Intelligent Blockchains
A new Forbes article finally put together one of the pieces to the puzzle. Blockchains in my opinion are about AI and in my opinion Proof of Work inherently promotes the development of AI. Total Proof of Work is defined by me as being a fully automated mining industry with zero human involvement required for securing the network. In my opinion Bitcoin is on the path to total Proof of Work based on Satoshi's design (perhaps it was intended?) which has block reward halvings until the year 2100. At some point 100% of all Bitcoins will be mined and what happens then?
The bitcoin inflation rate steadily trends downwards. At the time of writing, more than 3 out of every 4 bitcoins that will ever exist has already been mined, and the annual inflation rate is just 4%. The block reward given to miners is made up of newly-created bitcoins plus transaction fees. As inflation goes to zero miners will obtain an income only from transaction fees which will provide an incentive to keep mining to make transactions irreversible.
Well we have to consider that because the block reward continues halving the pressure economically is for increasing efficiency. After a certain point (long before 2100) the mining in my opinion will require efficiency beyond what any human run mining company can provide and at that point it will likely be fully automated botnets powered by AI. The fact is that AI will directly influence mining, as will distributed computation, and at some point there will be no reason for human beings to be involved in mining anymore.
For instance suppose an AI has the ability to simply buy computation from humans? This is assuming the AI is the most honest and benign form of AI which fairly decides to purchase resources from humans or from other AI. If this AI were to be less than benign then it can simply steal CPU cycles without any respect or regard for ownership rights. In either case human beings are going to be pushed out of the process in my opinion as the system administrator itself can be done by an intelligent agent.
Blockchain + AI are synergistic
This is what many people fail to realize. This synergism goes beyond the fact that Proof of Work encourages development of AI botnets (and AI in general) but goes much deeper. Blockchain and AI have a very deep synergism because you can theoretically set up automated businesses if you have the computation resources and the AI to direct proper use and management of those resources. The AI for instance could take the form of intelligent agents, and these intelligent agents theoretically could own Bitcoin wallets, and this is a deep dynamic synergism in itself because once you have intelligent agents which can own tokens then you can have intelligent agents which can use money.
In essence there will be bots which can use money and in essence pay for their own goals. These bots could be programmed to decentralize mining for example and that mission alone would result in the scenario I mentioned earlier. These bots could also be given goals to make money for certain humans functioning as completely autonomous AI corporations which simply pay dividends to the humans who anonymously or pseudo-anonymously or publicly hold the keys. Corporations could also hold the keys, or nation states cold hold the keys, for bots (intelligent agents) or swarms of them which will be able to collect money using the blockchain. This could mean that the IRS agent could literally be a bot (intelligent agent) which people pay.
Of course it goes even deeper when you speak of truly smart contracts. Smart contracts today are nothing more than simple scripts (buggy at that). Truly smart contracts will be legally aware because artificial intelligence will allow for real world to be followed by the bots, and for contract law to even potentially be recognized if nation states and courts decide to recognize smart contracts as real legal contracts. The funny thing is we aren't even 5 years away from seeing all of this happen which I explored.
Cryptocurrency mining and crypto token trading will be among the first industries to go completely automated
Now I will be one of the first to make a futurist prediction on this topic. I predict that two of the first industries to become fully automated will be cryptocurrency mining and crypto token trading. The demand for this to happen is building in the community as we speak as many people worry about human run mining cartels, centralization of mining, corruption, greed, etc and AI is a way to increase both decentralization and efficiency (cost reduction) at the same time. Crypto token trading is already in the process of going algorithmic with products like Enigma Catalyst and at some point I predict most crypto trading will be done by AI simply because humans aren't very good at making wise rational investments without being emotionally manipulated. AI will build crypto portfolios for investors based on what investors describe as their needs in a survey or profile and from there the AI will collect data using something like Enigma(or newer platforms) and begin it's mission of constructing a portfolio.