I was watching the House Financial Services Committee hearing a few weeks ago and the anti-crypto Congressman Sherman asked "What can you do with cryptocurrencies that you can't do with anything else?." And no one on the panel could provide a decent answer, which bothered me.
I thought about how to convey to people the societal good that cryptocurrencies enable, and I came to the conclusion that AI is the perfect example. AI needs a lot of data to function, so if humanity wants to benefit from it to the maximum extent, all of our data basically needs to be fed to the AI. But who would control this data? and this AI? Whoever it was would have immense power. They would be able to predict the future!
So the question becomes: How can you take advantage of AI without giving up your digital sovereignty... That's where decentralized apps come in.
Cryptocurrencies basically give you the power to run giant companies where no one is in charge, and this is a powerful tool to minimize corruption and the wielding of too much power. With the Facebook fiasco in the news, this is an easy example to give to people. Imagine if Facebook had been decentralized, would network participants have approved their own manipulation at the hands of politicians?
I wrote more about this here for anyone interested:
https://cryptograf.io/blog/2018/04/16/Crypto-Ai-and-the-Social-Good/
