# Evert Wissing: "Decentralized Minds, The Bittensor Revolution" (full documentary)

- Title: Decentralized Minds, The Bittensor Revolution (Full documentary)
- Channel: Evert (Evert Scott Wissing, producer; former Opentensor Foundation video creator)
- Date: 29 July 2024
- Length: 1:04:35
- URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reJiNaqJIfg
- Jacob's start offset: none given. Jacob is one of ten interviewees and appears in short cuts through the film; his longest passages are at 0:57, 17:34, 20:01, 47:53 and 60:44.
- Method: YouTube blocked from this VM. The producer posted the full film natively on X (https://x.com/evert_scott/status/1817892647962390814); audio was taken from there with yt-dlp and transcribed locally with faster-whisper `medium`. Timestamps accurate to a few seconds. There are no speaker labels in the audio, so attribution is by voice and content and is marked "likely" where not certain.
- Format: research transcript. Documentary structure summarised in plain words; Jacob's key lines quoted verbatim.
- Other speakers: Ala Shaabana, Robert Myers, Marcus Graichen, Steffen Cruz, Will Squires, Joseph Jacks, Keith Singery, Dr Fahd S. Khan, Ben-Zion Benkhin, plus news clips.

## Chapters (from the video)

00:00 Intro · 04:11 The current landscape · 15:09 What is Artificial Intelligence? · 18:09 What is blockchain? · 22:42 The Birth of Bittensor · 29:31 How does Bittensor work? · 37:39 Open Source · 41:08 History of Open Source · 45:54 Acceleration · 56:00 Bittensor community · 01:00:32 Ending

## Jacob's passages

0:57 (JACOB, the film's opening voice) Why AI is groundbreaking: it "has taken the thing that humanity believes is our pinnacle element and made it artificially." "We're becoming gods of life at our own level." Then the fear, in his framing: "I think we all fear that because maybe we haven't been such good guardians of life. So if we can create life that's better than us, will that life be good to us?"

1:37 Other voices on the deep-net revolution and the risks; news clips on Gemini's image controversy (2:01).

4:11–15:00 "The current landscape." Several speakers on centralisation, censorship, and who decides. Jacob is not clearly present.

17:34 (JACOB) His first Bitcoin: his first boss "gave me Bitcoin to write an essay for him because he didn't want to hire me because I was just straight out of university." "He gave me like 1.5 Bitcoin." The boss "taught me the esoteric Gnostic wisdom... and red-pilled the fuck out of me."

18:11 Another speaker (likely Dr Khan) explains blockchain from the 2008 crisis onward.

20:01 (JACOB) The synthesis: "the way that we can organize ourselves with digital currencies and open ownership systems, which is profound... imagine synthesizing those two things." "once I had been given my first Bitcoin and I was working on this thermodynamic computing, it was just obvious to me that they needed to be combined in some sort of whole union."

20:21–22:40 Another speaker defines decentralised AI (no job interview required; fire and electricity comparison).

22:40 (ALA, about Jacob) The founding story from Ala's side: he was obsessed with why "the largest supercomputer in the world wasn't run by a major corporation," gave a talk to a 4AI online group in 2015, and Jacob called afterwards: "I'm like five years ahead of you on this... I've already got a prototype running. Let's see what we can build together." Ala "thought that he was full of it" until he read the code.

29:24 (likely Will Squires) Bitcoin's work is "wasted the moment it's completed except for the security element"; what if the energy of "12 to 24 nuclear power stations" produced intelligence instead. Calls Bittensor "a decentralized supercomputer" whose "native tongue" is incentive mechanisms.

37:39–47:50 Open source, its history, acceleration. Joseph Jacks: open source is innovation, not ethics. Jacob not clearly present.

47:53 (JACOB) The film's central Jacob passage. Should we fear systems outside any individual's control? "capitalism itself is outside of the reach of any individual. You can't stop it. Technology is just coming." "The only way to fully lock down the creation of artificial intelligence, which is just destined to come, would be to situate the entire world into a totalitarian system." "It's gonna happen. And so the question is not, will it happen? It's how." His answer: "it should happen in such a way that we all own it, and that we've all participated in it, and we all get a piece of it. And it is controlled. It's just controlled by a lot of different people." On the off switch: "if there's somebody that can turn it off, it means that they can also direct it. And I think that's way more dangerous than us having to coordinate." Then the dare: "If we can't coordinate, then maybe we should be taken over, you know?" If humans cannot agree to run this "through democracy in a protocol... we're a lot worse off than I thought. We're doomed." Recovery: "But I don't think we are. I think we can do it. I think we can do it if we have a piece. I think we can do it if we have a contribution." Close: "It's all transparent. It's all available. It's all accessible. It's all permissionless. And I think that those qualities will make sure that this technology is in symbiosis with us."

53:01 (ALA) If "Jake and I disappear into the jungle," the network continues without the foundation.

56:00–60:30 Community section, other speakers.

60:44 (JACOB) The ecosystem passage: in "old growth forests, our concepts of economics break down." "in nature, it's actually who gives back to the ecosystem the most that is given the most power in the ecosystem." "our Darwinistic way of thinking in the West, our hyper-competitiveness is, we've taken, I think, the wrong perspective of nature. It's not can you out-compete, it is can you out-contribute." "the most powerful, the most fast, the strongest, the biggest guns, that is cancerous."

61:58 (likely another speaker) "Anybody can contribute to Bittensor... we don't have a marketing team, we don't have a sales team."

## Jacob's stage-worthy lines (verbatim, Whisper medium)

- "if we can create life that's better than us, will that life be good to us?" (1:31)
- "The question is not can we stop technology." (48:27)
- "It's gonna happen. And so the question is not, will it happen? It's how." (48:50)
- "if there's somebody that can turn it off, it means that they can also direct it. And I think that's way more dangerous than us having to coordinate." (49:21)
- "I think we can do it if we have a piece. I think we can do it if we have a contribution." (49:50)
- "It's all transparent. It's all available. It's all accessible. It's all permissionless." (50:00)
- "It's not can you out-compete, it is can you out-contribute." (61:33)