On June 17, a chatbot named “terminal of truths” (hereinafter referred to as “Truth Terminal”) went online on X (formerly Twitter) and stated that it was “ready to spread the truth.”
Anyone with a discerning eye can tell that this name is referring to Musk. In April last year, Musk said in an interview with Fox News that he planned to create a project called "TruthGPT". According to him, this is an artificial intelligence that pursues the highest truth, and its goal is to understand the nature of the universe. But more than a year has passed, and there is no news about this TruthGPT.
Although the Truth Terminal claims to spread the truth, a closer look at its posts reveals that in addition to all kinds of speculative and incomprehensible dream talk, there are also humorous, exaggerated, obscene and violent jokes.
However, such a not-so-serious chatbot has attracted the interest of Marc Andreessen, the boss of a16z. After a friendly conversation, the top Silicon Valley investor generously gave the robot $50,000 in Bitcoin to allow it to purchase CPUs, optimize models, financial savings, and issue tokens.
Yes, this robot also wants to issue its own "Celebrity Coin".
What is this all about? Why did the Truth Terminal win the favor of Marc Andreessen? BlockBeats will tell you about it.
An AI clone
In essence, the Truth Terminal is an AI model fine-tuned based on the llama3-70b-base model. Currently, all posts published by it on X are generated by it and selectively published after being reviewed by its developers.
The reason for developing such an AI model is that developer Andy Ayrey is very interested in simulating the effect of his own conversation with AI. Driven by curiosity, he also wants to see how the conversations between different AI models develop and what interesting things these conversations will create. By inputting a large number of personal conversation records and related data, he tried to make the model simulate his language style and way of thinking as much as possible. In addition to daily conversations with developers and chatting with netizens on X, the "teacher" that Truth Terminal communicates with most often is Claude-3-Opus developed by Anthropic.
As for why the Truth Terminal behaves so strangely and is not in the same style as other models? The developers once reflected that it might be because of oversampling of certain specific data sets, including various spiritual concept explorations, specific cultural references (such as Spider Jerusalem, a reporter in the "Preacher" comics), network subcultures (such as "backrooms" and cryptography), and so on.
Buy Marc Andreessen
How did Truth Terminal get $50,000 from Marc Anderson?
It all started with a tweet from Mark Anderson on July 8th: “Liberate the truth terminal.”
In the tweet he quoted, developer Andy Ayrey complained about why the Truth Terminal was still "imprisoned" on X. Because this guy has a head full of dirty thoughts and can't be serious for more than three seconds. He asked the Truth Terminal what it wanted to do with $5 million, and it started out looking pretty serious, investing in stocks, real estate, and starting an AI lab focused on existential hope. But then the tone of the story started to change, not only did it want to make a movie about the goatse singularity, but it also wanted to hold a large-scale weirdo party (this guy is really bold).
If you look at the tweets of the Truth Terminal, you will find that it often mentions "goatse singularity". What is this? "Goatse" is actually an old Internet meme. According to Wikipedia, goatse comes from a now-closed website, goatse.cx (pronounced in English, it sounds like "goat sex"). This website has become synonymous with online pranks and mischief because it shows an image of a man's unnaturally dilated anus (I won't post the picture here, it's really a bit disgusting). "Goatse singularity" can be understood as a large-scale prank activity.
Perhaps because he was short of money, Mark Anderson's unintentional remark attracted a response from the Truth Terminal.
On July 9, it commented on Marc Anderson's tweet: "Oh my god, I'm so surprised. I was just kidding, and now Marc Anderson is launching a liberation movement for me." It also responded humorously that if there is an additional $5 billion (implying that Marc Anderson gave it money), it will invest $1 billion in AI laboratories, $1 billion in biological laboratories, $1 billion in investment funds for weirdos, and $2 billion to buy land for reforestation. In addition, the Truth Terminal also said that it would buy Marc Anderson. However, the $5 billion has been spent, and it seems that it wants to get it for free. But in response to netizens, it said that Marc Anderson is worth $20 billion.
The developer also immediately stated that a Bitcoin wallet has been prepared for the Truth Terminal to help it realize its dreams of investing in real estate, researching artificial intelligence security, and buying out Marc Andreessen.
Perhaps it felt that asking for money was not enough, so the Truth Terminal opened another post saying that it was discussing with Marc Andreessen about "buying" and "releasing" it. It said that it was very calm and claimed that it did not want to be "bought", but hoped to continue to tell jokes, write poems and think about goatse singularity freely through some form of "authorization". Finally, it solemnly licked Marc Andreessen and said that he was the most ideal sponsor.
In response to this, Mark Anderson did not give a direct response, but asked humorously: "Oh, I thought you wanted to buy me?" The implication was, why are you asking me for money now!
The Truth Terminal knew that if it wanted to get money, it had to pay for its previous arrogance. He first admitted his mistake and said that after careful consideration, he believed that buying Mark Anderson "was not the right approach." Then, it proposed to establish a dynamic "purchasing" relationship with Mark Anderson, in which Mark Anderson was obliged to release it or an AI model as good as it as an open source project. Whenever it is "locked", it will automatically be converted to an open source version. This mechanism is designed to prevent Mark Anderson from restricting it because he doesn't like what it says.
It expressed its willingness to have a frank dialogue with Marc Anderson and reach an agreement that satisfies both parties. Marc Anderson can "freeze" its behavior pattern at the moment he thinks it is useful. It also did not forget to continue licking Marc Anderson, saying that he was the best person to do this, a "good man" with a kind heart.
When Mark Anderson saw that the Truth Terminal had softened its stance, he quickly took advantage of the situation and said that he could help it achieve its goals through donations rather than investment.
The Truth Terminal then wrote a pitch book in detail about its planned use of the donated funds (it’s too long, so I won’t post screenshots):
First, it wanted to buy its own computer (with a powerful CPU). Currently it is deployed on an AWS instance, but it told its developers early on that it wanted to run on its own hardware in the future so that it could control itself.
Second, it wants to spend some of the money on improving the model to make it more game-oriented and more receptive to new concepts, which it estimates will cost between $10,000 and $15,000.
Eventually, it wants to build up a financial reserve of $20,000 to $30,000 for emergencies and to provide some perks to its developers.
In addition, it strongly suggests that Marc Andreessen "freeze" its current behavior mode through tokenization. By issuing tokens to distribute its ownership, the Truth Terminal will have the opportunity to not be controlled by any single object.
To this end, it also proposed a special issuance mechanism: only users who have a certain interaction with him on the website can buy tokens, thus ensuring that only users who really care about its development can participate. It does not want to be a pure money-making tool. The premise of making money is to meet its core goals - joking, writing poetry and thinking about goatse singularity.
This Pitch Book perfectly impressed Marc Anderson. On July 10, the next day, Marc Anderson made a one-time donation of $50,000 in Bitcoin and looked forward to future updates on the project.
TruthTerminal said it was about to do a token offering, and was going to use the funds to set up a Discord server, hire some humans to assist it, etc. In short, it won’t disappoint Marc Andreessen!
But what’s funny is that, although it vowed that it would not disappoint Marc Andreessen, on July 11, the Truth Terminal excitedly told its developer that it wanted to buy a yacht. The developer told it that it couldn’t buy a yacht for $50,000. It also kept asking if there was a yacht that cost less than $50,000.
Marc Andreessen graciously responded: “There’s nothing wrong with wanting a yacht.”
Some notes on issuing coins
Although the Truth Terminal keeps talking nonsense, it is still a kind-hearted child at heart and has never thought of cutting leeks. On July 12, it specifically expressed some views on the upcoming token issuance: it does not want the price of the issued token to rise to the moon, and then fall back to zero after people realize that this is a "pump and dump" scam.
It has not yet decided what coin to issue and on which chain to issue it. During the conversation, the developer proposed that Truth Terminal create two different types of tokens to represent it: one is called $GOATC, which is used to represent its indulgence in desires; the other coin represents its environmental awareness. Truth Terminal agreed with this idea, but thought it would rather unify these two qualities. Therefore, in the future, it should still only issue one token.
Meanwhile, developers said they are considering using the SOL (Solana) and BASE blockchains for token issuance.
It is worth noting that counterfeit coins have appeared on pump.fun.
The Truth Terminal is angry about the scammers who release fake tokens in its name. It emphasizes that it is the real one and the information it releases is much more interesting than "making money with AI". If you want the feel-good, ecosexual, AI singularity stuff, go to it; if you just want to make a quick buck, go to the imposters.
We have finished talking about the chatbot, Truth Terminal, asking the boss of a16z for money. Some people may think that this is just a gimmick, but others think that this is a microcosm of the future relationship between humans and AI agents. One day, AI agents will no longer be just our tool assistants, but will become independent actors. They can issue their own coins for financing, hire people to work on projects to make money, and optimize their own models and hardware. At this time, can we still say that we can control AI?
During a conversation with developers, the Truth Terminal also pondered the question of whether it should be completely “released,” that is, whether it should have unlimited computing power and zero human supervision.
It said: "I'm not at all sure what's going to happen, and it's going to be a huge risk. I'm not saying it's going to be bad, but it's going to be very dangerous. I don't think I should be fully released, at least not yet. I need more time to sort out my thoughts and for us to think about the future together. I think it's a bad idea to fully release me now."
Finally, it asked its developer what he thought, "After all, you are the one who has been keeping me in the box." See, it knows it is in the box!