I am biased as I work in AI but the reason I do so is because I think a lot of its applications are hugely beneficial, the last part talks about AI as enablers of democracy but the other paragraphs are essential to see how we keep it in control.
I usually don't engage in discussions about the blockchain because 99% of the time it is about the promotion of a scam. I used to like these tech that enable some new kind of decentralization but I totally moved away from them when I realized that bitcoin's main usage now is to dodge taxes and international sanctions.
In general I am interested in cryptoanarchism (from which blockchains and DAO come from) without really being a proponent of it: I feel like it is a solution looking for a problem. But then, I live in a relatively free country where I can open easily a bank account, make a non profit, associate with who I want. The whole cryptoanarchism thing shines more in cases where you consider governments to be an enemy but this is a double edged sword: going this way means you don't mind enabling criminal groups in the process.
When I talk about it to people from more authoritarian countries or from countries where inflation is very high, their perspective in a parallel system is different.
I don't see a place for them in a functional, cooperative society. They can be useful but to me, their existence is the indication of a problem. In an utopia, they can be useful as a backup system: "we can always revert to a cryptocurrency if you fuck up your currency policy" but ideally we should do better than them.