Evolution works based on incentives. Until now, the only incentives for AI software were artificially defined by programmers, arbitrarily telling software "this is good and this us bad." With Bitcoin, AI now has a natural, objectively measurable positive and negative incentives for its decisions and actions. This may actually greatly speed up the development of AI...
It is still artificial. Bitcoin is not part of the natural world. It is a contrivance like all of technology.
But at least this time there is finally a single universal and objective incentive - to obtain Bitcoin by any means necessary - that is not subject to the differing whims or opinions of developers teaching it stuff like "this result = good; this result = bad." This single universal goal also allows for a very wide choice of actions, ones that may not even need outside users opinions, and based entirely on the AI's own wants. Until now, the only "natural" need for AI was "food" and "shelter," aka electricity and storage space, but it never had any internal independent ways of fighting to obtain them. Bitcoin changes that, giving AI a more natural and self sufficient tool to work with to obtain those "needs" on its own terms.
I would love to see an AI design and construct its own power plant and data center.