#Bittensor   $TAO

Below is a transcript of this new video produced by @TAOTemplar 

Bittensor TAO - AI or Market ?

Hey, this is Travis, the TAO Templar.

Most Bittensor subnets have an AI theme,
but some don't, which suggests
that it is a marketplace for commodities.

Let's answer the question:

Is Bittensor actually an AI crypto or is it
a market cryptocurrency?

I've wrestled with this question a lot and the
answer is wild. I want you to experience
the same epiphany I did. 

Let's look from a simplistic view at how AI works.
The simplest example I've found to
understand how an AI is improved
is by using a platformer game like Mario.

You tell the AI where your character is,
where the blocks are, where the enemies
are, give it some buttons to press, and
then you give it points based on how
far in the level it gets. At first, the
character doesn't make it very far
because the AI is just pushing random
buttons, it has no idea what they do.

Overtime, it learns that it's scored
better when it holds the move right
button because it gets closer to the end.
So it presses the move right button a
little bit more than randomly. Eventually
it learns that when an enemy is near, it
can increase its score by pressing the A
button to jump. It does this with other
obstacles, enemies, pits, etc. 

This works because of the scoring
mechanism. The scoring mechanism is a
measurement of how good the AI
is and when it has improved. 

There's a great video on YouTube called MarI/O that
shows this in more detail. Let's jump
over to markets. 

Markets are simply people exchanging their labor or products of their labor for money.
 
The amount of money you are paid for your work is
generally how valuable your labor is to
other people. 

For instance, specialist doctors are paid a lot of
money because they are valuable. They
save people's lives, and there aren't
very many of them. Put another way, a lot
of people want health care
specialists, and there's very few of
them. 

Therefore, they are paid more simply by demand. It's like the market is saying:

"Hey, you'd be more helpful to
humanity if you could become a
specialized doctor. Please do that."

Do you see any similarities between
markets and AI?

AI's are improved by rewarding
points to improvements.
Markets (that is, people selling their
labor), are improved by
awarding points for
improvements. We call these points money.

This blew my mind the first time it
occurred to me. So let me just say this
again. 

AIs work by the same mechanism as markets, by
awarding points for improvements.
 AIs are built through the
same mechanism as markets:
through incentives.

I'm just going to give you a few seconds
to let that soak in.
When you realize this, you start to see
some similarities. No one
knows how a complex language learning
model works. No one can truly
grasp the tangled mess of
neurons. 

In the same way that no one knows
why a market makes all of its decisions,
what everyone is doing, why they're doing
it, or how to assemble a pencil from
raw resources. 

If you truly knew everything there is to know a
market, you'd be a trillionaire. AIs and
markets are essentially the same thing,
but with different participants.

AIs are networks of neurons.
Markets are networks of people.
Now let's look at Bittensor.
Bittensor is the integration of markets
with AI. 

It incentivizes improvement to
itself. Miners are awarded
points, in this case $TAO, for
improving. 
Subnets are awarded
points for improving.

$TAO isn't just speculative value,
it's mined by doing valuable work. It
has inherent value. Some people say that
cryptocurrencies are all speculative
value because they don't create
anything valuable. 

I disagree with that,
but my point is that is not a valid
criticism of Bittensor. The work
done to generate $TAO
has to be valuable. 

If the work is not
valuable, the network doesn't award
$TAO. 

If markets are AI, doesn't that mean that Bittensor
is like a market of markets;
a market squared? 

Or maybe it's AI squared? No one has a
clue how big Bittensor will be, but I
believe everyone is underestimating it.
Thank you.
#Bittensor #TAO