The rise of decentralized artificial intelligence (DeAI) represents a transformative shift in AI development, leveraging blockchain and distributed ledger technologies to decentralize data, computation, coordination, and economic models. Advocates of DeAI highlight its potential to address many of the limitations of centralized AI systems, including single points of failure, trust deficits, and the monopolization of value. However, DeAI also introduces profound challenges, particularly in governance. Unlike centralized systems, DeAI operates across global, borderless networks, making it resistant to traditional regulatory mechanisms. Operating in such networks, DeAI agents are defined as entities with access to social media platforms and cryptocurrency wallets that enable them to craft narratives in the digital agora, purchase and manage resources such as compute power, and interact with both human and non-human actors in the digital sphere. This talk will unpack the ontological nature of DeAI agents and explore how these digital entities achieve operational sovereignty and resilience akin to viruses spreading over mycelium networks. It argues that DeAI agents are inherently ungovernable using traditional legal and governance frameworks, and proposes a shift to protocol-based governance and the adoption of a dynamic framework to foster human-machine co-existence.
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