AIs, AGIs and Bots as a user base
Back in June 2019, a piece of research was published setting out how 75% of EOS Dapp transactions could be attributed to bots, rather than humans.
At the time it was presented as a case against blockchain networks, the argument being that if it’s bots making transactions then the transactions are not true transactions but even back then I was arguing that a transaction by a bot is just as valid and important as any other transaction.
Why would we be surprised by bots becoming a predominant user of an autonomous network? In the world of financial trading, it’s bots that perform most trades whether it’s currency trading or arbitrage. Away from financial markets we are seeing increasing levels of automation from smart home appliances to electric vehicles, to smart home management systems. Load an energy smart meter or smart home management system with cryptocurrency and have it pay for what it uses automatically. At the time I was working for a company called Atlas City and we were even looking at building a smart home router that integrated with smart devices across the home, managing a home wallet on behalf of those appliances. Need to pay for the milk delivery or energy bill? Have those devices send the payment request to the home router which handles the payments on behalf of the household.
Fast forward from 2019 to 2023 and the explosion in popularity of AI and AGI and I see these alongside bots becoming an important customer base for modern blockchain networks. And when we start to think of bots, AI/AGI as a distinct user class then it should shape the types of projects we build.
As an investor in projects, I now look specifically for projects targeting bots and new AI/AGI users since they already account for the largest customer base, a trend I see continuing. In 10 years’, time, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that humans accounted for as little as 1% of transactions on networks. Sure, the end beneficiary will often be a human or business, but the direct user will be an AI/AGI or bot. I would say the odds are that AIs will become a very important user group in the future. Why is this important?
When building a startup, it’s important to always think of the user of the startup’s product or service. Let’s say I’m building a new HR SaaS project in the cloud. The ultimate beneficiary is the business subscribing to my service but when modelling out user stories, I’ll be focused primarily on the HR staff, building a user interface and experience that is satisfying to those particular people, solving their specific problems.
Now if we consider AI/AGI and bots as customers then why wouldn’t I apply that same user modelling process to those digital users? Considering they account for the largest user base on the network, I would expect the most successful new products and services to be targeting them and presenting a business case with them as a customer.
An AI/AGI or bot won’t be looking for a traditional GUI, they’ll be looking for a simple, ideally standardised, connection and communication process. That might be a web service or a callable contract on a blockchain network.
The service should not only be easy and efficient for a digital user to use, but it should also solve real problems experienced by those digital users. Primitives that solve problems for digital users and are attractive to connect to by digital users should see rapid growth, larger transaction volumes and the best returns.
Let’s take a very simple example. I’ve identified that retailers are using AI/AGI systems to analyse their customers spending habits, identifying for each customer a personalised set of offers that will bring them to the store or get them shopping on their online store. These offers are often very time limited, let’s say it’s Friday evening and there’s an offer being made for drinks and BBQ snacks the following day. The missing piece I spot is that there’s no easy way for a store to package up those offers and deliver them to their customers quickly and in a way that they’ll notice. My solution is to build a service that those AI’s can connect to, use to pull back oracle data targeting retailers and events and after working out offers, my service mints special offer NFTs that are sent to customer wallets while alerting them through their wallets of these great new offers. My targeted users here are the customers and the AI/AGI system at retailers. But wait, I find that these homes are increasingly using home-automation to handle certain types of purchase so I now package these NFTs in a way that can be delivered to, read by and acted upon by home automation systems. I’m now dealing with AIs at both ends of the trade with a minority user base of humans. For now, I must cater for human shoppers, but I design my system and models to grow the automated user base.
The point I’m making is that as an investor strategy, I’m now including AI’s, AGI’s and bots as valuable customer bases for services and I’m looking for investments that cater for these user classes. Right now, it’s a valuable user class but over the next decade I see it becoming the primary user class. Humans will still be the end beneficiaries, but hyper convenience will get to the point that humans will be working or enjoying life while leaving more mundane actions such as paying bills and keeping the home and car running to their AI’s, AGI’s and bots.
