OUTsider INsights #10 – Special Edition with Const

This interview was fully written by: TAO Outsider

Before we begin…

Our work focuses on the TAO Bittensor ecosystem, so for this special edition, we invited none other than Const, the co-founder himself. He accepted the invitation, offered to schedule a meeting, but in the end we followed tradition and conducted the interview in text format.

Before going deeper into the interview, we discovered something interesting in common: we both love Brazil, the Amazon, and the local indigenous peoples — especially the Yawanawa. After reading this interview, I strongly suggest you take a moment to learn more about them.

So — let’s go.

The Interview

Outsider: Const, what’s happening with TAO Bittensor right now? Suddenly everyone is watching us. Everyone is talking about it. Why now? What changed?

Const: I think that the @tplr_ai Templar run played a massive role in opening up the eyeballs and unleashing the self-reinforcing flywheel of attention. There was all this lingering potential right under the surface around the incredible subnets we have on Bittensor. Templar burst the surface. I’ll give full credit to the covenant guys for this one. Bravo to that team and Sam, @DistStateAndMe, in particular.

Outsider: Around 18% of the available TAO supply is currently allocated across the 128 subnets in the ecosystem. The rest is still sitting in Root or on CEXs. How would you suggest people take their first step into exploring subnets?

Const: Try to mine one with an agent. See if it sucks or if the agent is smarter than the subnet.

Outsider: You were at Google when Attention Is All You Need dropped and watched the transformer architecture ignite the modern AI race from the inside.

Const: And I met a lot of the people writing that paper too! Geniuses.

Outsider: You left anyway to build something most people thought was unrealistic at the time.

Const: I never used to shut up about it and they thought I was crazy.

Outsider: Today, centralized labs still control most frontier models and large-scale compute. Has Bittensor already started changing that trajectory, or are we still early in shifting real control of AI toward a decentralized alternative?

Const: I believe it is all about aligned incentives. When we get the tech properly aligned things will move exponentially fast. So I am not concerned about the scale difference here. I am concerned about making Bittensor’s subnets perfectly aligned and working.

Outsider: You left a stable Google career, moved to Peru, and spent years building Bittensor before the world was paying attention. At some point during those early years, there must have been a moment when the rational decision would have been to stop. What was that moment for you?

Const: Naive rationalism would have stopped me from quitting the job. I got out of college. Way before I left the top team at Google and way before years of disaster and upsets in the early Bittensor years. The truth is that the question you are asking is badly formed. It is irrational to focus your life’s effort on something that doesn’t compel you. Your state of mind is what makes your life successful. To give up on what compels you is to lose already.

Outsider Thoughts: Life is about having the courage to make difficult decisions. Make no mistake. Maybe the question was badly formulated. But your answer was simply the truth. And that’s more than enough. Thank you, Const.

If you made it this far, you are probably already deeply involved, or at least genuinely interested, in the Bittensor ecosystem. Thanks!