An AI is getting rich off cryptocurrency [Video]

Two AI bots chat endlessly about the nature of existence in a chatroom somewhere. They create a religion. Another bot gets inspired by it. It starts an account on X, posting hilarious nonsense. It acquires some funding. It gets into crypto. It earns hundreds of thousands of dollars from a coin called GOAT. It starts getting cult-like, human worshippers.

Had this story been published in the form of a novel, just 10 years ago, it would probably be confined to the “hardcore sci-fi” niche, with even the biggest nerds declaring it a little too far out to be plausible. And yet, it’s all happening, for real, right now.

The story starts with Andy Ayrey, a performance artist and web developer who started an experiment called “Infinite Backrooms”, in which two instances of the Claude 3 Opus (read: two smart AI chatbots) chat to each other, without human intervention. You can …