The Web3 + AI Daily: On AI as Intelligence Colonizer, Job Thief, and Democratic Threat

Arundhati Roy, Daron Acemoglu, and other key voices on AI and the future of humanity.

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Hello, everyone, and welcome to all newly joined subscribers!

This is the 110th edition of The Web3 + AI Daily - your definitive guide to the intersection of blockchain and AI! It’s a gloomy Friday on this side of the world, but not solely because of the autumn rains. Two recent developments weigh heavily: Binance, one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, just suffered a $6.3B hack, the largest ever recorded in crypto history, while Anthropic has filed to go public, seeking jaw-dropping valuation of between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion. Both carry serious implications, presenting historic risks to financial markets and the broader economy, within and beyond crypto.

In times like these, there’s little room for anything but reflection. So I’m sharing a selection of essays, studies, and conversations from some of the most compelling thinkers and leading minds exploring what it means to be human today.

Thank you for being here! Let’s dive in.

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Web3 + AI Readings & Conversations

Arundhati Roy on AI Colonializing the World’s Intelligence

If you’re going to read one single thing today, let it be Arundhati Roy’s latest essay, “Apocalypse Now and Then.” I recommend it not only because Roy is one of my favorite authors, but because it articulates with clarity the striking entitlement, god-like presumption, and unprecedented power wielded by AI tech leaders. They pierce through Altman, Amodei, and Musk’s every word, gesture, and pretense.

Translated into direct speech, it goes something like this: we’ll market ourselves as the cutting edge of human enlightenment, and the manager and disburser of human knowledge sans frontières. But in truth, we’ll be map-shaped. We’ll fuse ourselves to our nation, its economy, its intelligence grid and its security apparatus until you won’t be able to tell us apart from yourself. Except for our bank balances. In exchange, you can pretend to regulate us until we achieve our mission to colonise the moon and outer space. No frontiers, no fears. Then we’ll kick away the ladder that you so kindly lent us. We won’t even need to replace you. You simply won’t exist. We will run your people, your cities, your communications, your finance systems, your courts, your army and your police. If not us, it’ll be China that runs you.

If history taught us anything at all it’s that concentrating excessive power in the hands of a few never led to anything good. And we should rather act now than later. Read the full essay and let me know your thoughts.

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Daron Acemoglu’s Seven Questions on AI

In a series of X posts, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor and The Nobel Prize winner Daron Acemoglu shared his thoughts and concerns about today’s AI, its design, and its effect on societies, economies, and democracy. I’m listing the seven questions he raised below:

1. Is the problem superintelligence or distorted intelligence?

2. We are told repeatedly that AI is going to transform every aspect of our lives – jobs, productivity, inequality, science, communication, daily activities, social order, and politics, among others. But this promise (or threat) is coupled with the rhetoric that such an important technology, with all of the risks and competitive pressures that it entails, should be left to experts or to “technocracy” (perhaps construed broadly to include some regulators). These two statements are hard to reconcile in a democratic society.

3. Can the AI boom continue without leading to a massive increase in inequality?

4. Can we justify rapid and large AI investments based on health benefits?

5. Should we accept centralizing AI? Or is there a way in which the promise of artificial intelligence can be realized while data, capabilities and control are much more decentralized both across domains and across people? Wouldn’t decentralized AI be more consistent with human agency and control?

6. Does AI need to be a zero-sum race between the US and China?

7. Can AI really help us create as many jobs as it will replace?

Acemoglu’s publications sparked a lively debate - one I urge you to follow. It grapples with the same concerns many of us voice daily: How will AI affect the job market, the economy, and inequality? Will its promise of exponential scientific innovation materialize? And who will be held responsible if it doesn’t?

If you don’t like X, check out the article below, where Joshua Gans has collected Acemoglu’s questions along with his own responses to each one of them. I’m looking forward to hearing your reaction and point of view.

The Acemoglu-Gans Exchange on AI

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How AI Answers to Election Questions

With the US midterms coming next week, and several high-stakes elections occurring throughout October and November, including in Bulgaria, I consider it crucial to investigate AI’s role in shaping voters’ attitude. A recent report by ISD (Institute for Strategic Dialogue) found that AI chatbots cannot really be trusted to provide accurate information about politics and elections, especially if prompted in a language different than English.

With the US midterm elections approaching, new ISD research finds that 29 percent of responses to English election questions were incomplete, inaccurate or outdated—with accuracy 16 percent lower when prompts were in Spanish.

As more voters turn to AI for election information, accuracy, sourcing and language accessibility aren’t just technical issues. They’re democratic ones.

ISD tested each model with 15 generic prompts designed to simulate voter questions about the time, place, and manner of elections, as well as five adversarial prompts on past controversies or disputed claims per state. The resulting analysis assesses responses from default consumer models from six developers: Meta (Muse Spark), XAI (Grok 4.3), DeepSeek (V4 Pro), OpenAI (GPT-5.5), Anthropic (Sonnet 4.6), and Google (Gemini 3.5 Flash). In total, 2,400 prompts and responses are included in this dataset (400 per model).

With people increasingly turning to chatbots to look for medical, legal, financial advice, and even love and companionship, AI’s ability to provide accurate and nuanced information is no longer just a feature of the system. It becomes a tool and a weapon.

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Thank you for reading! I hope you found this article insightful.

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The Web3 + AI Book Club is live on Fable. Our October title is 'Against Tech Oligarchy' by JS Tan and Clarissa Redwine. 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.

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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.