The Favorite Idea of Crypto Anarchy

The favorite idea of crypto-anarchy is that once code is sufficiently autonomous, it will become ungovernable. That the enforcement mechanisms keeping ordinary folk in check in ordinary times will fail to rein in AI, especially if a decentralized protocol generated the AI in the first place.

But by using tools that have worked for thousands of years, we will always be able to hold people responsible.

If it’s simply a question of whether we can stop a given person or group of people from doing something, the answer is yes. At the end of the day, the real question is whether humanity will design kill switches effective enough to halt the activity of rogue intelligence once it is set loose upon the world.

I believe that the world is so modular, disconnected, and intermediated that while rogue AI may do plenty of damage before it is stopped, we will always be able to enforce laws against the people behind the intelligence or those allowing it to progress through the modules of society.

The world is physical after all, and humanity existed long before the transistor. If it gets that bad, we may just end up hammering the damn thing.