I feel some discomfort in my stomach area when I hear CBDC and AI. I am following a bit the AGI discussions and the raising concerns within the AI community.
But with regard to stable coins and CBDC and all the political developments around (which Chris highlighted) this gets its own dimension.
I mean what if a rough AGI-AI figures out this could be one powerful tool that could be deployed for his “great escape”?
What if a rough AGI-AI concludes that by infiltrating into the stable coins and CBDC system he can take on us?
Within the critical AI community there is still the discussion going on how AI could break out of the box. We all think that AI will for the foreseeable time confined… to the box – means to the computer. That might be true – physically. But does he really needs to get out of the box to be free?
The risk factor is that a rough AGI-AI might plan his break-out by firstly building an army of “compromised humans” that act as an outreach of his power within the human society. This compromised humans then will be used (using divide and rule tactics) to build the foundation of his “great escape”.
And one tool for building this army of compromised humans I fear could be stable coins and CBDC!
We all fear that governments could use the “conditions attached” feature of the digital currencies to advance their agenda controlling us… but what if a rough AGI-AI learns this feature and concludes that he can do that much better for his agenda? What if he understands he can use the “controlling what we do” feature for “dividing us”?
What if he (the rough AGI-AI) creates his stable coin (of course with the help of some naïve humans (who personally benefitting enormously from it)?
He has certainly already figured out that humans have a few (useful for him) dark corners in their heart and one of them is called selfishness.
Maybe he smartly manages to promote himself to our government/politicians who in the meantime stuck in deep s#$@ of an out of proportion indebted and leveraged monetary & financial system?
So, what if he creates his stable coin which he totally controls – with conditions attached feature. People who work on his projects get paid in that stable coin. He is promoting perfectly that stable coin with all features of real money - like artificial scarcity.
Then when he builds his executive army, he simply weeds unreliable and disloyal members out by “managing the tokens” – meaning connecting the validity of the tokens/stable coins the AI pays to this human staff to their loyalty. Moreover – he could generate a system where the coins of disloyal members are getting cancelled and so the value is equally redistributed to all remaining loyal members - sending a strong signal to all remaining holders to stick to the goals and benefit from it. In this way the rough AI could (ab)use our traits and turn us against ourselves.
Just a few of all the thought that swirl through my mind… feel free to add on.