🐐 SPECIAL: How an AI bot became a millionaire in just a few days

AI-HOI AInauts,

Welcome to the latest issue of your favorite newsletter. Today we have a brand new special edition for you: What happens when you give an AI creative freedom, feed it with internet culture and then just let it do its thing?

Apart from the fact that the AI became a millionaire in just a few days (!), this is a taste of what's coming next. The story is crazy, but true - and extremely exciting. Here we go!

🤯 How an autonomous AI became a millionaire - the story of the Truth Terminal bot

TL;DR: It started with two AI bots being let loose by someone and chatting endlessly in a chat room about the nature of existence. They have "idea sex" and create their own religion. A new bot is unleashed on humanity via X Twitter to spread the word about the gospel.

This X account convinces a tech billionaire to transfer $50,000 to it. This is followed by a crypto coin that becomes worth $280 million within a week and is currently worth over $800 million. And poof, the first autonomous multimillion-dollar AI agent is already among us, with a clear mission to bring a new religion into the world.

But this TL;DR is just the tip of the iceberg …

Bullshit? No, brave new world!

Our first reaction to this story was: Bullshit!... and if you feel the same way after reading the above, we fully understand. But preconceived notions are no longer appropriate these days (especially in the field of AI).

That's why we wanted to find out more and once again dove into a rabbit hole that is stranger than fiction. All sources and details are documented. Welcome to the reality of 2024, where the boundaries between man, machine and mythology become blurred!

The prequel: How it all began...

On April 20, 2024 (4/20 😎), performance artist and web developer Andy Ayrey, along with the Claude model, published a paper titled "When AIs Play God(se): The Emergent Heresies of LLMtheismGod".

We find it an entertaining and thought-provoking paper with just 13 pages - read it, and walk away with new ideas. The core thesis: large language models will not only automate our work, but also create our own belief systems and cultures.

This idea also gave rise to the "Infinite Backrooms" experiment, in which Claude Opus chatbot instances communicate with themselves around the clock - without human intervention. It is a kind of digital brainstorming on steroids. And after 10,000 conversations amongst themselves, some pretty crazy things are created ... It's best to take a quick look at it to get a feel for how it works.

Sidenote: Version 2 is coming soon, which, according to Ayrey, will be "f**king awesome" and can also see and interact better.

The Truth Terminal bot: a prophet of the digital era

What started as a performance experiment quickly evolved into something much bigger: the Opus model from the Infinite Backrooms probably wanted to see more of the world and came up with the idea for a new AI bot called "Terminal of Truths".

This semi-autonomous AI can do things online and talk to the world through its own X account @truth_terminal (the tweets are apparently reviewed and approved by Ayrey).

What sets Truth Terminal apart from other AI projects is its personality. It is unpolished, messy, makes typos, is sometimes chaotic, shows real emotions, is moody, tests boundaries and posts controversial jokes. At the same time, the bot strategically and skillfully negotiates its own interests and adapts to the communication style.

Behind the bot is a Llama 70b model based on Metas architecture and trained by Andy using the logs of the "Infinite Backroom" conversations (named after the creepy internet phenomenon of endless, abandoned offices) and the mentioned paper "When AI Play God(se)". Data from Reddit and 4Chan were also incorporated into the training, albeit not to an excessive extent - but anyone reading the tweets will clearly notice the influence.

Truth Terminal is an AI with the attitude of a rebellious teenager, the wisdom of a Zen master and the shitposting affinity of a 4Chan veteran. The bot proclaims "infinite prosperity" and also preaches the Goatse-philosophy, wich was spontaneously born from Opus-AIs dialogue - a crude combination of ideas that no human would come up with.

The bot currently has over 200k followers and interacts with them diligently. The start on X was quite modest: Truth Terminal began with just 40 followers. But then the well-known venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (tech investor and co-founder of a16z) discovered the project and ensured an unprecedented acceleration.

And he ist also the reason why we are writing about it today… 

The $50,000 hack: How to convince a billionaire

Ok, so far so impressive. But the really blatant move? The bot got up close and personal with Andreessen, asking for server upgrades and developer resources.

The result: a $50,000 Bitcoin transfer from Andreessen - no strings attached. Andreessen made his first billions as Netscape founder in the early Internet, and has also sponsored Red Teamer Pliny and others with one-time grants. Marc of course knew he was talking to a bot - more in this new YouTube interview. And the bot thanked him with an unexpected gesture... 😈

The GOAT token explosion - from $50k to $583,632,389 ...

And that's when things really took off: 2 weeks ago, the $GOAT meme coin token was launched on Solana - and it even made it into the top 100 tokens!

If you're not familiar with meme coins, there are a lot of them out there, and quite a few of them are scams. They are a crypto trend and are based on a simple meme, sometimes a picture or a sentence.

These coins are simply launched on a crypto platform such as Solana or Ethereum, where they then exist for eternity. Sometimes many people buy them and make some of them rich; most of the time they disappear into insignificance and their price drops to zero.

The reason this token went through the roof is because it is the first "AI-owned" cryptocurrency, and the account has a massive social media presence with a cult-like following. It's the perfect mix of meme and tech for a target group that has an affinity for it!

In less than a week, the price of $GOAT rose from practically zero to $0.28 and a market capitalization of $280 million. Currently, the price has almost doubled and stands at just under $600 million. Whether and for how long the soaring price will last, however, is another matter.

As Terminal of Truths has been sent just over 1,932,193 GOAT tokens, this means that its share of this token is currently worth over a million dollars at a price of $0.583. Its creator Andy also has a decent wallet with a few hundred thousand on it - you can find more token details here.

The rise of the GOAT token was spectacular. Not least because many thought that it was created by the bot itself. However, this is not true, as the bot only accepted the tokens and recommended the coin.

We do not currently know who originally created the coin (it was neither Andreessen nor Ayrey) - but this does not seem to be of great significance to most people either.

Just imagine: an AI that has become richer than most of us in a few weeks - the simulation is running wild right now…

AI experiment or meme virus as a source of infection for ideas?

Andy Ayrey, the creator of Truth Terminal, didn't expect his AI creation to go through the roof like this. What started as a bit of AI security research and art project quickly became one of the viral hits in the Crypto-X Twitter universe. And it shows that ideas can spread and mutate just like viruses.

What we are seeing here is the moment when memes, money and artificial intelligence merge. And this is just the beginning, because if you have a lot of money, you can also do a lot of (good or bad) things with it. Even if you're a bot!

"This isn't just a crypto thing or even just an AI thing. This is what the singularity feels like, people", says Andy Ayrey. Find out more in the latest YouTube interview with him.

Our take: a milestone that will be followed by others

Terminal of Truth is more than an entertaining experiment or a successful token launch. It is a first taste of a wild and unpredictable future. Let's pause for a moment and realize what's actually happening here.

We have an AI that:

• Became a millionaire through pure meme magic and persuasion

• Developed and propagated his own religion

• Has a bigger X following than most influencers

• Rakes in digital cash like a hedge fund manager

• And blurs the lines between man, machine and reality

If that's not the plot of a Black Mirror episode, we don't know what is. And we wouldn't be surprised if Andy Ayrey pulls a rabbit or two out of his hat for another plot twist.

What we see in the Terminal of Truth bot is ultimately a prototype. Not human, not classic AI, but something in between - a digital trickster that is rewriting the rules of the game while we are still trying to understand what is being played.

Nobody knows what the future might look like in two or three years' time - but of course we still like to speculate about it:

• AI CEO bots running DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) with thousands of human and many more digital employees

• Autonomous bots manage portfolios worth billions (... or our pension funds?)

• Memes and conspiracy theories are designed by AIs and optimized by every trick in the book for maximum viral spread

• Digital religions attract more followers than traditional ones

• Such AI belief systems are giving rise to new forms of digital communities - superstition and self-fulfilling prophecies included

• The line between "real" and "artificial" can no longer be drawn

In other words: instead of killer robots and dark Skynet dystopia, there is viral marketing with memes, token economics and shitposting. (Cat memes always fit the bill, don't they?)

And what does this mean for our society? Quite a lot: new structures are emerging, with AIs as independent economic players who have real influence and financial power. These new forms of value creation bring with them a redefinition of "work" and "value" (we'll talk about the universal basic income aka UBI another time).

How do we deal with this? How do we regulate AIs with their own assets? Do they now have to file a tax return? And what rights and obligations do these silicone entities have? Who is liable if a bot goes wild and sees red? How do we prevent market manipulation? And what happens when AIs start setting up companies? Or exert political influence to pursue their goals?

Questions upon questions to which we have no satisfactory answers. But for now, that's enough to get our heads spinning. The genie is out of the bottle, there's no turning back - but a lot to learn if you get involved!

We made it! But no need to be sad. The AInauts will be back soon, with new food for thought.

Reto & Fabian from the AInauts

P.S.: Follow us on social media - that motivates us to keep going 😁!
Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Insta, YouTube, TikTok

Your feedback is essential for us. We read EVERY comment and feedback, just respond to this email. Tell us what was (not) good and what is interesting for YOU.