an AI researcher I met some years ago was last week bought out by google for 400M$. they seem to want to integrate the engine into the search product, although I doubt Google is going to get better. I know the scene pretty well, and much of is techno-babble. combine that with bitcoin you get techno-babble^². I see rather the emergence of pseudo-religious techno-cult, deeply a-political, which means no concern for human society at large, but rather private cooperations ruling the world, like in a William Gibson novel.
Your right techno babble^2....
I do wonder however if an autonomous agent that can perform its own actions on a block chain and be paid for a service, for coins = energy ultimately, will be the beginnings, or a rudimentary life. So perhaps AL (artificial Life) as a processor to AI.
I guess we already have virus's on computers though
