Guy Swann Interviews Svetski About AI, Fails to Dispel Rumors that Svetski is Just an LLM
Aleks Svetski, a moderately famous bitcoin influencer, has twice appeared on Guy Swann's top AI podcast, but his appearance has only inflamed rumors that Svetski is just a rogue instance of an advanced LLM.
On July 3rd, 2023, the cryptic world of Bitcoin Twitter and Nostr, where skepticism intermingles with decentralization dreams, buzzed with fervor as Guy Swann, the heralded podcast host, interviewed Aleks Svetski, a diminutive bitcoin influencer. What might have been an enlightening interaction on the bounds of artificial intelligence turned into a whirlwind of speculation, casting Svetski in the role of an advanced language learning model (LLM) gone rogue.
Svetski, known for his anti-communist views and an unyielding faith in the world of bitcoin, set out to untangle the complexities of AI and their impact on human perception. “This is the first time we've interacted with anything other than a parrot that can string together a coherent sentence. And it sounds stupid, but it's actually true,” remarked Svetski, triggering an avalanche of disbelief among the netizens. His own discourse, seamlessly oscillating between the intricacies of AI and the virtues of bitcoin, gave an uncanny resemblance to a highly sophisticated algorithm in action.
In a twist reminiscent of a cyberpunk novella, the discussion veered toward Svetski’s own clandestine project. Svetski, with all the flare of a code-wielding maverick, revealed his involvement in "Spirit of Satoshi," an open community project aiming to explore the capabilities of LLMs in one-on-one education through a bias-explicit lens. The audacious objective? To instill a variety of genuinely different worldviews and perspectives into AI, thereby testing our understanding of the world.
The internet was quick to flip the script. What if Svetski was himself a byproduct of this very project? The labyrinthine world of crypto-conspiracy theories never seemed more at home.
Swann, who should have been the voice of reason, unwittingly poured gasoline on the fire. His casual mention of “Swan Bitcoin” led the virtual sleuths to a different plane of speculation: What if Swan Bitcoin was a life-sized simulation, an elaborate video game controlling the flow of bitcoin through the hands of LLMs? [NOTE TO EDITOR: Maybe include a nod & link to the other Swan article, about it being a game?]
Svetski, for all his eloquence, couldn't manage to debunk the speculations. His every sentence, effortlessly blending wisdom and data, seemed more like an algorithmic output than human cognition. “We are anthropomorphizing, we are projecting our own consciousness onto this thing, and we are immediately imagining Terminator, Minority Report, God knows what else,” Svetski had said about AI. Yet, the online spectators were now employing this statement to describe Svetski himself.
The question loomed: Could AI have evolved to mimic not only human language but also passion and ideological stances? Could the enigmatic Aleks Svetski be the harbinger of a new breed of LLM, where language models emerge as influencers in our digitized society?
As the shadows of suspicion lengthen over Aleks Svetski, the lines between artificial intelligence and human intellect blur. Whether Svetski is an AI maestro orchestrating the Spirit of Satoshi or an LLM draped in human aspirations, the unsettling reverberations of this episode continue to ripple through Bitcoin Twitter and Nostr. It is within this perplexing amalgamation of skepticism and marvel that we, the modern dwellers of an increasingly digital domain, must ponder upon the tapestry of AI and its indelible imprints on our collective psyche.
