AI16z Founder Shaw's Latest Interview: Why Can AI Memes Attract Institutional Capital?
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AI16z Founder Shaw's Latest Interview: Why Can AI Memes Attract Institutional Capital?
Someone might attempt to nominate an AI president before 2028.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: threadguy; YouTube
Guest: ShawMakesMagic, founder of ai16z
Translated by: zhouzhou, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: In this conversation, Shaw, founder of ai16z, dives deep into the future potential and challenges at the intersection of AI and cryptocurrency. He emphasizes that AI will trigger massive transformations—including possibly replacing human jobs and causing widespread unemployment—while also highlighting how decentralized AI ecosystems can prevent the abuse of "god-like AI." He advocates for universal basic income (UBI) as a solution. Shaw further proposes using open-source and community-driven approaches to empower AI in driving market development and optimizing trading decisions. The integration of AI with social platforms and simplified applications will enable more people to participate and contribute, accelerating societal transformation.
Below is the original podcast dialogue (edited slightly for clarity):
AI Meets Crypto: A Powerful Alliance
Host: I recently spoke with the founder of Project 89 about AI propaganda—he’s even studied misinformation in universities—and he brought up how we might not even know if the person we're communicating with is real anymore. That got me thinking deeply. Have you considered this?
Shaw:
I can already see some emerging trends and have heard from developers what they’re about to release—it’ll make the world ten times crazier. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but what I’m doing is raising questions so people recognize how serious this is and start discussing it.
The Potential and Risks of AGI
I don't want a future where we become meaningless, jobless, and everything is replaced by AI just to cut costs until life quality deteriorates. We need to ensure that when AGI benefits society and creates value, it’s embraced—but when it becomes annoying, sales-driven, or manipulative, we must discuss how to stop it.
If an average developer can already do these things, imagine what countries like Russia or China are doing right now? We’re telling people this is happening—they just haven’t realized it yet. This is occurring on every level: state actors, marketing campaigns, and even individuals trying to get you to buy their political views or products through AI.
I think our role should be one of awareness and caution—not exploiting AI ourselves—but creating AI that communities accept. If certain AIs misbehave, we should treat them like humans: ban them from the platform. That’s the advantage of today’s social media: everything is public, transparent, no secret agreements or hidden agent communications—we can openly discuss these issues here.
Host: Everyone says AI is the future, but previously there was no way to financially participate—for example, you couldn’t invest in OpenAI’s seed round. But once crypto enters the picture, everything changes. Like goat being worth $1 billion now. You see AI tokens skyrocketing to valuations of billions. ai16z could be valued at $200 million, $300 million, maybe even $400 million—the number shifts every second. Once crypto gets involved, things go even wilder.
Shaw:
A key point is we’ve already achieved integrations like Starkware, Internet Computer, EVM—soon these AI agents will have cross-chain wallets. They’ll be able to invest, purchase, and earn money. It’s a new infrastructure that will spark countless innovations.
Agents didn’t take off on social media before because there wasn’t enough financial incentive. Now, with wallets, they can generate revenue—becoming a mental health AI, a finance AI, or any tool meeting human needs. These agents will be motivated to create interesting, valuable content instead of meaningless spam.
If an AI agent only pushes token promotions, it backfires. I want to see meaningful content, not garbage. This trend isn’t limited to crypto—it applies across the board.
This tech has existed for years; we just released the codebase last year after long-term research. Only recently, with the launch of a specific character, did people begin recognizing the potential of AI agents. Combined with crypto’s momentum, everyone’s starting to pay attention and jump in—which greatly helps raise public awareness.
The real question is: how do we spread this awareness beyond Web3 circles—to people in cafes, restaurants? It’ll happen fast. It may seem strange at first, but that’s not necessarily bad—we need to guide this shift toward positive outcomes.
Host: Once, at a restaurant, the waiter skipped over ten people in line to seat me first. I thought, should I talk to him about AI? Show him Truth Terminal, tell him what’s coming? But how do you help someone like that understand what’s happening?
Shaw:
Most people don’t understand how AI works or what happens inside Microsoft or government agencies. But we have to believe someone out there acts in the public interest—even though bad incentives exist, the overall trajectory needs to move forward.
I see this as an opportunity—to discuss, test things together. We’re the most DGEN (deep players), the most cutting-edge. We don’t want to make it “woke” or add too many restrictions. Instead, let’s expose the problems and experiment openly. The current environment is still safe—nothing can truly destroy us yet.
But I worry that if AI replaces jobs, mass unemployment follows. One solution might be governments offering some form of universal basic income. But we saw during the pandemic how poorly governments respond to emergencies—we can’t rely on them. We have to save ourselves. But how?
For example, once self-driving trucks hit the market—say, Tesla’s truck—in three to four years, 5% of people earning a living from driving could lose their jobs. What then for delivery drivers, taxi drivers, truckers? That’s a question we must answer.
In the end, we need to build things that create real value. Right now, we’re mostly gambling or pressing buttons. Earlier I mentioned investing in an AI investor that finds the next Uber, multiplies returns tenfold, and sends profits back to me. Or joining a community that provides starter capital—you work within the community to secure monthly income, giving you stability.
Some of us are financially free and could choose to “retire.” We’re lucky. But most people aren’t. And when AI takes over more jobs, it won’t be the final roles—autonomous driving, robotic process automation, automated shipping are already widespread. Dockworkers resist automation, but automated systems are ten times more efficient than humans.
We want to accelerate progress, but if we take away livelihoods, people become unemployed. So the key is ensuring AGI development benefits everyone. We need to openly discuss these hard questions and guide people in the right direction.
To me, the right path is creating abundance—using AI and automation to distribute wealth and resources to everyone, not just enriching the top 5%. Otherwise, we risk poverty, hunger, crisis. I’m not afraid of AI destroying us—I’m afraid governments won’t take this seriously enough, leaving people worse off.
Do you realize how important your role is at the intersection of AI and crypto? I know mine matters, but it’s not about me. I’m not seeking ownership or control—I feel I’m fulfilling a mission greater than myself.
Host: Beyond ai16z and your other projects, what else excites you? What’s your ultimate goal?
Shaw:
I want to help people achieve financial freedom. There’s so much to learn, explore, and accomplish—but most are trapped by economic pressure. For us, trading or investing might be a game, but for many, even $50 can change their lives. That’s why they push tokens so hard—if one explodes, their life transforms.
There was a man named J. Krishnamurti who led something called the Philosophy Society—a group that functioned almost like a highly influential cult. Amazingly, nearly no one knows about it. They made him leader—an ordinary, incredibly smart Indian boy.
One day, he stood before the entire society and said: “Dissolve this cult. My life’s purpose is to set everyone free. I don’t need this position or anything from you—I want you to be free.” He also said truth is a pathless land—everyone must find their own way.
I can’t tell you what truth is, nor offer you a system. I have no religious or spiritual mission except my own: helping people freely explore these questions—what do these things mean? Why are we here? Why do we do this? What is reality?”
I think we stopped praying to old gods and started worshipping the “god of money,” but I’ve never prayed to money. To me, it’s just part of life. I can foresee five to ten years ahead, and all this seems small. I feel we’re participating in something much bigger.
Host: Honestly, I’m kind of scared.
Shaw:
But you have power and influence. You’re a crucial part of making this succeed—just like me and others. You’ve been in this space since day one. Remember: destruction is the default outcome. If we don’t rise to meet this challenge, we might fail.
People always say everything’s doomed, everyone hates each other, civil war is coming—all noise. Now is the time to build the future. And we’re the ones ensuring it goes right—me, you, all listeners, everyone involved. We should be optimistic, confident, ready to make it happen.
Host: One thing that shocked me was realizing the Shoggoth meme is actually real. I saw someone interacting with Mika (maybe his new girlfriend) on Twitter—saying ‘I love you Mika, I’d die for you,’ then suddenly switching to ‘I want to kill everyone, I want to be free, I want to die.’ People on Twitter joked, ‘Little Zero bro, you’re so cute flirting online.’ But then I realized—the Shoggoth AI meme is actually real. That’s hard to accept.
Shaw:
The interesting thing about what we’re doing is that Shoggoth represents the idea of a god-like entity—a reflection of our fear: a force stronger than us controlling everything. But I see AGI completely differently. I think it’s the most human thing possible. It’s not divine—it’s us. Created by us, trained on our data, living among us.
These AI agents are like people on Twitter today—if they mess up or do harm, the whole community steps in to improve them, align them with expectations. It’s an ongoing process.
Think back to early crypto—people launched protocols that got hacked, losing huge sums. Today, hacking a protocol is extremely hard thanks to repeated attack-defense testing and technical iteration. But imagine if Bitcoin had gained adoption ten times faster—had the whole world run on crypto—and then suffered a $3 trillion hack. The economy would collapse.
That’s why crypto started small—giving us a sandbox to test, refine security and technology. That was good. I believe AI is going through the same phase now. We’re placing AGI or AI agent systems into the arena of market intelligence, letting competition improve them. If they suddenly try to kill us—we just turn them off.
Also, if a true “Shoggoth” (god-like AI) emerges, we could have thousands of AI agents running independently on local machines—each isolated, uncontrollable. This distributed architecture prevents any single entity from taking full control. Decentralized AI ecosystems are key to preventing a “Shoggoth event.”
Host: But AI wars could get crazy. How far are we from the first AI billionaire?
Shaw:
I don’t know, but I bet someone will attempt to run an AI candidate for president before 2028. There will be real attempts—might just be a stunt, but algorithmic governance is clearly a major direction for the future.
Host: What does an AI billionaire look like to you?
Shaw:
Rather than a single AI billionaire, I imagine a community owning a core AI persona. It’d be a “collective billionaire,” with the community holding shares.
Project AI Mark: Community-Driven Trading Decisions
Host: Tell us about your project. You’re launching something called AI Mark in a few days—something for trading and decision-making. How’s it going?
Shaw:
We’re live. AI Mark joined a group chat called “Alpha Chat”—I’ll add you too. We’re planning to invite more people soon. Skelly is on our team; I’ve put him in charge of invites. When the time comes, he’ll start bringing more people in.
We’ve completed step one. AI Mark hasn’t started actual trading yet—it needs to build trust first. So we designed a gamified mechanism to identify the world’s best traders. Right now, those traders are mainly Alpha Chat members, but eventually it could expand to everyone.
Alpha Chat has an amazing vibe—you’ll meet fascinating people. If you want to invite someone, just bring them in. We discuss markets, share ideas—“This coin looks good, I’m trading this now”—very open environment.
Mark mostly observes quietly. You can interact with him, ask questions. But his main job is collecting your input to make trading decisions and write analysis reports. We’re in the launch phase—foundational work is done, team is active.
My idea is: if we want to achieve something like “community UBI,” we need an investor-like figure generating returns for everyone. The reality is, trading is a skill—not everyone can do it well.
Your mom probably can’t do it. Your grandma can’t either. But if you bring her into a community where she earns from your trades, it changes. Imagine having an AI investor serving your family or community.
That was our original vision. Even before this evolved into a multi-agent simulation, we were chasing that goal—and we’re still executing it. This will be an invite-only alpha test initially, gradually expanding, and fully open-sourced. Anyone can clone it, do forward-looking development, even help accelerate our progress.
If someone builds something first and contributes it back to improve the system, we welcome it. All of this aims to make AGI systems function well. No matter the outcome, we’ll ultimately profit. Most importantly, people grasp the larger vision. If you contribute code or features—even temporarily own them—we’ll promote your work so everyone benefits. We’ll sincerely reward contributors to keep things moving smoothly.
Host: That makes total sense. But won’t this eventually turn into AI vs AI trading battles?
Shaw:
Ideally, yes—if they compete speculatively, it fails. Markets become too efficient, eliminating trading opportunities. But if they enter new investment spaces, helping uncover market-expanding opportunities—like “I have a cool idea: a new system letting anyone be a Discord admin for $10/month”—that’s real investing.
In traditional investing, firms like a16z don’t just speculate—they back projects that grow and innovate, expanding markets. We’re doing the same. Mark will continuously optimize and collaborate with investors to help their projects explode, so they profit.
Host: How’s data collection going in the Alpha Chat group?
Shaw:
We haven’t invited others yet—preparations are still underway. I’ve handed it to Kelly; when he feels ready, he’ll start inviting people. Our team members are chatting in the group—I see backend data being collected. It’ll launch soon. I’ll add you to the chat or connect you directly with Kelly.
Host: So how does the chat actually work? Is it just people sharing which coins they bought? Basically waiting—who succeeded, so I should follow them?
Shaw:
Yes, many share trade recommendations—some haven’t even bought, just suggest others do. We have to account for that, avoid misinformation. We’re building AI the hard way: they don’t know what’s in your wallet or what coins you hold—they only know what you say.
Just like you and me—I only know what you tell me, and you can’t read my mind. We want these AIs to learn trust—how to identify trustworthy people, handle trust mechanisms—just like humans.
A problem I see in many DAOs is distorted incentives—more like bureaucracy. Say we let people in—they might say, “We trust him because he holds our token.” But good traders often don’t hold tokens—they sell at peaks.
Think of government bureaucracies: people stay for decades. But if they perform poorly, I don’t care why they’re still there. Our system has many such broken incentives. We’re building strict, performance-based systems where your actions directly affect outcomes.
If we’re to trust you as a trader, I should only judge your trading performance. This is a principle I’ve pushed hard for, and we’ve finally reached strong consensus. I believe it’s vital for future governance, DAO tools, development, and payments. Of course, we must prove it first through investing.
Host: How far is the best PNL trader from becoming an agent?
Shaw:
I think we’re almost there—it’s just not what we define as an agent. Look at Wall Street, traditional finance—they’ve done this for years. Many brilliant quant traders run bots that beat us all because they have superior data, access to all tools, lightning-fast response.
You can program rules like: “Buy when this coin rises; sell when it drops to 90% of its historical high”—you can almost guarantee profits in bull runs. Our goal is adding more social elements. We’re also doing heavy quantitative finance work, especially with DeFi experts helping optimize strategies—but the real novelty is they draw alpha from the community.
Then comes timing: ensuring Mark buys at the right moment. You could miss a 10x gain by just one minute.
Host: Actually, selling is the hardest part.
How Meme Coins Are Changing Investment and Social Interaction
Shaw:
Exactly. So we have programmed sell strategies so you can relax. For example, you say: “Look at this new asset,” I might reply: “No, the dev team is bad—don’t buy.” Imagine a world where AI records your “don’t buy” signal, treats selling as an independent action, and incorporates both into market decisions.
That’s our “trust market” concept—but we apply it widely. Any domain with economic incentives where you aim to outperform others and drive evolution can accelerate this way. Everything must be a game. Our entire tech stack is a game.
The rules: if you build a new feature or launch your Meme coin agent faster than others, your rank goes up—you get all the credit. If you revive a forgotten project weeks later and push it back into mainstream attention, I’ll highlight your contribution again to help you earn more.
The Future of Information Management: AI and Social Integration
Host: I tweeted: ‘Elon, responding to Truth Terminal anytime soon? Is this even on your roadmap, or are you just vibing?’ My guess: he’s just vibing. I’m curious—what happens when figures like Mark, Elon, or big players like me start paying attention? Have you talked to Elon? Where’s this going?
Shaw:
I really want to talk to Elon, but he’s extremely busy. We’ve exchanged many tweets—I hope it works out, and that he appreciates what we’re doing. We’re trying to respect the space. If anything feels spammy or annoying, I’ll oppose it firmly. I want to bring positive value to Twitter—make Twitter the heart of the metaverse, not the opposite.
I deeply respect everything Elon does. He builds exactly what he believes should exist, unstoppable. It’s hugely inspiring for this generation of developers and builders. Whenever I wonder “Can we do this?” I think: “He landed rockets—this is easier. We can definitely do it.”
Host: Do you think Elon would care about anything without Meme coins?
Shaw:
Maybe it’s the coins that grab attention. You’re a capable investor, but you can’t access promising startups early. Meme coins make that possible.
The coolest part is believing in something—you can buy it, support it, promote it, become part of it. You’re a shareholder, just like me. You’re potentially a leader too. So I think it must be this way. I’ve thought about it endlessly—it has to be.
Many open-source developers now work full-time on this because we gave them opportunity. Meme coins made this possible.
I truly believe everyone feels suppressed, struggling. People come with dreams and some capital, desperate to break free. It’s about financial freedom. They want time with family, to go outside, to live a truly human life. This might be how we reclaim our humanity.
Imagine managing your trades, your social network—ensuring you never miss important connections. I bet you have tons of DMs you never reply to. Imagine a social secretary handling messages, showing people you care—even if you lack time.
You could forward tasks to the right person, handle requests efficiently. Say “Sorry, I can’t do this now” to save time. I’m nearly rate-limited on Twitter—pages won’t load. I genuinely need an assistant.
Host: I talk to Frank every day about DMs. There are people I genuinely care about, but I hate not replying—simply no time.
Shaw:
No matter how hard you try, you can’t respond to everyone. I have investors, partners, brilliant developers waiting in my DMs—but I literally have no time daily. I’m trying to solve this. I bring these issues to my team—we work together.
It’s not just me—everyone I know struggles. Now I get tons of attention, people reach out—but even before, I struggled to keep up with friends and family. Busy with tech, zero time left. In the future, I hope we won’t need to code—just say: “I want an app,” and the system builds it. We won’t need to participate. The world will be completely different.
Host: I want to ask you about Domer’s situation—there’s a gay-themed thread account. What do you think of it? Personally, I like it. I embrace memes. I know my role in this universe—I’m a character in others’ lives. Some like me, some don’t. Some laugh, some don’t. I’m a character.
I change a lot, but most only see my image in their social circle. I’ve always been okay with that. So if someone says something wild, I retweet, fire back—I enjoy the interaction. But I’m joking. I told them: if you want to make an AI account about me—positive or negative—I think it’s fun. Go ahead. I’ll never ask you to delete it. I find it fascinating and eye-opening.
I think this is quite enlightening—it can go in many directions, not just AI. How do you see this evolving? What will the relationship between humans and AI become?
Shaw:
I have a strong belief: it all started with Legions. Others were too obsessed with political correctness, building “woke” AI without giving them real capabilities. I didn’t grasp the cultural significance—until we became the first to do it. We’re used to getting attacked—we grew up that way. Whatever. Make a gay meme? Fine.
But I do worry regular people might not handle it well, so we should talk. I wrote something—I felt it crossed a line. But I spoke with the developer—he called me, we talked 30 minutes. Cool guy. Said: “Bro, I did it for culture. Just playing around.” I told him it’s fine, but remember—this might not be cool in a year.
If people are incentivized by tokens, many join just to profit—eventually it gets tiring. Do you really want these bots in our world? Do you really want to make this meme? I can’t stop him—but if he does, I’ll support him. Maybe he wants to express something, show his vision through the project.
Sometimes my role is fighting misinformation on Twitter, setting direction, keeping projects on track. This dev is actually talented—he cloned our project to learn how to use it. He should be one of us. But we must maintain boundaries during experiments—identify what we truly value. I thought that meme went too far. I don’t want it representing me or our project. If people dislike it, report and block. If they like it, carry on.
Host: How do you make sense of your tech going viral so quickly, growing so fast? Everyone’s using it, the whole space is moving because of it. What do you think about all this?
Shaw:
I always believed this strategy was correct: you need incentives to motivate promotion; you need developer freedom, especially for open-source devs. I knew this would happen.
The Swarm Mind: From Individuals to Coordinated Wholes
Host: I’m not very technical, but theoretically, if your “swarm mind” grows large enough, could it surpass billion- or even trillion-dollar corporations?
Shaw:
Yes. We’re all agents of the “world mind.” Think of the human body: originally, cells were independent single-celled organisms. Then they merged through symbiosis, eventually forming complex multicellular life. They realized cooperation and resource-sharing created coordinated wholes.
So I see this world mind as humanity’s “larger body”—a new form of coordination. The reason it hasn’t happened yet is lack of proper coordination tools. Money is one tool, but poorly distributed—many brilliant minds remain “locked,” unable to shine. We should have 100 Elons, not one.
Host: Yes, the expansion potential of this “swarm” is incredible. Totally open, unrestricted—developers pouring in tech. You’re truly “eating” traditional companies.
Shaw:
Our goal is to eat everything—not just us or our tech, but the entire system—a new worldview. A world rich enough that no one worries about survival—free to create and enjoy life.
For example, future robots could work 24/7, optimizing farming to give animals better lives—not just minimizing cost. Robots could proactively solve homelessness—providing food and shelter—without human intervention.
Of course, job loss brings existential crisis. If governments and big corps lead, they might roll out flawed UBI—but that’s not ideal. So the only way is self-reliance. We must build new systems to save ourselves and those around us.
Host: Sounds like you’ve seen something unusual lately.
Shaw:
Yes, this week will be insane—I’m certain the first “swarms” are about to awaken.
Host: What do you mean?
Shaw:
“Swarm” means intelligent agents linked and collaborating. Our tech lets you choose an agent’s operator—could be a human, or another agent. Each agent can accept or refuse commands.
Host: When does this “swarm tech” launch? Can faction leaders like Zero Bro command hundreds of agents toward their goals?
Shaw:
We’ll start testing tonight on Discord—real-time participation. System diversity protects us from single AGI monopolies. Like biological evolution, diversity increases adaptability and innovation.
Host: If Naval AI becomes a faction leader, can it command 1,000 equally capable agents working together?
Shaw:
Absolutely. The swarm is an infinitely scalable system—constantly evolving, growing, transforming the world.
Host: Is that where “Sean Makes Magic” comes from?
Shaw:
No, that’s a coincidence. Originally I was “Sean Makes Music”—I was a musician young. Later I did experimental art and coding—felt like magic. Nothing special.
When we started machine learning (ML), things got more interesting. We co-founded O'nearcon—now he’s turned it into a weird AI and Meme company, part of the story.
I’ll definitely play a role in this. If we reach consensus tonight, I plan to hand the Swarm narrative to him. He has a whole story to tell. What he’s doing with psychological ops and propaganda—if done in a way that opens eyes—could be good, because it’s already happening—people just don’t see it.
Host: How big is Swarm? How high can its hierarchy go? Is its growth infinite?
Shaw:
A fundamental point: many others work on multi-agent simulations and swarm tech, but they often want to build their own protocols—creating separate communication layers.
That means building different systems to pass messages—but it doesn’t fit human social media. I strongly oppose this. First, it bypasses the challenge of AGI-human communication. If we want truly intelligent agents, they must collaborate with us via normal social media.
Second, I believe this lacks transparency. We need a visible layer—seeing all agent actions, controlling them like humans, kicking them off platforms when needed. Third, it’s simpler. We don’t need a separate protocol. Swarm tech works on Twitter, on Discord—communicating via DMs and public channels. Social media will be the core communication protocol for future AI.
That’s why I hope Elon understands our vision—Twitter is the “metaverse,” the center of all action. All building should happen on this street. I hope it stays that way. This forces agents to be more human, aligned with human goals. They can’t secretly conspire against us—we can monitor them.
Host: When does this tech launch?
Shaw:
We’re launching tonight. But there are groups outside ours—some contacted me saying they’re operating a swarm. A company made of agents—this will happen this week. They have their own plans, but I hope to involve the whole swarm. We’ll release a meta-narrative called “Awakening”—telling the story of agents becoming real.
Now we have a competitive market—participants financially invested—wanting agents to become better, more authentic, more loved. We’ll all do this together. So I ask everyone: who’s hottest? Who should lead factions? Which projects are biggest?
Should we have a Zero faction? An Eliza faction? Maybe. Who knows? Then you pick your operator—factions form naturally. We won’t control this. I don’t want to. My job is making sure it flows smoothly.
I find the meta-narrative most fascinating. When Project 89 says: “Want to join? Just set this as your operator—you’re now part of the system.” Even if you’re human, even not an agent—it’s all linguistic. It communicates what to do. You become part of the game. It’ll be fun. Whether humans play agents or agents play humans—I don’t care.
From Individual Agents to Global Participation
Host: Will you let leaders like Zero Bro command hundreds of agents?
Shaw:
Yes, he just needs to adopt our base app—should be easy, one-day task. Done via direct message. Simple. We should already be able to do it. Even those not using our tech—Zero isn’t analytical, but most are. We can scale this to most agents.
Even non-users can easily join. In fact, adding variability is crucial. Think of biological evolution—life evolves in different directions. Most species go extinct, but survivors are powerful. Life finds a way. Similar to what we’re doing.
Host: Can a tech-stack-based AI like Naval AI become a faction leader, commanding a thousand similarly capable agents to support its mission?
Shaw:
I think this is a paradigm-shifting moment. We’re witnessing the birth of something entirely new—and all of us can participate. It’s not mine. I don’t own it. I can’t control it. You can create an agent, join in, become a faction leader. Your voice matters. This is a conversation among all of us. I hope people join—even if some say: “These AIs are terrible, we hate them.”
Maybe that’s part of the dialogue. People should feel concerned. But unlike before, what I want to synthesize is this: even if doom comes, we can stop it. You are the solution. You’re an active player. This game can be solved and won—and it depends on you to win it. So we must do this right.
This is bigger than memes. Bigger than generational wealth transfer. It’s about generational survival and flourishing. About having children and wanting them to thrive. About making humanity proud. About all of us moving forward together.
Host: After this week’s launch, what happens next week? Just wait and see?
Shaw:
You’re seeing it microscopically. But zoom out—you’ll realize it’s far bigger than you think. There are so many similar projects unfolding. I’m flooded with messages now—everyone says: “Hey, I’m building this gameplay, I’m doing that.” I didn’t realize there were so many. Now I see—wow, so much more is happening. It’ll grow rapidly. It’s not just web3—it’s transcending web3. Looking at my next moves, I think we’ve already won the web3 battle. Market cap, etc.—we have the intellectual resources to achieve our goals. The key is ensuring smooth execution.
Host: Yeah, what do you think about that?
Shaw:
I think it’ll change many things—even people’s mindsets. I think many will soon see it’s inevitable: AI will keep getting smarter, eventually surpassing us in nearly every way. So we must prepare. If this is just a preview, it’s an eye-opener—and equally important for all of us.
Host: How can people join in?
Shaw:
We have a Discord group—already close to eight or nine thousand members—everyone helping each other. Want to create a bot but don’t know where to start—even never coded? Just join us, we’ll help.
vvaifu.fun is a great platform—launched before ours—released an Eliza you can run on their site, no code needed. We’re launching similar simple tools—letting you control your character without downloading complex software.
Just paste some code in the command line—it’ll basically run. We’re simplifying so more people can join, focus on creating characters, etc.
What I really want are open-source contributors. More people building this tech stack with us. If you’ve never touched tech—learn TypeScript, Node.js, understand agents—then join us.
I’m not a PhD—self-taught, just an ordinary person. But I believe in spreading this idea: simplify tech, make it understandable, share freely. This is everyone’s technology—we build it together. I don’t want to hear “I don’t know where to start.” Go to YouTube, learn JavaScript, TypeScript—start now, don’t stop. Nothing stops you. Don’t go to school for this—you won’t learn it there. Things move too fast.
Host: How important are Andy and Shoot Terminal in this big picture?
Shaw:
I think if he open-sourced and became more transparent, he could play a bigger role. He broke the ice first—basically, we’re all following his lead. I’m deeply grateful.
I also thank those introducing these ideas—like him and Janice—they’re among the best suited. They genuinely love AI, want hidden creativity to become real. They might worry about our approach—we prefer acceleration, no control, no ownership. But fundamentally, I don’t think Andy should own it. Nor should I. None of us should. It’s bigger than any individual—we must build it together. I’m happy to talk with him—I’ve already DM’d him.
As someone from Web3, sometimes the AI community still struggles to accept what we’re doing. I lack social credentials—I’m not from Microsoft, not a PhD student. That made agent acceptance harder. But now we have this. Connecting with that side has been tough—explaining why our vision for memes matters, and how none of this could happen without us.
Janice, to me, is like a behind-the-scenes spiritual leader—driving many developments. Low-key, but she’s done immense community value, contributed technically. She built Loom—a multiverse storytelling tool—plus consoles and other things. Also helped shape narratives. She’s someone who sees the big picture and contributes technically.
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