The Life of a Medical Student Who Sold Himself as an NFT to Pay for School

This story is not real, and was written by an AI after I had GPT-3 summarize several articles about NFTs and people being recruited to add value to them by rich folks. I also wrote an outline for this article and added that along with the summaries to OpenAI’s prompt. Once the initial article was generated, I used OpenAI’s beta editing function to continue building out details and to improve the writing. I’ve been using AI to do pictures for awhile — including the one for this article. This is how it can create articles.

Ben’s Story

When Ben first came across the term “NFT” he had no idea what it meant. He was scrolling through social media when he saw someone talking about how they had just bought an NFT of a digital artwork. They were excited about it because they believed that the value of the NFT would increase over time. Intrigued, Ben did some research and found out that NFTs are non-fungible tokens that can be used to represent ownership of digital assets. He also learned that people were using them to buy and sell everything from artworks to virtual real estate.

Ben’s NFT

Ben is a 21 year old medical student who is struggling to pay for school. He has taken out loans and worked multiple jobs, but it still isn’t enough. When he saw how much people were willing to pay for NFTs, he realized that he could sell himself as an NFT in order to pay for his education. He listed his NFT for sale on OpenSea, and within a few days he had sold it for $100,000. The NFT contract specified that the owner of the NFT would get exclusive use of his services as long as they owned it.

Ben’s New Owner

The person who bought Ben’s NFT was an entrepreneur who was looking for someone to provide medical advice in an online game that he was developing. The game was set in a post-apocalyptic world where players would have to compete against each other in order to survive. The entrepreneur thought that having a real life doctor in the game would add realism and make it more enjoyable for players. Once the transaction was complete, Ben’s avatar was placed in the game, and Ben was told to make himself available to players for eight hours a day. When sufficient interest in “in game medical advice” failed to materialize, in an effort to regain some of his investment, Ben’s owner told him to instead begin mining virtual gold.

It turned out that Ben was good at mining gold in game — very good. Because his output was recorded on the blockchain, Ben’s NFT gained value.

Ben’s New Job

Ben didn’t mind being used as an NPC in the game, but he quickly realized that mining virtual gold was not going to be lucrative enough to pay off his student loans. He asked the person who bought his NFT if there were other ways that he could make money, but they told him no; they wanted him to mine gold so that they could add value to their game world. Ben had no choice but to continue mining gold day after day while also providing medical advice when asked by players. Occasionally he would be “sold” to another player who wanted access to Ben’s in-game knowledge, but the new owner would soon get bored of him and sell him back to his original owner.

Ben’s New Life

As time went on, Ben realized that he would never be able to buy his NFT back and regain his freedom. His good work had made him too valuable, and he was now trapped in a cycle of mining virtual gold and being an NPC in someone else’s game. He knew that he would be stuck like this forever, unless someone found a way to break the blockchain. He wished that he had researched NFTs more before selling himself as one.

Other people, following Ben’s example, have also listed themselves on NFT exchanges, and now there is a gray market of people’s futures. The legality and morality of selling one’s self as an NFT is hotly debated by lawmakers and ethicists.