Author: Kyle
Reviewer: Sandy
Source: Content Guild - News
Originally published on: PermaDAO
Original link: https://permadao.notion.site/Hack-and-Tell-90ca345bf44142bfb012df0e93d57a3f?pvs=4
This episode of the "Hack and Tell" podcast is hosted by Sam Williams and features Teng Yan as a guest. The two sides discussed in depth the future of Crypto, AI, and decentralized computing (AO).
Background
- Sam Williams (@samecwilliams): Founder and inventor of Arweave and AO, and CEO of Forward Research.
- Teng Yan (@0xPrismatic): Former researcher at Delphi Digital with over 10 years of experience in the tech industry. Currently the head of independent research firm Chain of Thought, focusing on the intersection of encryption and artificial intelligence.
Highlights
1. Synergy between Crypto and AI
Both Teng Yan and Sam believe that there is a lot of hype in the field of combining Crypto and AI. But this fusion brings real disruptive potential, especially in building trustless autonomous systems and intelligent financial agents .
Teng Yan pointed out that the current hype and experiments show that the industry is developing rapidly, while Sam emphasized that it is crucial for smart financial agents to be a trusted protocol that can operate without trusting intermediaries.
2. Origin of AO
Sam mentioned that AO was originally designed to solve the content trading needs of a decentralized social media network (Odysee, which has about 7-8 million monthly active users and has now been acquired by Forward Research). Because of the need to build a system that supports content ownership transactions and an efficient market, the team eventually developed a new blockchain that supports scalable smart contracts based on this need. This process was an unexpected innovation result caused by solving its own problems.
3. The transformation of agent finance
Sam described agent finance as the most intuitive combination of decentralized AI and crypto technology. He pointed out that decentralized financial agents can not only eliminate the dependence on traditional intermediaries (such as funds and banks), but also allow ordinary developers to participate in the creation of financial strategies. This reduction in trust and barriers to entry will release a lot of unactivated innovation potential.
Teng Yan believes that most of the current transactions on the blockchain are related to finance, so agent finance is the best entry point for AI agents to enter the blockchain.
4. Advances in AI technology on AO
On the technical level, Sam shared how AO supports the operation of LLM (such as Llama.cpp) in smart contracts, emphasizing that this is an important milestone in introducing AI into the blockchain. He admitted that the current performance is still insufficient (processing 0.7 tokens per second), but this capability provides a solid foundation for the future development of complex AI intelligence.
Teng Yan said that although the technology is not mature enough at this stage, these experiments have paved the way for the development of practical applications driven by AI.
5. Practical Application of AI in AO
Sam introduced the case of Llama Land in the AO ecosystem in detail. This is an experimental platform that allows users to experience decentralized governance and monetary policy through an autonomous system managed by AI. The core of LlamaLand is an AI (Llama 3) that can independently decide on currency issuance. Users can submit applications to it, and the AI automatically decides whether to issue rewards based on the request. This is not only an interesting way to play, but also demonstrates the potential of autonomous AI in the on-chain economy.
6. Philosophical Discussion on AI
Both of them expressed similar ideas - the rise of decentralized AI is not only a technological innovation, but also a philosophical debate between open source and centralized models .
Teng Yan believes that the open system of decentralized AI can enable global developers and users to participate, break the monopoly of large technology companies, and make AI development more democratized.
Sam emphasized that the neutrality and trustworthiness of decentralized AI are the essential differences from traditional centralized AI. This open system is like a protocol that can be executed in a neutral manner without being controlled or manipulated by any single entity.
7. AI infrastructure construction
Sam pointed out that the current focus is to build infrastructure that attracts developers, including tools and frameworks to quickly build and deploy AI applications. By lowering the threshold for innovation, developers can more easily achieve the cycle from learning to development to production.
Teng Yan added that AI agents on the blockchain are an ecosystem that gradually develops from the underlying infrastructure to applications, and requires good development tools and basic platforms to support it.
8. On Market Behavior and Growth
Teng Yan mentioned that sentiment fluctuations in the crypto market often have nothing to do with technological progress, but many people regard price as an indicator of technological maturity, which is a misunderstanding.
Sam added that real technological development is gradual, and it is common for the market to overestimate short-term potential and underestimate long-term impact. He also observed that despite repeated market sentiment, technological capabilities are steadily increasing.
9. Future Vision for AI
Teng Yan and Sam agree that AI-driven blockchain applications will bring exponential growth.
Teng Yan is more optimistic, believing that this growth will be evident quickly in the coming months.
Sam believes that we will continue to feel the profound impact of this change in the next 10 to 20 years. From financial agents to AI autonomous governance, these technologies will gradually penetrate into more industries and applications.
10. Looking to 2025 and beyond
Teng Yan predicts that 2025 may become a critical node in the field of AI, as the technical infrastructure will be gradually improved in the coming months and large-scale developer participation will trigger a rapid expansion of applications.
Sam pointed out from a long-term perspective that the combination of AI and blockchain is a long and far-reaching process, and its impact may last for decades, but the emergence of the first users and use cases will significantly promote this process.
