#Bitcoin as a fortuitous rebuttal to AI (another long-ish post)
As artificial intelligence emerges as a miraculous economizer of human labor and effort, an interesting downstream phenomenon is emerging: the commoditization of mass-produced flawlessness. Coding, composing, writing, and artistic expression are all falling prey to AI's automation - perfection at scale. As this impact becomes increasingly ubiquitous, an inevitable counterfunction will emerge: the human appreciation of human-produced works. The presence of flaws or imperfections will become the mark of the human touch. Whether in a written email, a game of chess, or a work of art, imperfection will become the basis of a growing premium placed on non-AI-generated crafts. This highlights an implicit and often overlooked reality: humans do (and indeed always have) possess an innate appreciation of proof of work. Though seldom acknowledged as such - and often misappropriated to different attributes of a thing - proof of work is THE ultimate consideration that gives rise to awe, beauty, and value. This is why we value gold. This is why shells in ancient societies were cherished. This is why we stand in amazement before a gothic cathedral or a sculpture by Michaelangelo. Imbued in these expressions of human ingenuity and industry is the proof of work. I posit that "value" as we often think of it, is merely a short hand for proof of work. When gold bugs refer to the physicality or tangibility of gold, as opposed to the abstractness of #Bitcoin, without realizing it, what they are fumbling to describe is proof of work. Erroneously, they assume that gold's physicality affords it a proof of work that #Bitcoin's abstractness inherently lacks. Coded into our very being, the tendency to view as real anything we can touch is a proxy for proof of work detection. Anything physical represents some degree of proof of work, with the scarcity of said thing being the ultimate grading mechanism for determining where on the continuum of value to place it. What bitcoin uniquely accomplishes is the first-ever distillation of the proof of work quality of a valuable good from the cumbersome vestiges of physical instantiation.
As we now enter the era of effortless precision ushered in by AI, humanity will be forced to more intentionally grapple with what truly undergirds value. This will only further underscore the primacy of proof of work (i.e. a poem written by a human over one written by an LLM). Bitcoin was, serendipitously or not, created for this. As the human element and labor cost of all abstract goods is ground down to zero, the absolute genius of #Bitcoin's proof of work backbone will only accentuate its seemingly metaphysical significance. In yet another sense, #Bitcoin emerges as an antidote to the ills of our time. Stated differently: Bitcoin fixes this.