Maltese crypto lawyer Jonathan Galea has issued a stark warning about the pace of AI, arguing that the real disruption to the current world order will be more economic than political.
In a LinkedIn post reflecting on the recent launch of autonomous AI agent OpenClaw, Dr Galea – who is a partner at major US law firm Cahill Gordon & Reindel – said that products that take months and years to build can now be launched within days, with a fraction of the overhead costs.
“Companies and enterprises are likely to face a significant repricing event the likes of which will dwarf any past ones, and the winners are likely to be those that embrace the change rather than resist it,” he said.
“There has never been a time where one should feel so excited, or so afraid, as it is now. Whether it's one or the other: that's now completely up to you.”
Dr Galea said that while many jobs grounded in logical reasoning are likely to be at significant risk within the next two years, the world is still far away from agent autonomy.
Dr Galea described OpenClaw as a “notable step” forward towards agent autonomy, although not quite the finished product yet.
“It's more in the spirit of Neil Armstrong's quote of ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, as it foreshadows a seismic shift which for now it's still in its infancy,” he said.
“Despite the ability of 'plugging in' OpenClaw to various LLMs, its contextual awareness remains woefully limited, and its reinforced learning progress is reminiscent of LLM models of 1–2 years ago or so.”
“Swarms (with sub-agents) can greatly help in speeding up the learning process, although it requires a balance of token consumption (which can be immense unless properly configured) and regular intervention by the human user.”
Turning to his field of crypto, Dr Galea said it is likely that AI agents will more readily a digital-native monetary system, which highlights the need for an incorruptible, secure and lean monetary infrastructure.
“This is where crypto is facing an inflection point – can it become the monetary system of choice for the agentic world of tomorrow?” he questioned.
“I think it does, but we should not get sidelined by vaunted non-financial applications of blockchain technology which, time and time again, have proven to be non-viable.”
