On this page
The 60-second version
Standard Explanation
AI and cryptocurrency are the two dominant software trends of the decade, and they are colliding in both directions. AI is reshaping crypto's users and attackers — deepfake scams, trading bots, AI-assisted audits and exploits. Crypto is offering AI things it lacks — programmable payment rails that software agents can use without a human, a bank account, or a card. A useful map of this space comes from Vitalik Buterin, who sorted the intersections into four quadrants: AI as an actor in a market, AI as an interface for users, AI as the rules of a protocol, and AI as the objective a protocol builds. This unit walks the quadrants — with the same rule the Ethics unit set: what's real, what's contested, and what's hype.