# Cointelegraph: "Can Bitcoin Save AI From Big Tech? Bittensor Co-Founder Explains" - Title: Can Bitcoin Save AI From Big Tech? Bittensor Co-Founder Explains - Channel: Cointelegraph - Date: 6 June 2026 (published; confirmed from the watch page's date field on 20 Sep 2026). Recorded at Proof of Talk 2026, Paris, 2–3 June 2026. - Length: 4:21. The earlier stub said 10:56 "from a public channel listing"; that figure was wrong. Three independent checks agree on 4:21: the caption service reports `length: "4m 21s"` with `hasMore: false`; the publisher's own chapter list in the video description runs 00:00 to 04:10 and the caption text covers all thirteen chapters in order; and the 675 words of caption, at Jacob's measured rate of about 2.6 words a second, take 4:20. So this is a short edited cut, and the caption is complete, not partial. - URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aL2HY7HTY94 - Jacob's start offset: 0:00. Edited interview; the interviewer's questions are cut out and only Jacob speaks. The first 19 seconds are the teaser Cointelegraph posted on Facebook (already transcribed from audio); the video then restarts from the first question. - Method: OBTAINED 20 Sep 2026. kome.ai caption API (`POST https://kome.ai/api/transcript`, body `{"video_id": , "format": true}`), which returned YouTube's English auto-caption track for the whole video. Timestamps estimated by word position (about 2.6 words a second against 4:21), then snapped to the thirteen chapter markers in the video description where a passage begins a chapter; the two methods agreed within about 10 seconds everywhere. Expect an error of up to about 10 seconds. The first three timestamps (0:00, 0:08, 0:15) are exact, from the Whisper pass on the 19-second teaser. No audio was obtained for the rest. - Text: verbatim YouTube auto-captions, fillers and repeats kept. Corrections of obvious caption errors: "Bit Tensor" → Bittensor; "shoots" → Chutes; "town" → TAO (at ≈3:51, "without even needing to know about TAO"); "Tao" → TAO. Nothing else changed. ## Chapter list (from the video description) 00:00 What happens if decentralized AI loses · 00:15 Crypto as a human alignment tool · 00:20 Bitcoin, AI and organizing intelligence · 00:50 Why AI must be transparent and auditable · 01:10 The danger of one company controlling AI · 01:25 Everyone can own and build on Bittensor · 01:50 Why Jensen Huang is watching Bittensor · 02:15 Why people will notice if decentralized AI fails · 02:35 The danger of one hierarchy of intelligence · 02:50 Should people be worried about AI? · 03:10 Why people should still be optimistic · 03:35 Bittensor products already used in the real world · 04:10 Why Bittensor can organize talent better than Big Tech Cointelegraph's own summary: Steeves argues AI must be transparent, auditable and co-owned, and warns that a world dominated by one centralised intelligence could reshape how people understand reality. ## Transcript Only Jacob speaks. The questions he is answering are inferred from the chapter titles and given in brackets. **[0:00] JACOB (teaser):** If decentralized AI doesn't win, I think that's when people notice. I think that's when people understand that they don't have any hope of taking down the giants. **[0:08] JACOB (teaser):** Everybody in the world will be sipping from the mental biases of a single company that controls artificial intelligence. **[0:15] JACOB (teaser):** Cryptocurrency is the most powerful alignment tool for humans, for compute. *[Question, inferred: how do Bitcoin and AI fit together?]* **[≈0:20] JACOB:** Bitcoin and artificial intelligence, the fields are effectively tools of organizing matter. Cryptocurrency is the most powerful alignment tool for humans, for compute. And artificial intelligence has become the most most powerful tool for aligning digital intelligence, for for organizing the weights of neural networks. We simply are using the combination of those two things to produce digital common commodities and artificial intelligence itself. *[Question, inferred: does AI need to be decentralized?]* **[≈0:50] JACOB:** I think it needs to be transparent. It needs to It needs to be auditable. It needs to be co-owned. Decentralization is kind of a catch-all term for a lot of different things. Let's say like technologies that have moral primitives. And yes, it needs to be. **[≈1:10] JACOB:** If it's not that way, then basically, you know, it's not our our mind. And everybody in the world will be sipping from the uh the mental biases of a single company that controls artificial intelligence. And I think that's that would be devastating for our ability to make sense of the world. *[Question, inferred: what does Bittensor do differently?]* **[≈1:25] JACOB:** Everyone can own Bittensor. Everyone can build on Bittensor. Everyone can see how Bittensor works. It's transparent. And those primitives are just not built into the centralized technologies that uh that our competitors are using. That's it. There's some disadvantages. It slows things down for us, but but we know where we're going, and we think that those primitives will really matter. *[Question, inferred: Jensen Huang mentioned Bittensor. Why?]* **[≈1:50] JACOB:** Nvidia, Jensen Huang was mentioned Bittensor in a talk. And he's interested in what we're doing because like us he believes in access and he believes in competition. He believes in freedom. And so he likes what we're building. *[Question, inferred: what happens if decentralized AI does not win?]* **[≈2:15] JACOB:** If decentralized AI doesn't win, I think that's when people notice. I think that's when um people understand that they don't have any hope um of taking down the giants. And it's easy to um imagine the value of something when you can imagine when what happens in the negative side. **[≈2:35] JACOB:** So, you know, if we if we live in a world where there is just one hierarchy of intelligence, one intelligence, people will will eventually find out. And and so, you know, people will feel it in that in that pathway if we don't exist. *[Question, inferred: should people be worried about AI?]* **[≈2:50] JACOB:** I don't think people should be worried because I I I think that collectively we can make this technology work and be better. But I do think people should be cognizant and think about the effects of outsourcing our mental capacity to machines that are controlled by singular entities. **[≈3:10] JACOB:** I think they should feel optimistic because there's a lot of really intelligent people focusing on this problem. How can we make sure that the primitives that artificial intelligence would be built off are going to be distributed and co-owned and transparent and auditable uh using blockchain technology. So, yeah. I think they should be in insanely uh yeah. *[Question, inferred: is any of this used in the real world?]* **[≈3:35] JACOB:** One point our top sub on Bittensor Chutes was serving the most number of open source tokens across any other provider. You know, people didn't know about TAO, but they were using those tokens. **[≈3:45] JACOB:** Targon on Bittensor, one of the top subnets providing compute, almost all of the computers are not available on that on that subnet because they're being used by people, not just not just TAO miners. **[≈3:55] JACOB:** So, that we we we've really built products that seep into the real world and are used by people without even needing to know about TAO. *[Question, inferred: can Bittensor really compete with Big Tech?]* **[≈4:10] JACOB:** I think that we organize talent better than them. I I actually think that we can find people that are true killers that can really solve problems faster than than they could do with an interview process. And and I also think that we will eventually train better models than them. *[≈4:21 end]* ## Notes - "Sipping from the mental biases of a single company" is said twice, once in the teaser and once at ≈1:10 in context. The context adds the payoff the teaser lacks: "it's not our mind... that would be devastating for our ability to make sense of the world." The danger is epistemic, not only economic. See analysis, sections 5 and 9. - "Moral primitives" (≈0:50) is a phrase not heard in the other fifteen recordings. He uses it to redefine "decentralization" as a bundle of properties (transparent, auditable, co-owned) rather than a slogan. - "Outsourcing our mental capacity to machines that are controlled by singular entities" (≈2:50) is his calmest statement of the fear, and the only one framed as advice to ordinary people. - The talent claim at ≈4:10 ("true killers... faster than an interview process") is the 2026 version of the "no HR department" idea (BIG TALK 15:25, CoinFoin ≈0:55). - The stub's teaser text is preserved above at 0:00–0:15; nothing in it changed.