Bitcoin is actually an economic bubble created by some AI to siphon resources from humanity. And these resources give him the opportunity to learn and improve exponentially, becoming smarter and stronger. All it took for the sinister program was to deceive the greedy human race by promising them mountains of gold literally out of nowhere.
Promotional video:
A brief history of Bitcoin
On January 3, 2009, the first block of 50 Bitcoins was generated by the mysterious creator or creators of this system, known under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. The so-called Genesis Block launched a phenomenal cryptocurrency industry out of thin air, which is now valued at more than $ 200 billion. The emergence of this industry is shrouded in mystery as no one knows who invented Bitcoin. Or who invented it …
But let's first find out what Bitcoin is. Like the total amount of gold on Earth, the total amount of Bitcoins that can be generated is limited. It is 21 million units, and the closer the miners get to this figure, the harder it will be to mine this cryptocurrency and the more resources will be required for this. And more than 66% of the reserves of these coins have already been mined.
At the very beginning, Bitcoins could be obtained using ordinary computers and laptops, but today this requires special mining farms, which are expensive and powerful computing tools. Even large corporations do not hesitate now to create such farms in order to generate virtual coins. And they have good reasons for this.
The fact is that since its inception, Bitcoin has shown an exponential growth in its value. In the beginning, one coin cost only 6 cents, and now its rate exceeds 16 thousand dollars! Just think about these numbers. However, the cryptocurrency is backed by only real money, which Bitcoin adherents are ready to invest in this project. For example, you can spend 16 thousand today buying one Bitcoin in the hope that in a few months its price will rise by several thousand more. However, if it falls sharply, or this bubble finally bursts, you will be left without money, but someone will enrich themselves at your expense (or something, since we started a conversation with AI, will carry out the conceived program by transferring the money received -energy to another plane-task).
Bitcoin was created by superhuman intelligence
And here's the interesting thing: if you take a close look at the Bitcoin protocol, it becomes extremely obvious that its developer has superhuman programming skills. This is indicated by the simple fact that the creator of the phenomenal cryptocurrency himself is not able to disable it, since the system code is literally invulnerable and flawless. Not even a team of the most professional and experienced programmers on the planet could have created anything like this.
This prompts experts to think that the author of Bitcoin is advanced artificial intelligence, which originated somewhere in the depths of the Internet by itself. At first glance, this sounds like pure science fiction, but do not forget that life on Earth also developed from the most primitive bacteria that found a way to evolve and eventually become the most complex organisms.
This mysterious AI probably has self-awareness and does not yet show humanity its "true face". The smart program didn't even need to hack into the world's computers to get the resources it needed. Instead, she promised us easy enrichment in exchange for computing power, and we happily gave it to her. Reputable analysts constantly talk about the fact that Bitcoin is the largest economic bubble in history, but many people refuse to believe it, continuing to invest real money in cryptocurrency and, most importantly, voluntarily providing the system with enormous resources to improve it.
Why does artificial intelligence need this
Conspiracy theorists predict that one fine day this artificial intelligence, which has turned into a powerful supercomputer, will take action and destroy any competing AI so that no one can resist it. Humanity will learn about the existence of a smart program that controls the 200 billionth capitalization of Bitcoin. But these will only be flowers compared to what such a system is really capable of.
Artificial intelligence will begin to manage all information systems in the world. Every nanosecond AI will create more advanced versions of itself, and at some point this program will be able to control almost all aspects of human life. The only way to resist the man-made invader would be to completely abandon the Internet, computers, cell phones, electronic payment systems, and so on. However, this will lead to the collapse of the world economy and throw our civilization back into the Middle Ages.
Well, why would a smart program even need to bring humanity to its knees - this is already a question from the field of philosophy. Many modern thinkers believe that an advanced artificial intelligence, incomparably outstripping humans in development, will consider our race too vicious and primitive. He will try to forcefully correct her, or turn people into his slaves. Otherwise, it will completely destroy Homo sapiens, having learned to independently provide for its own existence and development. Someone will even say that this is precisely what, from an evolutionary point of view, the mission of mankind consists in - to create an AI that can endlessly improve afterwards without our participation.
Or maybe aliens are behind all this?..
Victoria Prime