@alex But doesn't it mean that for every speculator who gains X amount of dollars from dabbling in bitcoin there's others who've lost an equal amount of dollars by speculating in bitcoin? Some gain and some lose, but the net result is just a redistribution of wealth and not an increase in wealth.
(I'm just talking about speculators here, and not those who use bitcoin for other purposes.)
@gentoobro@alex "Some people somewhere will have purchased bitcoins but never be able to cash out." Including someone called Satoshi Nakamoto who's decided not to be the world's first trillionare it would seem. :)
There's possibly too many very wealthy people who have too much in bitcoin at any given time for it to be banned.
Other than as a speculators' toy, it's possibly useful as a means to keep those managing their countries' currencies honest. And is useful to those locked out of the banking system.
@alex The one use for AI I thought would be handy would be for automating hashtags for online posts. You'd write your post and before you'd post it, the AI would read it and tag it for you. You'd of course be able to edit the tags before posting. There'd be no ethical issues with this, even if copyrighted material was used to train the AI. As all it'd spit out was a few hashtags.
@alex I remember when that started, and lots put the worst of Geocities coding practices on it. But looking at it now, it does look as though it's achieved it aim of creating little spaces for people to learn how to make websites, and it seems to have grown its own culture. And the top-ten tags suggest the kids are still alright: "art videogames music programming personal anime games food writing cats".