The global system of commerce is evolving at a rapid rate. In just a few years Cryptocurrencies have shifted from being seen as a “gimmick”, to a viable stock option in trade markets and everyday consumerism. This is in part due to support and reinforcement from billionaire Elon Musk. Through Twitter stock manipulation, and the allowing of crypto friendly transactions within his companies, Musk continually promotes a decentralised vision of economic progress. With one unit of Bitcoin (BTC) now being valued at over $54,000 USD, it is clear that crypto is here to stay.
It is no surprise then that pop artist Grimes, who recently split from a relationship with Musk, envisions cryptocurrency as integral to the future of work and financial systems. On Sunday, Grimes stated in a staged Instagram post featuring her publicly reading Karl Marx: “Full disclosure I’m still living with e [Elon Musk] and I am not a communist (although there are some very smart ideas in this book -but personally I’m more interested in a radical decentralized ubi [Universal Basic Income] that I think could potentially be achieved thru crypto and gaming but I haven’t ironed that idea out enough yet to explain it.”
Grimes was seen posing with the Communist Manifesto in the days following her split from billionaire Elon Musk - image from @grimezsz Twitter
Grimes is no stranger to controversy, and frequently makes statements that confuse the press and public. The Karl Marx photograph was, as she puts it, designed to ‘troll paparazzi’. The decision to name her child “X Æ A-12” in 2020 baffled the commentariat and generated headlines from The BBC, CNN, and others. Fans have also been left puzzled by her very public disagreements with fellow musician Azealia Banks in recent weeks. Despite this, her vision of the future seems earnest, and may be closer to reality than first appears.
Cryptocurrency can be seen as separate from government, and so free from external factors that drive inflation and devaluation. It is also much harder to tax and regulate, therefore the attraction to crypto from investors and employers is not difficult to understand. The part of Grimes’ statement that seems to be confusing commenters is that which refers to gaming and Universal Basic Income, and how these would interact within a system of economic distribution and commerce.
Gaming as a career is rarely considered outside of content creation, e.g. Youtube or Twitch entertainers. As the recent Twitch leaks confirm, the top creators on the platforms can make an extraordinary amount of income, with some creators earning millions in just a few years from subscribers and ads alone. However, in countries with less stable economies, gaming for work is not solely possible as a content creator. In Venezuela for instance, Runescape gold farming can amass a higher wage than the job market available in the country; following a period of prolonged hyper inflation reducing the minimum wage to less than $4 USD an hour. Gold farmers will often receive hourly payment, or payment for resources farmed in game, in either USD or Crypto. This protects their earnings from the economic strife that continues to affect the national economy.
Gold farming in the fantasy role-playing-game Runescape has become a viable career in unstable economies - image from Steam/Jagex
In developed economies, the white-collar workforce is often expected to perform calculations with mechanistic precision in order to maximise employer profits. With the rise of AI learning, it is not unreasonable to suppose that future capitalists will seek to replace these roles with refined automated systems with minimal human involvement and subsequent error. In fact, machine learning and data science has become one of the top 20 emerging professions as of 2021, and the industry is expected to be worth $31bn USD by 2024. Should this trend continue, it is likely that many more jobs will open in this field. AI learning has already been harnessed by a number of blockchain networks. Although this technology is still in its infancy, it is possible to imagine extension of this system dictating the currency by which employees are paid; encouraging participation to refine the AI and reap greater rewards.
A single person can train an AI to be able to perform simple tasks effectively, as exemplified by MarI/O. Created by SethBling, this program trains neural networks and genetic algorithms to beat the video game “Super Mario World” through repeated attempts until it finds the optimal route for progression. Expanding this to more complicated tasks, and envisioning a large workforce providing a variety of gamified inputs is certainly possible in the coming years as demand for comprehensive AI rises. In much the same way as the contemporary Runescape gold farmer, the future worker may serve in a gaming environment. Sitting at a desk examining spreadsheets may be replaced by the gamified ironing out of kinks and inefficiencies in an intelligence that far surpasses our own numerical and conceptual capabilities, with the worker farming crypto payouts in the process.
Artificial Intelligence can be trained to complete video games with beyond human precision through trial and error, as shown by MarI/O - screenshot from SethBling on YouTube
None of this however, explains how Universal Basic Income could play a part in this future. It is hard to imagine a world where corporations would voluntarily provide free income. Similarly, the idea of central planning around a cryptocurrency based system defeats the entire point of a deregulated currency, and so government involvement is unlikely. A possible explanation would be implementation of corporate social credit scores. This being distinct from the social credit systems spoken about in relation to the USA or China. In a corporate environment, performance and loyalty to the company could be the primary driver for increasing one's score. A basic income would at first be distributed, and then further fiscal rewards would be determined through score. Systemic implementation of UBI is underresearched, however preliminary findings from Sweden suggest that the system may actually increase motivation for employment. It therefore may be beneficial to employers to provide it, with generous benefits to employees who then go above and beyond the basic necessities of employment. Client side crypto mining may also unlock the fiscal potential of employees to generate their own passive income, which is centralised within the company and then redistributed back to the employees. Alternatively, it is plausible that Universal Basic Income could be distributed by an entity entirely separate from human institutions, distributed by an AI itself.
Of course, it’s hard to decipher exactly what Grimes was referring to with her comments. They could have just been passing remarks during a confusing time in her life. Perhaps this is what we should expect from someone who once claimed to “... ultimately probably believe in an AI dictatorship.” However, when one analyses the prediction, it does not seem so detached from reality. It may seem dystopian to have employment contracts so removed from government, but attempts to restrain the power of internet technocrats are minimal and ineffective (see Mark Zuckerberg’s US senate hearing). Politicians are ill equipped and out of touch with the speed at which the internet is moving, and unless legislatures catch up, the future of employment may be out of their control.
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