Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain are two great technologies that will define our future.
Blockchain technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have become the perfect combination to keep the decentralization of projects developed in Web3. While both are technologies, which may seem new and highly innovative, their most basic development principles have a long history in computing. The foundation of blockchain and cryptocurrencies dates back 30 years to eCash, a 1983 idea attributed to David Chaum. The foundations of AI are much older. They date back to the forties of the last century when McCulloch and Pitts presented a model for artificial neurons. They paved the way for what we call Artificial Intelligence today.
Blockchain, AI and Web3
It is hard to believe that ideas developed so many years ago are now part of that innovative and revolutionary stack people are designing worldwide. With creations such as those driven by OpenAI, the well-known GPT-3, Dall-E, Codex, or more open-source ideas, such as Stable-Diffusion, AI is reaching an impressively rapid level of development. This ecosystem leads to other more industrial and professional uses, such as GitHub Copilot or the AI solutions that Tesla and other automakers are starting to implement in their autonomous driving models.
The same is true for the Hollywood industry, which has even more powerful tools for producing special effects. The mobile phone you use also has AI capabilities that you use every time you use your face to unlock it.
AI is getting everywhere because this technology has applications in almost every field we can imagine. But what about blockchain? For those who think it may lag because of crypto winter, nothing could be further from the truth. As the cypherpunks say, "developers write code." And that's what they are doing in many blockchain projects: coding and trying to create the next disruptive iteration of this technology, where AI is starting to play a significant role.
Personalizing Web services
If there is one place where blockchain and AI go hand in hand, it is on Web3. The need to personalize Web services and adjust them to the needs of their users usually involves centralized data centers that analyze the information and "serve what the user wants." Because it works so well, this model has been around since Web2. The only issue is that third parties own your data and typically give little thought to protecting your privacy.
Tackling this problem from Web3 is a challenge. Especially if we want to maintain the decentralization of services, that's where AI comes in. Not only to add the semantic part (the ability to adapt to what you search for and want) but to do it in a decentralized and private way. Of course, it doesn't just apply to Web3, as this duo of technologies can be used in products of different kinds, as is the case today.
Smart Contract auditing giant CertiK's SkyTrace product uses blockchain capabilities and AI. This compliance-focused development allows exchanges to comply with the stringent regulations for KYC/AML within their operations, thus avoiding the risks associated with certain activities within their wallets and services.
Markets and trends
Another development is Numerai, a Data Science project that uses the power of AI to analyze the development and evolution of blockchain markets. Its strength, although dedicated to studying markets, can also be directed to analyzing trends and behaviors within the blockchain. The goal would be to predict user needs or behaviors within Decentralized Applications (DApps) to personalize experiences.
A merge with many possibilities
The previous examples are just a few business use cases for this technology, but there are many others. Projects like Fetch.AI are an example that there are still many possibilities to explore along with blockchain and AI. But the fusion of both technologies would also enable such exciting things as:
AI models can review user history in a personalized and private way, obtain information, and provide a unique Web3 experience. This way, users would move from being mere consumers to being part of the consumption experience and content creation. User experience (UX) is vital for Web3, where users become creators and owners of their data and experiences at all times.
Another great use of AI in Web3 is to enable new media that generate long-term sustainability of projects. At this point, AI can facilitate the creation and unlocking of new value from the content you create and the creativity and intellect you use to make it. Machine Learning generates new forms of sustainability, value generation, and utility for the project and the user.
Finally, AI would make it possible to move from a unidirectional mass consumption model, where creators generate content and the audience consumes, to one of the more significant interactions. A model where creators and their communities have their platform and can interact, share and create content.
New AI models
Of course, the possibilities not only affect Web3 development. They also serve to develop new AI models that take advantage of the potential of decentralized computational networks, such as blockchain networks. The potential for AI development in this scenario would be enormous and more democratic, enabling those with access to those networks to create AI-powered software, which would significantly advance the pace of technological advancement on a global scale.
Things like this are already possible within blockchain networks like Ethereum. Projects such as MLG or Deep Art are just an example of the potential of Golem and blockchains to create open-access AI applications on the blockchain, in which they exploit the power of more than 10 thousand CPU cores, 17 TB of memory, and 118 TB of disk storage. These figures are more than enough for most AI applications we can imagine today and are far from the data that Google or Amazon can provide.
The current situation is only the beginning of these technologies. Even though there is still much work to do and a lot of code to be written, one thing is sure: blockchain and AI are a duet with many possibilities, and shortly, we will see many developments adding the best of both technologies.