In many contexts, images are meant to illustrate a point. The human becomes the gatekeeper of generated content. The question becomes: does this picture illustrate the point I want to make. If so, you are adding your human approved stamp to the genrated output.

Mathematics seems to be entering an era where human + machine maximizes performance, much like chess in the 1990s. However, imagine a future where even talented mathematicians are nothing but noise in the machine (as is the case in chess now). A future where AI generates and verifies proofs without humans in the loop. Where the mathematics may be beyond human comprehension.

In that future, does it matter that early career mathematicians are inhibited by these developments? Perhaps not. Programming faces the same issue. As AI crawls up the competence ladder, does it matter that fewer people have opportunities to develop the skillset of a senior engineer? Perhaps not.

Mathematics seems to be entering an era where human + machine maximizes performance, much like chess in the 1990s. However, imagine a future where even talented mathematicians are nothing but noise in the machine (as is the case in chess now). A future where AI generates and verifies proofs without humans in the loop. Where the mathematics may be beyond human comprehension.

In that future, does it matter that early career mathematicians are inhibited by these developments? Perhaps not. Programming faces the same issue. As AI crawls up the competence ladder, does it matter that fewer people have opportunities to develop the skillset of a senior engineer? Perhaps not.

I think most people cannot destinguish between "genuine" creativity and an artificial almalgamation of training data and human provided context. For one, I do not know what already exsists. Some work created by AI may be an obvious rip off of the style of a particular artist, but I wouldnt know. To me it might look awesome and fresh.

I think many of the more human centric thinkers will be disappointed at how many people just wont care.

Furthermore, I think many of the more human centric thinkers will be disappointed at how many people just wont care.

Typical gene therapeutic approaches probably wont work, e.g. Cas9 (you'd need two cuts to delete the sequence), Base editors (cant delete sequence), prime editing (deletion is too large for standard prime editing).

You'd either need a template based system such as homologous recombination (too inefficient) or something like twin-prime editing, but good luck getting that to work on repeat sequence.

The transgene engineering is totally possible without a viral vector. We engineer cells all the time with recombinase based editing methods for targeted safe harbor insertion of transgenes https://www.nature.com/articles/s41551-024-01227-1. This stuff just permeates through the community slowly.

The whole concept of a "website" will simply become niche. How many zoomers still visit any but the most popular websites?

> What about the other thousands of other public blockchains, many of which are extremely similar (DOGE, BCH, LTC, ...)?

They are simply not as secure and could be attacked by well funded actors. Perhaps in time another blockchain will win out.

>... Metaverse anytime now.

Just curious. Do we disagree about where this (technological progress) is headed, or is it the timeline? I think its quite likely that we will spend more and more time in vitual or augmented reality. For good or ill.

> Personally, I think there is much more value in trusted systems.

I prefer the absence of a central authority. Perhaps im cynical.

> ... because the world didn't work at all prior to 2009?

We dont need crypto right now either. I simply think that the only good outcome of our digital future is a trustless one, and I think blockchain will play a central role there.

> Solutions to this problem might well involve digital signatures and hardware enclaves in cameras (installed by trusted centralized camera producers which could publish the public keys of each sold camera once), but I don't see how public blockchains would add any value. The signature of the picture embedded in the picture speaks for itself.

The value of blockchain is in the absence of a trusted centralized camera producer that can be pressured.

> Apart from the fact that I don't see the benefit of that, the oracle problem makes this impossible, I fear.

The oracle problem is solved in the same way the camera problem is solved. By digital signatures of real world interactions of the machines in the production chain.

I think the world will lean into trustless systems over trusted systems, lets see. That is not to say that I dont think the world would continue to function on trusted systems, I just think it makes dystopian outcomes more likely.

Controversial, I know. However, already we cannot trust that a digital picture is genuine. There is currently no solution to this problem. In the near future, I imagine that the raw data of your camera will be associated with a token on a blockchain (not bitcoin, but a dedicated high-capacity blockchain). Such a system would allow us to determine that a picture was indeed taken with a physical device, and thus that the events depicted have a bearing in the real world.

My bet is that we are headed toward a future where blockchain is ubiquitous. Where everything of value is underpinned by a specialized blockchain. When you order groceries, the origin of the produce and raw ingredients are all embedded in blockchain. In virtual reality, every digital product has a specialized blockchain. Every kind of transaction; compute, assets, AI, will all be underpinned by trustless peer to peer systems.

All these specialized blockchains trade security for throughput. My bet is that Bitcoin will act as a security guarantor in our future digital society, where the state of every blockchain is periodically validated on the Bitcoin network. Thus, I bet that every transaction in the future will have an associated Bitcoin cost. Thats why I own a small amount of Bitcoin.