Podcast
Crazy Wisdom
Hosted by Stewart Alsop · EN
In his series "Crazy Wisdom," Stewart Alsop explores cutting-edge topics, particularly in the realm of technology, such as Urbit and artificial intelligence. Alsop embarks on a quest for meaning, engaging with others to expand his own understanding of reality and that of his audience. The topics covered in "Crazy Wisdom" are diverse, ranging from emerging technologies to spirituality, philosophy, and general life experiences. Alsop's unique approach aims to make connections between seemingly unrelated subjects, tying together ideas in unconventional ways.
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Episodes
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Episode #540: Own the Software or Go Amish
Mar 3000:57:25Tap to summarizeStewart Alsop sits down with Karol, a 3D generalist and digital artist with 25 years of experience, to talk about the evolving landscape of 3D art — from sculpting in ZBrush to the deep technical rabbit hole of Houdini, and how AI tools like Claude are quietly reshaping creative workflows. The conversation wanders into bigger territory: the singularity, accelerationism, the philosophical roots of Silicon Valley's techno-anxiety (including the Roko's Basilisk thought experiment and the writings of Nick Land), the slow unraveling of Hollywood's cultural monopoly, and what decentralized creative tools mean for independent artists. Stewart also points Karol toward the work of Fei-Fei Li and World Labs as a window into where 3D world modeling is heading next.Timestamps00:00 — Karol's 25-year journey from Photoshop and 2D art into Cinema 4D and the world of 3D.05:00 — Why Houdini blew the ceiling off every other 3D program, and how node-based coding changed Karol's creative process entirely.10:00 — The tension between visual thinking and technical thinking, and how constant digital stimuli has degraded Karol's internal imagination.15:00 — Stewart reflects on Claude Code and how AI is about to dissolve the technical barriers in Houdini the same way it did for programming.20:00 — The Sphere in Las Vegas, projection mapping, drone polo, and Stewart's vision for intimate tech-integrated experiences.25:00 — Roko's Basilisk, fear-driven accelerationism, and why Latin America never caught the Silicon Valley doomsday bug.30:00 — Hollywood's cultural machine, shared Western boogeymen, and how decentralized 3D art is replacing the $100M production monopoly.35:00 — Karol's eclectic client roster: Utah Jazz, Apple, League of Legends, and a Buddhist temple in Los Angeles.40:00 — Gaussian splatting, photogrammetry, point clouds, and where world models are taking 3D next.45:00 — The freelance vs. studio dilemma, brutal VFX industry crunch culture, and Stewart's plan to own his entire podcast stack.50:00 — Poland's economic rise, the hollowing out of the Netherlands, and capitalism as an endless infection with no clear cure.Key InsightsHoudini as creative rebirth. After nearly burning out on conventional 3D software, Karol discovered that Houdini's node-based, code-driven architecture gave him something the other tools never could — a blank canvas with no ceiling. Rather than navigating a boat someone else built, he now builds the boat from scratch every time, which keeps the work perpetually challenging and alive.Visual thinking is under attack. Karol noticed his once-vivid internal imagination quietly degrading over the years, and traces it directly to the overwhelming volume of digital stimuli in modern life. His response has been aggressive minimalism — stripping back inputs, physical and digital, to try to recover the creative mental space he once had naturally.AI as a technical collaborator, not a replacement. Karol uses Claude daily, not to generate imagery, but to work through coding problems inside Houdini. He's clear that image generation is his job — what AI earns its place doing is explaining unfamiliar code and helping him push past technical blockers faster.The freelance paradox. Twenty-five years of independence has meant total creative freedom alongside real financial instability — months of silence followed by weeks of 16-hour days. Karol has never resolved this tension, but holds onto the freedom anyway, and sees it as increasingly important as surveillance and corporate control tighten.Roko's Basilisk explains Silicon Valley. Both Stewart and Karol land on the idea that the feverish, fear-driven energy behind tech accelerationism may trace back to this single thought experiment — the notion that if you don't help build the AI, it will punish you retroactively. Latin America, blissfully unaware of it, seems measurably calmer.Decentralization is ending Hollywood's monopoly. The same forces making software cheaper and AI more powerful are quietly dismantling the $100M barrier to cultural creation. Karol's career — spanning album covers, Apple, the Utah Jazz, and a Buddhist temple — is a living proof of concept for what independent 3D generalism can look like outside the studio machine.Owning your tools is a political act. Whether it's Karol resisting the pigeonhole of VFX studios or Stewart rebuilding his podcast infrastructure from scratch, both see the ability to own and control your own software and hardware as essential preparation for whatever comes next.
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Episode #539: Zero Trust Everything: Rebuilding the Internet's Money Layer
Mar 2301:08:18Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop sits down with David Lachmish, co-founder of Ika, to explore the cutting-edge world of decentralized cryptography and its real-world applications. They cover the foundational problem of zero-trust custody and interoperability in crypto, breaking down why most people end up relying on centralized custodians despite crypto's original promise of removing third-party trust, and how Ika's novel 2PC-MPC cryptographic protocol addresses this with decentralized wallets (d-wallets) that require both the user and the Ika network to generate a signature. The conversation also touches on AI agents and the critical need for access control guardrails when agents handle real financial transactions, the philosophical parallels between crypto's growing pains and the early internet, decentralized governance and its potential to reshape how societies make decisions, and a surprising look at how decentralized certificate authorities could dramatically improve everyday internet security. David also gives a first public mention of an upcoming privacy-focused project called Encrypt.Links mentioned:- Ika website: https://ika.xyz- Ika on X: https://x.com/iкаdotxyz- David Lachmish on X: https://x.com/d3h3d_- Encrypt (upcoming project): https://encrypt.xyzTimestamps00:00 - David Lachmish introduces Ika and DWallet Labs, explaining their cybersecurity and cryptography background led them to solve zero trust custody and interoperability.05:00 - The d wallet concept is revealed as a decentralized signing mechanism controlled jointly by user and network, requiring new cryptography breakthroughs.10:00 - Crypto's philosophical parallels to early Internet are drawn, framing scams and misuse as inevitable growing pains of transformative infrastructure.15:00 - Wallet abstraction and agent constraints are explored, comparing future seamless crypto interaction to modern WiFi versus early modem connections.20:00 - Public key cryptography's binary ownership problem is explained, leading into MPC secret shares and Fireblocks' centralized access control tradeoffs.25:00 - 2PC MPC protocol is introduced as Ika's breakthrough, enabling decentralized policy enforcement without trusting any single entity.30:00 - Decentralized governance via token staking and code as law is discussed, contrasting corporate representative governance with crypto's direct decision-making.35:00 - Futarchy prediction markets and decision trees are connected to knowledge graphs, tracing humanity's accelerating governance transition.40:00 - Automation's historical parallels are examined, arguing AI's displacement of lawyers and developers mirrors every prior technological revolution.45:00 - Bitcoin and Ethereum's uncertain futures are assessed alongside Ika's positioning in custody and interoperability infrastructure.50:00 - Zero trust interoperability is explained, revealing how bridges create dangerous honeypots that Ika eliminates through native cryptographic control.55:00 - MetaMask's limitations for agents are detailed, contrasting stored private keys against Ika's policy-enforced guardrails for agentic transactions.60:00 - HumanTech's Wallet as a Protocol is presented as a practical way to give agents spending policies while maintaining user cryptographic control.65:00 - Decentralized certificate authorities emerge as Ika's broader cybersecurity vision, eliminating single points of failure across the entire Internet.Key Insights1. Zero Trust Custody and Interoperability: David and his cofounders at DWallet Labs identified that most cryptocurrency is held by centralized custodians, which contradicts crypto's core purpose of removing third-party trust. They set out to create "zero trust custody and zero trust interoperability" — systems where users maintain cryptographic control without sacrificing usability or relying on any single entity.2. The D-Wallet Primitive: Ika is built around a new cryptographic concept called a "d-wallet" — a decentralized wallet controlled jointly by the user and a decentralized network. A signature cannot be generated without the user's participation, meaning even if all network operators are compromised, they cannot act unilaterally. This required inventing new cryptography called 2PC-MPC.3. Access Control as the Missing Layer: Traditional crypto wallets operate on binary ownership — you either have full control or none. The d-wallet model introduces programmable access control policies enforced by a decentralized network, enabling features like spending limits and whitelisted addresses without trusting a centralized company like Fireblocks.4. Bridges Are Crypto's Biggest Security Vulnerability: Interoperability across blockchains typically requires trusting a bridge, which creates a honeypot for hackers. Ika eliminates this by allowing users to natively control assets on multiple chains simultaneously, maintaining cryptographic guarantees without a trusted intermediary.5. AI Agents Need Cryptographic Guardrails: Giving AI agents control over crypto wallets like MetaMask is dangerous due to hallucination and prompt injection risks. Ika enables agents to operate within strict, code-enforced policies — they can transact autonomously but cannot exceed boundaries set by the user, combining automation with genuine security.6. Decentralized Governance as a Structural Advantage: Ika operates as a permissionless network where two-thirds of token-staking operators control the protocol's direction. Even the founding team cannot unilaterally change the network, making governance transparent and resistant to capture — a meaningful contrast to closed, corporate-controlled systems.7. Decentralized Certificate Authorities as a Future Application: Beyond crypto, David envisions d-wallets solving broader cybersecurity problems. Today's internet relies on a handful of certificate authorities whose compromise would break global web security. A decentralized certificate authority built on Ika's infrastructure would require attacking hundreds of operators simultaneously, representing a fundamental upgrade to how trust is managed across the internet.
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Episode #538: Outside the Three Institutions: Network States as the Last Honest Bet
Mar 1600:54:36Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop sits down with Vahram Ayvazyan, founder of the Armenian Network State, for a wide-ranging conversation touching on AI and the future of work, the cyclical nature of human conflict throughout history, the decay of the nation-state, the concept of a "fourth establishment" of free people operating outside traditional power structures, the role of greed and self-aggrandizement in politics and tech, and how network states could serve as a parallel structure to challenge entrenched global elites. You can find Vahram on LinkedIn, or check the Armenian Network State page at networkstate.io.Timestamps00:00 The Future of AI and Humanity05:57 Human Nature and Greed12:00 The Crisis of Nation-States17:53 Community Resilience and Abundance23:30 The Power of Storytelling in Change29:43 Cultural Connections: Armenia and Africa35:43 Western Dominance and Its Consequences42:17 Creativity in the Age of AI48:07 Creating Parallel StructuresKey Insights1. Humans advance technologically but remain socially and biologically stagnant. Vahram argues that despite extraordinary technological leaps, human nature remains driven by greed and self-aggrandizement. Conflicts today mirror those of thousands of years ago, with only the actors changing while the underlying structure of power struggles stays the same.2. Power corrupts by disconnecting leaders from reality. Using a personal account of a deputy head of state, the guest illustrates how those who gain significant power gradually lose touch with reality, fall into cycles of wanting more, and become trapped in ego-driven decision-making regardless of their original intentions.3. The nation-state is in decay and failing its citizens. Globalization, internet, and migration have eroded the nation-state's ability to deliver basic services. Events like the Valencia flooding exposed how even wealthy European governments mismanage resources despite collecting enormous tax revenues.4. Three institutions currently rule the world, with a fourth emerging. Nation-states, multinational corporations, and religious institutions form today's power structure. The guest envisions a "fourth establishment" — network states — composed of free-thinking individuals connecting across geographies to build parallel, dignity-based communities outside these failing systems.5. Intentions matter more than the tools themselves. Whether discussing AI, nuclear energy, or mathematics, the guest emphasizes that technology is neutral and that what defines civilization is the moral intention behind its use, not the sophistication of the tools developed.6. Western civilization's dominance was built on superior weapons, not superior values. The guest challenges Western narratives by suggesting its historical advantage came primarily from military technology rather than cultural or moral superiority, contrasting this with indigenous and Eastern philosophies that treat land, community, and human relationships as sacred rather than as capital.7. Evolutionary, not revolutionary, change is the path forward. The guest warns that revolutionary movements are easily infiltrated, diverted, or crushed by existing power structures. Meaningful change requires patiently building critical mass through parallel structures, storytelling, and emotional connection until the alternative becomes undeniably powerful.
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Episode #537: Free From the Grid, Connected to the World
Mar 1300:48:47Tap to summarizeIn this episode, Stewart Alsop III sits down with Tom Faye — experimenter, author of The 90 Day Client Acquisition Code, and founder of Carbon Credits Marketplace — to talk about solar energy, off-grid living, and the solarpunk vision of a technology-powered utopia. They cover everything from perovskite solar cells and portable container-based solar systems, to carbon credits, ESG investing, and blockchain verification of clean energy output. The conversation also winds through AI training data, business automation, and the data labeling industry before circling back to some bigger questions about human nature, geopolitics, and what genuine self-reliance looks like in 2025. You can find Tom and his work at Carbon Credits Marketplace on LinkedIn and his energy consumption data visualization is also shared there. His book The 90 Day Client Acquisition Code is available for those looking to explore business automation further.Timestamps00:00 Introduction to Tom Fay and his work01:03 Understanding Solar Punk: Utopian Tech and Culture02:15 Current State of Solar Technology and Storage03:45 Living Off-Grid: Solar, Batteries, and Remote Work06:11 Solar Energy in Africa: Challenges and Opportunities12:21 Powering Communities with Mobile Solar Solutions16:50 The Vision of Solar Punk: Self-Sufficient Communities22:54 Existing Examples: Great Barrier Island and Others26:06 Overfishing, Environmental Challenges, and Technological Solutions28:34 Using Technology to Address Second-Order Environmental Problems36:35 Data, AI, and the Future of Energy Management43:13 Carbon Credits, Blockchain, and ESG Reporting45:27 The Geopolitics of Green Energy and Resource Control46:53 How to Connect with Tom Fay and Future ProjectsKey InsightsSolarpunk represents a genuine near-future possibility, not just an aesthetic. As solar panels and lithium batteries become cheaper and more efficient, the vision of abundant, decentralized clean energy is becoming a practical reality rather than a utopian fantasy.Perovskite solar cells are pushing efficiency roughly 22% beyond conventional panels, and the bigger revolution happening right now is on the storage side — cheaper, higher-capacity batteries are what will truly unlock solar's potential at scale.Africa may leapfrog the West on solar adoption, just as it leapfrogged landlines with mobile phones. People in energy-scarce countries viscerally understand the value of clean power in a way that people in the West, accustomed to reliable grids, simply don't.Portable solar container units — self-contained, deployable systems — already exist and are making off-grid energy viable for farms, mines, remote lodges, and even data centers, with a roughly five-to-one solar-to-load footprint required.Carbon credits generated from verified solar output, tracked via IoT smart meters and stamped on blockchain, represent a long-term business opportunity that survives political shifts because institutional investors and banks operate on independent ESG mandates.AI training data is a present and real economic opportunity, but a shrinking one. The window for humans — especially lawyers, scientists, and specialists — to get paid for their expertise is closing fast as labs pivot toward synthetic data generation.True self-reliance comes down to four things: food, water, power, and transportation. With solar and Starlink, the gap between remote wilderness and connected civilization has essentially collapsed — something unimaginable even a generation ago.
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Episode #536: From Filament to Agents: The Tools Keep Getting Cheaper and the Judgment Keeps Getting Scarcer
Mar 900:42:54Tap to summarizeIn this episode of Crazy Wisdom, Stewart Alsop sits down with Andre Oliveira, founder of Splash N Color, a bootstrapped 3D printing e-commerce business selling consumer goods on Amazon. The two cover a lot of ground — from how Andre went from running 40 FDM printers out of South Florida to offshoring manufacturing to China, to how he's using Claude Code to automate inventory management and generate supplier RFQs across 200+ SKUs. The conversation stretches into bigger territory too: the San Francisco AI scene, the rise of AI agents and what they mean for the future of the internet, whether local on-device AI will eventually replace cloud-based tools, and why building physical products will stay hard long after software becomes easy. It's a candid, wide-ranging conversation between two self-taught builders figuring things out in real time. Follow Andre on X: @AndreBaach.Timestamps00:00 — Andre introduces Splash N Color, his Amazon-based 3D printing e-commerce business and explains the grind of running 40 FDM machines in South Florida.05:00 — The conversation shifts to Claude Code and how Andre built an inventory automation system to manage sales velocity and RFQs across 200+ SKUs.10:00 — Stewart and Andre compare notes on Opus 4.6, debate Codex vs Claude, and Andre breaks down the new Agent Teams feature in Claude Code.15:00 — Discussion turns to the San Francisco AI scene, the viral OpenClaw launch event that drew 700 people, and what's capturing the city's imagination right now.20:00 — The pair wrestle with data privacy, the illusion of it since 2000, and whether full transparency of personal data might actually serve people better.25:00 — Stewart pitches his vision of local on-device AI replacing cloud tools entirely, and they debate the 10–15 year timeline for mainstream societal adoption.30:00 — Andre traces his origin story: a high school dropout from Brazil who spotted a 3D printing opportunity on Facebook Marketplace and got lucky timing with COVID.35:00 — They explore whether AI-generated 3D models and DfAM will automate physical manufacturing, and why proprietary specs keep the space stubbornly hard.Key InsightsLifestyle businesses deserve more respect. Andre spent months feeling inadequate scrolling through Twitter watching founders announce funding rounds, before realizing his cash-flowing, location-independent business was already the goal. The social media version of entrepreneurial success warped his perception of what he actually had built.Claude Code is becoming an operating system. Stewart describes running Claude Code as having a second OS on top of MacOS — one that makes the underlying machine legible in ways it never was before. Both guests use it not just for coding but as a primary interface for understanding and operating their businesses.Agent Teams changes how work gets done. Andre explains that Claude's new multi-agent feature lets you assign a team lead and specialized roles that communicate with each other in parallel, essentially running an autonomous task force inside your terminal — a meaningful leap beyond single-instance prompting.Physical manufacturing will stay hard. Even as AI-generated 3D models improve, tolerances of 0.5 millimeters can mean the difference between a product working or not. Design for manufacturing is a separate discipline from design itself, and proprietary specs mean open source models rarely hit commercial quality.The internet is heading toward agents. Both guests agree that AI agents will increasingly handle tasks humans currently do manually online — booking services, making payments, coordinating logistics — with the human internet potentially becoming secondary to a machine-to-machine layer.Iteration is the real value of 3D printing. Andre pushes back on 3D printing as a business unto itself, framing it instead as a prototyping tool. The true value is rapid iteration on housing, tolerances, and fit — not the printer, but the speed of the feedback loop it enables.Technology compounds in layers. Andre closes with a tech-tree analogy: each generation normalizes the tools of the previous one and builds the next layer on top. Agentic coding today is what the internet was in the 90s — the foundation for something we can't yet fully see.
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Episode #535: The Technological Adolescence: Can Humans Keep Up With AI's Puberty?
Mar 200:58:13Tap to summarizeStewart Alsop sits down with Ulises Martins on the Crazy Wisdom podcast to explore how artificial intelligence is fundamentally disrupting professional careers, labor markets, and the pace of human adaptation itself. They discuss everything from Dario Amodei's concept of "technological adolescence" to the possibility that we're approaching a point where AI advancement accelerates beyond our ability to keep up, touching on topics ranging from the economics of software development and the future of warfare to generational differences in how people will respond to AI-driven change. Martins emphasizes that while we may not be able to predict exactly what's coming, we need to dramatically increase our efforts to learn and adapt—potentially doubling the time we invest in understanding AI—because this isn't optional change, it's disruption happening at an unprecedented speed. Connect with Ulises on Linkedin to follow his work in AI and generative technology.Timestamps00:00 — Stewart introduces Ulysses Martins, framing the conversation around accelerationism and the future of work.05:00 — Ulises uses the parent-child analogy to argue humans will no longer play the dominant role as AI surpasses us.10:00 — Both agree learning AI is non-negotiable, urging listeners to double their investment in staying current.15:00 — Discussion shifts to software as media, the collapsing cost of building products, and the risk of big players like Anthropic making your idea obsolete overnight.20:00 — Ulises raises ecology vs. cosmic ambition, questioning whether humanity should aim for civilizational-scale goals like the Dyson sphere.25:00 — Stewart's ESP32 hardware project illustrates AI's current blind spots beyond software, while both predict physical-world AI will arrive as a byproduct of bigger industrial goals.30:00 — Tesla's birthplace in Croatia sparks a reflection on human genius as luck versus deliberate investment, invoking the Apollo program as a model.35:00 — The US-China AI race is compared to the Cold War Space Race, with interdependency acting as a brake on outright conflict.40:00 — Drone warfare and AI reframe military power, making troop size irrelevant and potentially reducing total war.45:00 — Agile methodology and generational shifts are linked, asking how Gen Z's values will shape the AI era globally.50:00 — Argentine vs. American Zoomers are contrasted, with millennial expectations versus Gen Z's pragmatism explored.55:00 — Ulises closes urging everyone to enjoy the ride, taking the infinite stream of change one episode at a time.Key Insights1. The Death of Traditional Career Paths: The concept of professional careers as we know them—starting as a junior and progressively advancing—is becoming obsolete due to AI's rapid advancement. This applies far beyond just software and SaaS companies, extending to all industries as robots and AI systems gain capabilities that fundamentally disrupt labor markets. The question isn't whether we'll adapt, but whether humans can adapt fast enough to keep pace with exponential technological change.2. The Acceleration Imperative: People must dramatically increase their investment in learning about AI immediately. Whatever time you were previously dedicating to staying current with technology needs to be doubled or tripled. This isn't optional—it's comparable to the necessity of basic education. Unlike previous technological transitions where you had years to learn new frameworks or tools, the current pace demands immediate, intensive engagement or you risk becoming irrelevant.3. Software as Media and the Collapse of Development Economics: Software has become media—easily reproducible and increasingly commoditized through AI assistance. The fundamental economics of software development are collapsing because if building software requires dramatically fewer development hours, the value and price of that software must necessarily decrease. Entrepreneurs need a new evaluation framework that assesses the risk of their ideas being replicated by AI or absorbed by major players like Anthropic or OpenAI.4. The Parent-Child Analogy for AI Development: Humanity's relationship with AI will inevitably mirror that of parents with increasingly capable children. Initially, we understand and control what AI does, but as it advances, it will surpass human capabilities in most domains. Just as parents cannot control fully grown adult children who exceed their abilities, humans will need to reconcile with creating something superior to ourselves. Attempting to permanently control such systems may be both impossible and potentially pathologic.5. The Kardashev Scale and Civilizational Ambitions: AI represents a civilizational-level technology that should redirect humanity toward grander goals like capturing stellar energy through Dyson spheres and expanding beyond our solar system. The competition between China and the United States over AI mirrors the Apollo program's space race but with higher stakes—potentially making traditional concepts like money less relevant if we successfully crack general intelligence. This requires thinking beyond planetary constraints.6. The Changing Nature of Warfare and Geopolitics: AI and autonomous weapons systems are fundamentally changing warfare by making human soldiers less relevant, similar to how nuclear weapons reduced the importance of conventional military force. This shift may actually reduce bloody civilian casualties in conflicts between major powers, as drone warfare and AI-driven systems create new equilibriums. The geopolitical map may fracture into more sovereign states and city-states as centralized control becomes less effective.7. Generational Adaptation and Unpredictability: Different generations will respond uniquely to AI disruption based on their values and experiences. Generation Z, having grown up during the pandemic without traditional expectations, may adapt differently than millennials who experienced unmet expectations. However, we must remain humble about our predictive abilities—we're not good at forecasting technological change or its timing. The best approach is maintaining openness, trying to understand developments as they unfold, and accepting that we cannot consume all information in an era of unlimited AI-generated content.
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Episode #534: From COVID's Trust Bonfire to Decentralized Everything
Feb 2300:54:53Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop sits down with Jake Hamilton, founder of Groundwire and Nockbox, to explore zero-knowledge proofs, Bitcoin identity systems, and the intersection of privacy-preserving cryptography with AI and blockchain technology. They discuss how ZK proofs could offer an alternative to invasive identity verification systems being rolled out by governments worldwide, the potential for continual learning AI models to shift the balance between centralized and open-source development, and why building secure, auditable computing infrastructure on platforms like Urbit matters more than ever as we face an explosion of AI agents and automated systems. Jake also explains Nockchain's approach to creating a global repository of cryptographically verified facts that can power trustless programmable systems, and how these technologies might converge to solve problems around supply chain security, personal data sovereignty, and resistance to censorship.Timestamps00:00 Introduction to Groundwire and Knockbox02:48 Understanding Zero-Knowledge Proofs06:04 Government Adoption of ZK Proofs08:55 The Future of Identity Verification11:52 AI and ZK Proofs: A New Era14:54 The Role of Urbit in Technology18:03 The Impact of COVID on Trust20:51 The Evolution of AI and Data Privacy23:47 The Future of AI Models26:54 The Need for Local AI Solutions29:51 Interoperability of Knockchain and BitcoinKey Insights1. Zero-Knowledge Proofs Enable Privacy-Preserving Verification: Jake explains that ZK proofs allow you to prove computational outcomes without revealing the underlying data. For example, you could prove you're over 18 without exposing your full identity or driver's license information. The proof demonstrates that a specific program ran through certain steps and reached a particular conclusion, and validating this proof is fast and compact. This technology has profound implications for age verification, identity systems, and protecting privacy while maintaining necessary compliance, potentially offering a middle path between surveillance states and complete anonymity.2. Government Adoption of Privacy Technology Remains Uncertain: There are three competing motivations driving government identity verification systems: genuine surveillance desires, bureaucratic efficiency seeking, and legitimate child protection concerns. Jake believes these groups can be separated, with some officials potentially supporting ZK-based solutions if positioned correctly. He notes the EU is exploring ZK identity verification, and UK officials have shown interest. The key is framing privacy-preserving technology as protection against "the swamp" rather than just abstract privacy benefits, which could resonate with certain political constituencies.3. The COVID Era Destroyed Institutional Trust at Unprecedented Scale: The conversation identifies COVID as potentially the largest institutional trust-burning event in human history, with numerous institutions simultaneously losing credibility with large portions of the population. This represents a dramatic shift from the boomer generation's default trust in authority figures and mainstream media. This collapse is compounded by the incoming AI revolution, creating a perfect storm where established bureaucracies cannot adapt quickly enough to manage rapidly evolving technology, leaving society in fundamentally unmanageable territory.4. Centralized AI Models Create Dangerous Dependencies: Both speakers acknowledge growing dependence on centralized AI services like Claude, with some users spending thousands monthly on tokens. This dependency creates vulnerability to price increases and service disruptions. Jake advocates for local AI deployment using models like DeepSeek R1, running on personal hardware to maintain control and privacy. The shift toward continuous learning models will fundamentally change the AI landscape, making personal data harvesting even more valuable and raising urgent questions about compensation and consent for training data contribution.5. High-Quality Training Data Is Becoming the Primary AI Bottleneck: Stewart argues that AI development is now limited more by high-quality training data than by compute power. The industry has exhausted easily accessible internet data and body-shop-style data labeling. Companies are now using specialized boutique services with techniques like head-mounted cameras for live-streaming world model training. This scarcity is subtly driving price increases across AI services and will fundamentally reshape the economics of AI development, with implications for who controls these increasingly powerful systems.6. Urbit Offers a Foundation for Trustworthy Computing: Jake positions Urbit as essential infrastructure for the AI age because its 30,000-line codebase (versus Unix's three million lines) can be understood by individual humans. Its deterministic, purely functional, and strictly typed design aims for eventual ossification—software that doesn't require constant security patches. This "tiny and diamond perfect" approach addresses the fundamental insecurity of systems requiring monthly vulnerability patches. In an era of AI agents and potential prompt injection attacks, having verifiable, comprehensible computing infrastructure becomes existentially important rather than merely desirable.7. Nockchain Creates a Global Repository of Provable Truth: Jake's vision for Nockchain combines ZK proofs with blockchain technology to create a globally available "truth repository" where verified facts can be programmatically accessed together. This enables smart contracts or programs gated on combinations of proven facts—such as temperature readings from secure devices, supply chain events, and payment confirmations. By using Nock's abstract, simple design optimized for ZK proof generation, the system can validate complex real-world conditions without exposing underlying data, creating infrastructure for coordinating action based on verifiable private information at global scale.
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Episode #533: The Universe Doing Its Thing: AI Evolution Is Already Here
Feb 2001:13:51Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Crazy Wisdom podcast, host Stewart Alsop sits down with Markus Buehler, the McAfee Professor of Engineering at MIT, to explore how seemingly different systems—from proteins and music to knowledge structures and AI reasoning—share underlying patterns through hierarchy, self-organization, and scale-free networks. The conversation ranges from the limits of current AI interpolation versus true discovery (using the fire-to-fusion example), to the emergence of agent swarms and their non-linear effects, to practical questions about ontologies, knowledge graphs, and whether humans will remain necessary in the creative discovery process. Markus discusses his lab's work automating scientific discovery through AI agents that can generate hypotheses, run simulations, and even retrain themselves, while Stewart shares his own experiences building applications with AI coding agents and grapples with questions about intellectual property, material science constraints, and the future of human creativity in an AI-abundant world.Timestamps00:00 - Introduction to Marcus Buehler's work on knowledge graphs, structural grammar across proteins, music, and AI reasoning05:00 - Discussion of AI discovery versus interpolation, using fire and fusion as examples of fundamental versus incremental innovation10:00 - Language models as connective glue between agents, enabling communication despite imperfect outputs and canonical averaging15:00 - Embodiment and agency in AI systems, creating adversarial agents that challenge theories and expand world models20:00 - Emergent properties in materials and AI, comparing dislocations in metals to behaviors in agent swarms25:00 - Human role-playing and phase separation in society, parallels to composite materials and heterogeneity30:00 - Physical world challenges, atom-by-atom manufacturing at MIT.nano, limitations of lithography machines35:00 - Synthetic biology as alternative to nanotechnology, programming microorganisms for materials discovery40:00 - Intellectual property debates, commodification of AI models, control layers more valuable than model architecture45:00 - Automation of ontologies, agent self-testing, daughter's coding success at age 1150:00 - Graph theory for knowledge compression, neurosymbolic approaches combining symbolic and neural methods55:00 - Nonlinear acceleration in AI, emergence from accumulated innovations, restaurant owner embracing AI01:00:00 - Future generations possibly rejecting AI, democratization of knowledge, social media as real-time scientific discourseKey Insights1. Universal Patterns Across Disciplines: Seemingly different systems in nature—proteins, music, social networks, and knowledge itself—share fundamental structural patterns including hierarchy, self-organization, and scale-free networks. This commonality allows creative thinkers to draw insights across disciplines, applying principles from one domain to solve problems in another. As an engineer and materials scientist, Buehler has leveraged these isomorphisms to advance scientific understanding by mapping the "plumbing" of different systems onto each other, revealing hidden relationships that enable extrapolation beyond what's observable in any single domain.2. The Discovery Versus Interpolation Problem: Current AI systems, particularly large language models, excel at interpolation—recombining existing knowledge in new ways—but struggle with genuine discovery that requires fundamental rewiring of world models. Using the example of fire versus fusion, Buehler explains that an AI trained on combustion chemistry would propose bigger fires or new fuels, but couldn't conceive of fusion because that requires stepping back to more fundamental physics. True discovery demands the ability to recognize when existing theories have boundaries and to develop entirely new frameworks, something current AI architectures aren't designed to achieve due to their training objective of predicting the most likely outcome.3. The Role of Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs: While some AI researchers argue that ontologies are unnecessary because models form internal representations, Buehler advocates for explicit knowledge graphs as essential discovery tools. External ontologies provide sharp, analytical, symbolic representations that complement the fuzzy internal representations of neural networks. They enable verification of rare connections—like obscure papers that might hold key insights—which would be averaged away in standard AI training. This neurosymbolic approach combines the generalization capabilities of neural networks with the precision of formal knowledge structures, creating more powerful discovery systems.4. Emergent Properties and Agent Swarms: Just as materials science shows that collections of atoms exhibit properties impossible to predict from individual components, AI agent swarms demonstrate emergent behaviors beyond single models. When agents are incentivized not just to answer questions but to challenge each other adversarially, propose theories, and test hypotheses, they can spawn new copies of themselves and evolve understanding beyond their initial programming. This emergence isn't surprising from a materials science perspective—dislocations, grain boundaries, and other collective phenomena only appear at scale, fundamentally determining material behavior in ways unpredictable from studying just a few atoms.5. The Commoditization of Intelligence: The fundamental AI models themselves are becoming commodities, as evidenced by events like the Moldbug phenomenon where people built agents using various providers interchangeably. The real value is shifting from who has the smartest model to how models are orchestrated, integrated, and deployed. This parallels historical technology adoption patterns—just as we moved past debating who makes the best electricity to focusing on applications, AI is transitioning from a horse race over model capabilities to questions of infrastructure, energy, access speed, and agent coordination at the systems level.6. Human-AI Collaboration and Creative Control: Rather than wholesale replacement, AI enables humans to operate in an intensely creative space as orchestrators sampling from vast possibility spaces. Similar to how Buehler's 11-year-old daughter now builds sophisticated applications that would have required professional developers years ago, AI democratizes access to capabilities while humans retain the creative judgment about direction and meaning. The human role becomes curating emergence, finding rare connections, playing at the edges of knowledge, and exercising the kind of curiosity-driven exploration that AI systems lack without embodied stakes in their own survival and continuation.7. Technology as Evolutionary Inevitability: The development of AI represents not an unnatural threat but the next stage of human evolution—an extension of our innate drive to build models of ourselves and our world. From cave paintings to partial differential equations to artificial intelligence, humans continuously create increasingly sophisticated representations and tools. Attempting to stop this technological evolution is futile; instead, the focus should be on steering it ...
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Episode #532: From Pythagoras to Plugins: Why We Still Need Human Musicians
Feb 1600:58:21Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Crazy Wisdom podcast, host Stewart Alsop interviews John von Seggern, founder of Future Proof Music School, about the intersection of music education, technology, and artificial intelligence. They explore how musicians can develop timeless skills in an era of generative AI, the evolution of music production from classical notation to digital audio workstations like Ableton Live, and how AI is being used on the education side rather than for creation. The conversation covers music theory fundamentals, the development of instruments and recording technology throughout history, complex production techniques like sidechain compression, and the future of creative work in an AI-assisted world. John also discusses his development of Cadence, an AI voice tutor integrated with Ableton Live to help students learn music production. For those interested in learning more about Future Proof Music School or becoming a beta tester for the AI voice tutor, visit futureproofmusicschool.com.Timestamps00:00 Future Proofing Musicians in a Changing Landscape03:07 The Role of AI in Music Education05:36 Generative AI: A Tool for Musicians?08:36 The Evolution of Music Creation and Technology11:30 The Impact of Recording Technology on Music14:31 The Fragmentation of Culture and Music17:19 Exploring Music History and Theory20:13 The Relationship Between Music and Memory23:07 The Future of Music Creation and AI26:17 The Importance of Live Music Experiences28:49 Navigating the New Music Landscape31:47 The Role of AI in Finding New Music34:48 The Creative Process in Music Production37:33 The Future of Music Theory and Composition40:10 The Search for Unique Artistic Voices43:18 The Intersection of Music and Technology46:10 Cultural Shifts in the Music Industry49:09 Finding Quality in a Sea of ContentKey Insights1. Future-proofing musicians means teaching evergreen techniques while adapting to AI realities. John von Seggern founded Future Proof Music School to address both sides of music education in the AI era. Students learn timeless production skills that won't become obsolete as technology evolves, while simultaneously exploring meaningful creative goals in a world where generative AI exists. The school uses AI on the education side to help students learn, but students themselves aren't particularly interested in using generative AI for actual music creation, preferring to maintain their creative fingerprint on their work.2. The 12-note Western music system emerged from mathematical relationships discovered by Pythagoras and enabled collaborative music-making. Pythagoras demonstrated that pitch relates to vibrating string lengths, establishing mathematical ratios for musical intervals. This system allowed Western classical music to flourish because it could be notated and taught consistently, enabling large groups to play together. However, the piano is never perfectly in tune due to necessary compromises in the tuning system. By the 1920s, composers had explored most harmonic possibilities within this framework, leading to new directions in musical innovation.3. Recording technology fundamentally transformed music by making the studio itself the primary instrument. The invention of audio recording in the early-to-mid 20th century shifted music from purely instrumental composition to sound-based creation. This enabled entirely new genres like electronic dance music and hip-hop, which couldn't exist without technologies like synthesizers and samplers. Modern digital audio workstations like Ableton Live allow producers to have unlimited tracks and manipulate sounds in infinite ways, making any imaginable sound possible and moving innovation from hardware to software.4. Generative AI will likely replace generic music production but not visionary artists. John distinguishes between functional music (background music for films, work, or bars) and music where audiences deeply connect with the artist's vision. AI excels at generating functional music cheaply, which will benefit indie filmmakers and similar creators. However, artists with strong creative visions who audiences follow and identify with won't be replaced. The creative fingerprint and personal statement of important artists will remain valuable regardless of the tools they use, just as DJs created art through curation rather than original production.5. Copyright restrictions are limiting generative music AI's quality compared to other AI domains. Unlike books and visual art, recorded music copyrights are concentrated among a few companies that defend them aggressively. This prevents AI music models from training on the best music in each genre, resulting in lower-quality outputs. Some developers claim their private models trained on copyrighted music sound better than commercial offerings, but legal constraints prevent widespread access. This situation differs significantly from other creative domains where training data is more accessible.6. Modern music production involves complex technical skills like sidechain compression and multi-track mixing. Today's electronic music producers work with potentially hundreds of tracks, each with sophisticated processing. Techniques like sidechain compression allow certain elements (like kick drums) to dynamically reduce the volume of other elements (like bass), ensuring clarity in the final mix. Future Proof Music School teaches students these complex production techniques, with some aspiring producers creating incredibly detailed compositions with intricate effects chains and interdependent track relationships.7. Culture is fragmenting into micro-trends, making discovery rather than creation the primary challenge. John observes that while the era of mass media created mega-stars like The Beatles and Elvis, today's landscape features both enormous stars (like Taylor Swift) and an extremely long tail of creators making niche content. AI will make it easier for more people to create quality content, particularly in fields like independent filmmaking, but the real problem is discovery. Current algorithmic recommendations don't effectively surface hidden gems, suggesting a future where personal AI agents might better curate content based on individual preferences rather than platform-driven engagement metrics.
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Episode #531: Revenue-Based Lending Meets Crypto: Building Leviathan on Sui
Feb 1300:53:46Tap to summarizeIn this episode of the Crazy Wisdom Podcast, host Stewart Alsop sits down with Lars van der Zande, founder and CEO/technical architect of Inkwell Finance, for what Lars describes as his first-ever podcast appearance. The conversation covers a wide range of blockchain infrastructure topics, including Lars's work with Sui and Solana blockchains, the innovative capabilities of Ika's programmatic wallets and blockchain of signatures, and how Inkwell Finance is building revenue-based financing solutions for on-chain entities—from AI agents to protocols. They explore the evolving landscape of crypto regulation, the merging of traditional finance with blockchain technology, the future of decentralized legal systems, and how the user experience barrier is being lowered through technologies that eliminate constant transaction signing. Lars also discusses Inkwell's embedded financing approach and their pre-seed fundraising round.Links mentioned:- Inkwell's website: inkwell.finance- Inkwell on Twitter: @__inkwell- Lars on Twitter: @LMVDZandeTimestamps00:00 Introduction to Inkwell Finance and Technical Architecture02:06 Understanding Sui and Solana: Blockchain Dynamics05:55 The Role of Ika in Inkwell Finance11:51 Leviathan: Revenue Generation and Financing in Crypto17:38 The Future of AI Agents and Programmatic Wallets23:23 Smart Contracts: Legal Implications and Future Directions25:06 The Future of Inqvil Finance25:42 Decentralization and Its Evolution27:32 The Merging of Traditional and Crypto Systems29:33 Global Financial Dynamics and Market Reactions31:48 The Collapse of Traditional Financial Systems32:46 Jurisdictional Shifts in the Crypto World33:59 Legal Systems and Blockchain Integration35:57 On-Chain Credit and Financial Opportunities39:29 The Role of AI in Finance41:30 Learning from Peer-to-Peer Lending History43:14 Disruption in Insurance and Risk Management44:54 On-Chain vs Off-Chain Data46:54 The Evolution of the Internet and Blockchain49:12 Future Subscription Models in BlockchainKey Insights1. Ika's Revolutionary Blockchain Signature Technology: Lars discovered Ika, a blockchain of signatures built on Sui that enables any blockchain transaction to be signed without revealing the underlying message. Using patented 2PC MPC technology, Ika splits key shares across validators and encrypts them in transit, performing complex cryptographic operations that allow smart contracts on Sui to generate signatures for transactions on any other blockchain. This eliminates the need to build separate smart contracts on each blockchain, fundamentally changing how cross-chain interactions work and opening possibilities for truly interoperable decentralized applications.2. Programmatic Wallets vs Traditional Wallets: Traditional wallets like MetaMask require manual user approval for every transaction through a front-end interface, but Ika's D-wallet introduces programmatic wallets with policy-based controls embedded in smart contracts. These wallets can execute transactions based on predetermined conditions checked against on-chain data like Oracle prices, without requiring individual user signatures. For example, a Bitcoin D-wallet can hold native Bitcoin without wrapping or bridging to a custodian, and smart contract policies determine when and how that Bitcoin can be transferred, creating unprecedented security and automation possibilities for decentralized finance.3. Inkwell's Revenue-Based Financing Model: Inkwell Finance is building Leviathan, a revenue-based financing platform for on-chain entities including protocols, AI agents, and individual traders with verifiable track records. Borrowers receive capital based on their on-chain performance metrics like sharp ratio and drawdown, with loan repayment automatically deducted from their revenue stream. The profit split structure allocates approximately 60% to borrowers, 30% to lenders, and 10% split between Inkwell and integrating platforms. This creates a sustainable lending model where flight risk is minimized through D-wallet policy controls that restrict how borrowed capital can be used.4. Wallet-as-a-Protocol and the Future of User Experience: The crypto industry is moving toward embedded wallet solutions that eliminate the friction of traditional wallet management, with Wallet-as-a-Protocol representing the next evolution beyond services like Privy and Dynamic. Unlike current embedded wallets that lock users into specific applications, Wallet-as-a-Protocol enables single sign-on across multiple applications while users maintain control of their keys. Combined with app-sponsored gas fees, this approach allows non-crypto-native users to interact with blockchain applications without knowing they're using crypto, removing the biggest barrier to mainstream adoption and creating web2-like user experiences on web3 infrastructure.5. AI Agents as Financial Entities: AI agents are emerging as revenue-generating entities with on-chain transaction histories that create verifiable track records for creditworthiness assessment. Inkwell Finance is specifically targeting this market, recognizing that AI agents will need wallets and capital to operate effectively. The programmatic nature of D-wallets pairs perfectly with AI agents, as policy controls can restrict agent behavior to specific smart contract interactions, preventing unauthorized fund transfers while allowing automated trading or revenue generation. This creates a new category of borrower that operates 24/7 with completely transparent performance metrics, fundamentally different from traditional loan recipients.6. Cross-Chain Liquidity Without Asset Transfer: Ika's technology enables users to take loans against revenue generated on one blockchain and deploy that capital on entirely different blockchains without moving their original liquidity positions. For instance, someone earning yield on Sui's Fusol protocol could borrow against that revenue stream and deploy capital on Solana opportunities, effectively creating multiple on-chain businesses that generate their own credit scores and revenue to service debt. This ability to read state across different blockchains from within smart contracts opens possibilities for multi-chain strategies that don't require withdrawing capital from productive positions, maximizing capital efficiency across the entire crypto ecosystem.7. The Convergence of Traditional Finance and Crypto Infrastructure: The regulatory landscape is rapidly evolving with initiatives like the Genius Act and Clarity Act creating frameworks where traditional financial systems merge with crypto infrastructure through mechanisms like stablecoins backed by US treasuries. Companies are increasingly establishing entities in the United States to access capital networks and Delaware's established legal framework while issuing tokens through jurisdictions like Switzerland. This hybrid approach, combined with emerging concepts like Gabriel Shapiro's "cybernetic agreements" that make smart contract parameters legally enforceable in traditional courts, suggests the future isn't pure decentralization but rather a sophisticated integration of on-chain and off-chain legal and financial systems.
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