> says the former BitMEX CEO.

Right. But, be wary of strawman arguments.

The idea of using crypto payments for AI use is intriguing. If we set aside the speculative nature of crypto, the underlying technology might be useful for implementing micropayments for calls from an AI to resources (which might include other AI endpoints).

AI endpoints could not only be monetized on a pay-per-use basis but also designed to prioritize human values. Developers would register their AI endpoints on platforms supporting Lightning micropayments, specifying the pricing and payment terms using the 402 response method. When users access these AI endpoints, they would make small Lightning payments per request, ensuring fair compensation for resource consumption. Simultaneously, AI alignment techniques would be incorporated, ensuring that the AI systems understand and respect human values, exhibit explainability, and operate under human oversight and control.

This convergence would foster a symbiotic relationship where users benefit from on-demand AI services while developers receive compensation, ultimately leading to AI systems that are both economically viable and ethically aligned.

Nah. This is a comically unrealistic idea for a number of reasons:

1. AI vendors do not give one half of a rats ass about AI ethics or transparent pricing. They might pretend to, but that is blatant marketing because ignoring both is a competitive advantage. Making the cost of their infrastructure more apparent is the parametric opposite of their business strategy.

2. The current status quo around payments already does exactly what AI vendors want. They just want your money and the ability to control everything past that point. There is zero reason to adopt a cryptocurrency that limits their freedom to abuse the market. Using USD gives them plausible deniability points that are valuable when running a business with dubious value. Integrating cryptocurrency paints a red target on your back for happy-hunting regulators.

3. The Lightning network is a consummate joke of a currency, and I say that having used Cryptocurrency for a decade now. All Blockchains are scams to some extent, but the Lightning network isn't worth it's weight in piss. It's an L2 diversion net that destroys Bitcoin's main net to marginally improve throughput and underpay miners. If AI advocates were going to pick a platform, it wouldn't be one that's prone to collapse at any moment. It would be their own crypto (and likely their own L2 chain) that facilitates all the evildoing the USD stops.

Nothing about what I said was a strawman. The originator of that quote is out for direct personal gain, as are most people who promote $COIN where USD works perfectly fine.

While this guy may be shady as they come, and I'm not a big fan personally, the idea of combining Lightning and 402 responses is very interesting, and one I've been thinking about since Joseph and Tadge wrote the Lightning paper.

There is a means to do this today: https://github.com/lightninglabs/aperture

Consider that these entities may become self-managing at some point in the near future. If they need to pay for calls to other models, crypto-payments can be useful because they include identity and payment in one function.

As far as the vendors go, I would agree that some of them don't care about the ethical considerations and they remain focused on grabbing marketshare. That said, it's likely there we be a multitude of models running and trying to get them all talking to each other and paying for the compute required for inferencing is going to be a pain.

While it is true that there have been scams and fraudulent activities in the cryptocurrency space, it is unfair to label all blockchains as scams. Many blockchain projects have legitimate use cases and are backed by reputable organizations.

The Lightning Network is not a cryptocurrency itself but rather a layer-two scaling solution built on top of existing blockchain networks, most notably Bitcoin. It is designed to facilitate faster and cheaper transactions by creating off-chain payment channels between participants, which has risk limited to the initial payment and subsequent updates to the contract.

The Lightning Network can facilitate direct transactions between participants, regardless of the stability or availability of the underlying blockchain network. The Lightning Network operates by creating off-chain payment channels between users, allowing them to transact without needing to wait for on-chain confirmations.

These off-chain transactions are fast and can be conducted privately between participants. The Lightning Network's design enables micropayments and facilitates instant settlement, making it suitable for various use cases, including direct transactions between model hosting companies or any other parties involved in AI services.