The cryptocurrency versus artificial intelligence (AI) dichotomy will shape the future of humanity Says Thiel
Leila Chin
The cryptocurrency versus artificial intelligence (AI) dichotomy will shape the future of humanity which, according to Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and venture capital billionaire, can present everyone with a choice between a Big Brother totalitarian government and a world of greater liberty.
“But I think…the crypto versus AI dichotomy goes to the sort of question about what’s the future of the computer age going to look like. And is it going to be more centralized or more decentralized,” Thiel said in a recent interview on The Rubin Report.
“…on Bitcoin, so if crypto is libertarian, AI is communist. Everyone thinks crypto is libertarian because you have all these ideas about decentralizing money and things like this. Nobody says AI is communist and that’s because we are sort of more conscious of people with different views like libertarian and we are less conscious of people with collectivist views because that’s more the zeitgeist,” Thiel explained.
“In history we’ve had these very different pictures [of the future]. In the late 60s, the early Star Trek episodes you had one planet they got to where there was one big computer that ran the whole planet for 8,000 years. And the people didn’t have any thoughts. They were all docile, kind of happy. Nothing ever happened and that was what the people thought the future would be in the late 60s. That was in the late 60s when we had centralized big computers. In the late 90s, it was going to be crypto, to be decentralized. The internet was going to split up all these sorts of structures,” he added.
Thiel pointed out that 68 was centralized while 98 was decentralized in 2018. In some instances, the pendulum has swung back to centralized. Huge governments and large databases which can monitor and survey people know more about a person than what that person knows about himself, adding this is somewhat creepy, big brother type thing.
“I think since the pendulum has swung back and forth so much over the last 50 years, there is no reason that that’s the future. And it’s actually a choice. Do we want it to be centralized? Do we want it to be decentralized? And what I think AI can mean many different things but if it means you have large databases that are controlled by large governments that can monitor people more effectively, it’s something that could make communism maybe more effective, certainly more scary, more totalitarian than it ever was in the 20th century. It’s not a coincidence along these lines that the Chinese communist party hates crypto and loves AI,” Thiel said.
Thiel, who is known for being long on Bitcoin, the world’s first digital currency, has discussed several other interesting subjects such as US President Donald Trump and his decision to leave the Silicon Valley. Specifically, he tackled his support for the world’s most powerful leader, investing in Facebook, generational economics, contrarian thinking, the problems plaguing Silicon Valley, sexuality, freedom of the press against the right to privacy (note: the Gawker Hulk Hogan sex tape saga), and seastanding, among others.
During that interview, he started with a refusal to smoke a joint on the air to avoid competing with his fellow Paypal co-founder Elon Musk. Initially, he thought about the idea for the firm as he was very keen on virtual currency and new forms of money for the internet age.
