The Web3 + AI Daily: On Agentic Payments Alliance, and the Future of AI
Visa, Mastercard, Rain, Solana, and more launch Agentic Payments Alliance.
Hello, everyone, and welcome to all newly joined subscribers!
This is the 83rd edition of The Web3 + AI Daily - your definitive guide to the intersection of blockchain and AI. Today, I'm covering payment, stablecoin, and AI firms launching the Agentic Payments Alliance, along with a fascinating conversation about the future of AI with Dr. Fei-Fei Li.
Thank you for being here! Let’s dive in.
What’s Hot in Web3 + AI?
Rain Spearheads Agentic Payments Alliance
Stablecoin card issuer Rain, together with 25 other founding members across payments, stablecoins, and AI, just launched the Agentic Payments Alliance to drive the future of agentic-driven commerce.
By 2030, McKinsey & Company projects between $3 trillion and $5 trillion in global agentic commerce. Much of the infrastructure that activity will depend on, including how agents get authorized, how fraud gets caught, and how loyalty and rewards travel with an agent, is still being defined. The APA was formed to bring the people building that infrastructure into the same conversation, before those decisions get made in isolation.
The APA founding coalition includes both TradFi and crypto companies like Avalanche, Basis Theory, Chainalysis, Circle, Coinflow, Crossmint, Evertec, Fireblocks, Fiserv, Lithic, Mastercard, Monad, PayOS, Remitly, Rialo, Sardine, Shift4, Solana, Turnkey, Uniswap, Visa, and others.
Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations
Dr. Fei-Fei Li on What the Future of AI Should Look Like
I’m eager to share this conversation of Andrew Huberman with Dr. Fei-Fei Li, because I believe everyone should listen to it. Dr. Fei-Fei Li is arguably one of the few voices of reason amid the AI cacophony we’re living through. She discusses the complexities surrounding AI with remarkable calm and balance, without letting even a hint of either doomerism nor boosterism creep in. At the same time, she remains deeply optimistic about the technology’s potential to improve and advance our lives.
Throughout the entire discussion, Dr. Fei-Fei Li kept reiterating that AI won’t replace humans and shouldn’t be a threat to the workforce. On the contrary, she firmly believes that AI should be employed to help and enhance human capabilities and creativity.
Yet she doesn’t shy away from pointing out the problems, either. She pushes back against the anthropomorphizing of AI in public discourse and criticizes AI industry leaders for attempting to dictate how the world should navigate this novel technology. She acknowledges that regulation is necessary, but argues that it should be developed through a multistakeholder process, informed by scientists, industry, policymakers, and other relevant authorities.
I’ll leave you with just a few quotes, but I urge you to listen to the full recording linked below.
Do machines feel? Let’s make that very clear. We tend to imagine that they do, but they don’t. They don’t have that data, they don’t have that mathematical function. [...] A lot of what drives and triggers humans doesn’t exist in today’s machines. We operate fundamentally differently from today’s AI. We have to recognize that, and this is why public communication is so important. We cannot confuse the public about this.
AI has to comply with the same regulatory and ethics rules as the other sciences. We need to have education. Computer scientists are not educated in ethics and societal studies. They’re starting to, that’s why universities like Stanford University are feverishly putting those in their curriculum.
But we [AI scientists] should work with governments, and different kind of governments. The society has different kinds of norms and traditions, and heritage, where the regulatory measures should apply. What I would not want to see is one person or a few people coming from the industry telling everybody what to do. I think that would be dangerous, because market forces are different from societal norms, and culture, and heritage. These are multistakeholder problems that we need to solve together.
I’m curious to hear your thoughts - make sure to share them in comments.
Thank you for reading! I hope you found this article insightful.
If you’d like to keep up with the latest developments at the burgeoning intersection of blockchain and AI, I invite you to subscribe.
And if you find value in my writing, consider supporting the newsletter. I’d greatly appreciate it.
The Web3 + AI Book Club is live on Fable. We’re currently reading Karen Hao’s ‘Empire of AI.’ Follow the link below and come join our literary community.
I'm looking forward to connecting with fellow Crypto x AI enthusiasts, so don't hesitate to share your thoughts here or reach out on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Firefly.social.
Disclaimer: The content of this newsletter is provided for informational and educational purposes only. Nothing contained herein should be construed as financial advice or as a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any of the companies or assets mentioned.
Please don’t take my views at face value. Instead, do your own research (DYOR), think critically, and share your perspective so we can challenge ideas, learn from one another, and arrive at better conclusions through thoughtful discussion.