Why AI Needs Blockchain by Solo Ceesay
This year, artificial intelligence ( AI) has quickly surpassed many of the other technological advancements trying to catch our attention and, as a result of this, the conversation has quickly shifted. In 2022, headlines were dominated by how blockchain and cryptocurrency serve as the keys to a trustless, inclusive financial system. But now, there’s a greater focus on how ChatGPT and other AI tools and frameworks are our best hope of increasing productivity and innovation.
AI is meant to free up human capital by automating monotonous, mundane tasks — similar to how calculators automate basic arithmetic but with far more complex capabilities and the ability to adapt over time. A calculator will always tell you that two plus two equals four, but an AI bot, through machine learning, should pick up on various behavioral patterns. For example, by observing when that user tends to ask the bot to perform a certain equation or anticipate why the user is asking the question in the first place, it could suggest a more efficient route to the solution. In the face of the overwhelming AI media narrative, it might have become easier to dismiss blockchain’s capabilities but the reality is: AI needs blockchain to scale and maintain its integrity.
Why Blockchain Struggles to Catch On
Sometimes the hardest part of ushering in innovation is raising awareness about the problem at hand. Consumers don’t often see a clear reason for a solution to a given issue. When asked about what prompted his (at the time) unfathomable invention of the automobile, Henry Ford eloquently stated that if he had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. In other words, sometimes the greatest inventions are things that live in the realm of incomprehensibility and blockchain is quite similar in this sense.
We live in the age of technological renaissance. Our phones, cars and homes are continually getting smarter while our financial system has suffered from relative stagnation since the invention of the credit card. Crypto influencer Mason Versluis describes crypto as “smart money,” positioning it as the natural successor to existing financial technologies. Unsurprisingly, there has been skepticism and resistance — but this has been the case with every major technology introduced over the last century. When personal computers hit the market, they initially only attracted the attention of a niche group of hobbyists, with the wider public left wondering what the purpose of a PC was. Decades later, most of the planet now has access to the internet. With this initial skepticism towards distributed ledger technology (DLT) and a lack of mainstream education on the topic, there is a lot of cynicism. It’s quite easy to fall victim to the narrative that blockchain and crypto are scams, but it’s crucial to discern why you might have believed this narrative to begin with.
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Regulators across the globe are split on crypto’s value proposition — a handful perceives it as our only hope of creating a fair and inclusive financial system, while others see it as merely another tool to enable illicit activity. While education on the matter has been furthered, providing newcomers with the skills to identify and avoid scams and illegal activity in the space, the negative sentiment still remains. In part, this is because the concept of decentralization is a source of anxiety for governments and financial institutions around the world. Taking that power and disseminating it to everybody fairly is a process that limits how many slices one party might snag from the community’s pie. So naturally, those negatively impacted are quick to speak out against blockchain.
A Mutually Beneficial Relationship
One could say that AI has already left its mark on history. It took just five days for ChatGPT to amass 1 million users. For context, it took Instagram 2.5 months and Netflix 3.5 years to achieve the same feat. ChatGPT’s capabilities are so extraordinary that we’ve seen software engineers go viral on TikTok for showing how it could write complex lines of code to build a trading bot. That said, we’ve also witnessed instances of ChatGPT providing misleading and/or harmful answers. While AI has its limitations, blockchain can help solve a few of those problems.
While blockchain can potentially enhance AI in the long term, it’s equally the case that blockchain could greatly benefit from AI integrations to scale. One example would be utilizing AI to streamline the smart contract experience from initial coding to deployment. Because smart contracts are immutable, human error is quite punitive. So the use of AI to help eliminate human error can drastically increase the practicality of smart contracts being used and trusted by major enterprises across the globe. Another use case could be AI’s implementation into decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to help them make informed decisions, while the history of all actions taken by the DAO could live in perpetuity on the blockchain.
Conversely, because blockchain operates on the premise of complete transparency and community maintenance, Web3 frameworks are ideal for hosting data that can’t be compromised. To apply this to AI, blockchain could help protect the integrity of sensitive data sets that AI relies on to function. Additionally, the collaborative nature of Web3 technology provides the necessary portability for AI to grow smarter and add value outside of the current silos (or applications) it lives in. In other words, instead of using Google’s AI tool Bard whilst in the Google ecosystem or ChatGPT when in the Microsoft universe, blockchain imparts both AI tools the freedom and flexibility to live in both worlds simultaneously. In all, the synergies are quite vast.
Cautious Optimism
While we are still in the early days of AI, we can already see how it can invariably ameliorate our quality of life. However, numerous considerations require all of us to incorporate solutions, like blockchain, that make AI’s adoption practical. While the media quickly substituted one for the other, you must always be sure to do your research — you might just find yourself early to the next big thing.
Originally published at https://www.rollingstone.com on May 2, 2023.
