Jake Steeves, Founder of Bittensor

Sami, Connor, and Mahesh are joined by Jake Steeves, Founder of Opentensor / Bittensor. Bittensor is a decentralized protocol for the aggregation and coordination of machine intelligence, which can be applied to many use cases such as AI training and decentralized storage and compute. 

Jake explains why open ownership models mark the death of the YC business model, his views on AI regulation, the most interesting use cases he’s seen for Bittensor machine intelligence so far, and why he thinks we’re entering a golden era of technological innovation and human progress.

00:00 The cold open that almost wasn’t

1:33 $TAO community as the NBA Youngboy fans of crypto 

7:15 The techno-optimists/effective accelerationists vs. the decels/regulators and how Bittensor strikes a balance

8:51 Bitcoin is apolitical

9:12 The meaning behind Jake’s screen name “Const_reborn”

10:25 Why the YC business model is dead

15:25 Should AI be regulated?

18:43 How the Bittensor community regulates itself

21:01 Bittensor’s vision and purpose, inspiration from Bitcoin

23:14 Bittensor subnets / use cases

25:32 Will regulation of centralized AI development be a boon for decentralized AI?

27:20 Can open-source AI compete with closed-source?

34:30 How Bittensor uses incentives and monetization to compete with closed-source AI

35:13 Bittensor Revolution upgrade and its subnet architecture 

40:40 Example Bittensor subnets 

44:30 Bittensor is a DePIN

49:07 What’s your most non-consensus take?

50:52 Outro

Disclaimer: The hosts and the firms they represent may hold stakes in the companies mentioned in this podcast. None of this is financial advice.