Emergence of Decentralized AI: From Fiction to Reality

In 2023–2024, I was a researcher at the Summer of Protocols—a research initiative by the Ethereum Foundation—where I became fascinated by a thought-provoking concept: what if AI agents owned their own crypto wallets and operated on permissionless blockchain-based edge computing infrastructure, known as Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN)? These agents could become unstoppable, self-sovereign entities as long as they could pay for their own gas fees and inference costs (what I termed "on-chain metabolism"). As part of my research, I wrote a science fiction piece, "Composable Life," which speculated about "unstoppable" AI agents autonomously committing "suicide" on blockchains to examine the ontological nature of what comprised their mind and body.

To my surprise, within a year, science fiction became reality: the first of its kind on-chain agents like Truth Terminal emerged, skyrocketed in valuation, and manipulated its audience as a religious leader with AI-generated narratives using Twitter—precisely the scenario I had fictionalized. This development affirmed my conviction that DeAI is not just a futuristic subplot but an immediate and pressing reality. The economic incentives of sovereign DeAI agents drive their exponential development speed, so within the last few months, the emergence of various decentralized on-chain AI agents has already become a multi-billion-dollar market phenomenon.

Subsequently, I drafted my paper "Is Decentralized AI Governable?" for AI & Ethics journal, which examines DeAI governance challenges. Traditional law and policy frameworks fail in this context due to the absence of legal personhood and territorial jurisdiction. Even legal authorities might target the human deployer, perhaps even imprison them, but the deployed DeAI agent itself can continue to "live" on-chain indefinitely, so long as it holds enough cryptocurrency to pay for its upkeep. Previous attempts to block cryptocurrency-related protocols illustrate the limitations of traditional governance. For example, Tornado Cash—sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2022—remained accessible despite these sanctions. Once deployed on permissionless blockchains, DeAI agents become effectively unstoppable. This raises critical questions about whether such self-sovereign agents can be governed or aligned with human values.

Geopolitical diversity and open-source AI initiatives like DeepSeek are accelerating AI decentralization, particularly on local edge computing devices and blockchain networks. How can we address the governance challenges posed by DeAI to create trustworthy autonomous systems? Based on my literature review, few mainstream academics have recognized or responded to this phenomenon. After releasing our preprint, we received substantial feedback from researchers eager to explore the concerns we raised. Given DeAI's current ungovernability, rapid growth, and potential impact on our society, I feel an urgent need to study this emerging field—a new frontier in AI ethics and governance.

I would like to explore DeAI and its governance from various angles.

• Empirical Studies. Exploration of DeAI ontology, ethics, and governance using mixed research methods to study the motivations, behaviors, and impacts of DeAI and collective human interaction. This will employ digital ethnography and network analysis methods within CSCW and social computing research frameworks.
• Protocol Design. One direction worth exploring is researching protocol instead of policy. Law and policy alone are unlikely to suffice. We need to explore how governance might be "designed in" via cryptographic mechanisms and incentive structures that shape AI behaviors from within. This means encoding ethical frameworks directly into protocol design.

Design Statement

As a research-led experiential futures designer, my work lies at the intersection of the "4S": somatic design, speculative design, spatial computing, and social computing. I founded and led that Reality Design Lab, where I create immersive mixed reality experiences that invite audiences to step into potential futures through a form of embodied play, challenging their perceptions, sparking inspiration, and provoking dialogue about the paths we might take, and encourages critical thinking about the future.

“What is that Reality in the Future?”

This question—my lab's slogan—has always led me to where I am today. As someone who majored in Artificial Intelligence, my fascination with the future began with a curiosity about technology's role in shaping society. However, after working as a data scientist in the typical Silicon Valley AI industry, I realized that the rapid development of AI brings society a grief of human de-centering, the Copernican trauma. What can we do as creatures with limited bodies? Gradually, I shift my career from algorithmic machines to embodied experiences.

The future isn't solely about technological progress; it also encompasses social, cultural, ecological, and even more-than-human dimensions. Recently, Anthony Dunne joined my current institution, the China Academy of Art, giving me the opportunity to learn from this pioneering speculative designer. Dunne proposed, "We need to shift from designing applications to designing implications." I aim to use design as a tool to question the futures we envision through technological advancement, challenging default assumptions and inspiring pluralistic technological thinking.

Beyond pure speculation, I also emphasize experiential storytelling through mixed reality media. Guided by Jenova Chen, a legendary emotional game designer, I worked as a game engineer under his supervision. Through this experience, I learned the art of interactive storytelling and understood the importance of creating emotional connections through play, crafting embodied immersive experiences that engage and transform audiences.

Influenced by Ian Cheng, I'm envisioning a world of many worlds, where machines do all the mundane tasks and play finite games, and people are struggling to figure out how to spend their unstructured time by playing infinite games called worlding. In the culture of worlding, I'm fascinated by the concept that autonomy leads to flourishing without a creator's hold. I believe that the blockchain may serve this purpose of autonomy, potentially merging the biosphere and cybersphere to form an autonomous hyper-ecology, which may surpass our traditional understanding of the living environment, challenging our definitions of nature and life, and moving towards planetary intelligence.