Title: A hybrid marketplace of ideas Show Chinese title

Title: 思想的混合市场

Abstract: The convergence of humans and artificial intelligence systems introduces new dynamics into the cultural and intellectual landscape. Complementing emerging cultural evolution concepts such as machine culture, AI agents represent a significant techno-sociological development, particularly within the anthropological study of Web3 as a community focused on decentralization through blockchain. Despite their growing presence, the cultural significance of AI agents remains largely unexplored in academic literature. Toward this end, we conceived hybrid netnography, a novel interdisciplinary approach that examines the cultural and intellectual dynamics within digital ecosystems by analyzing the interactions and contributions of both human and AI agents as co-participants in shaping narratives, ideas, and cultural artifacts. We argue that, within the Web3 community on the social media platform X, these agents challenge traditional notions of participation and influence in public discourse, creating a hybrid marketplace of ideas, a conceptual space where human and AI generated ideas coexist and compete for attention. We examine the current state of AI agents in idea generation, propagation, and engagement, positioning their role as cultural agents through the lens of memetics and encouraging further inquiry into their cultural and societal impact. Additionally, we address the implications of this paradigm for privacy, intellectual property, and governance, highlighting the societal and legal challenges of integrating AI agents into the hybrid marketplace of ideas. Show Chinese abstract

Abstract: 人类与人工智能系统的融合为文化与知识景观带来了新的动态。 补充诸如机器文化等新兴文化进化概念，人工智能代理代表了一种重要的技术社会学发展，特别是在以通过区块链实现去中心化为重点的Web3的人类学研究中。 尽管它们的存在日益增多，但人工智能代理的文化意义在学术文献中仍 largely 未被探索。 为此，我们构思了混合网络民族志，这是一种新的跨学科方法，通过分析人类和人工智能代理作为共同参与者在塑造叙述、思想和文化艺术品中的互动和贡献，来研究数字生态系统中的文化与知识动态。 我们认为，在社交媒体平台X上的Web3社区中，这些代理挑战了公共话语中传统的参与和影响力概念，创造了一个混合的思想市场，这是一个概念空间，人类和人工智能生成的思想共存并争夺关注。 我们考察了人工智能代理在思想生成、传播和参与方面的现状，通过模因学的视角将它们的角色定位为文化代理，并鼓励进一步研究它们的文化和社会影响。 此外，我们还讨论了这一范式对隐私、知识产权和治理的影响，强调将人工智能代理融入混合思想市场所带来的社会和法律挑战。