AI and Blockchain - The magic of two opposing paradigms

“Our new technologies, combined with our numbers, have made us, collectively, a force of nature” — Al Gore

We have seen an explosion of technological advancement across verticals in 2019, which makes it a landmark year for technology. Technology has become such an important part of our lives that it has started changing even the nature of work itself. This special piece just before the Christmas and New Year holidays will help me bring 2019 to a close, by discussing about the next steps for a collaborative future. Even though this party hasn't quite kicked off yet, the combination of blockchain and AI has received a large amount of corporate & scholarly attention.

We know that blockchain is a distributed, decentralised and immutable ledger with encrypted data whereas AI can be defined as an engine that allows analytics and automated decision making from the data collected. PWC reports that AI will add up to $15.7 trillion to the world economy by 2030 and blockchain will add up to $3.1 trillion during the same time.

Since both the technologies deal with data intelligence at their core, it makes sense to explore them together in totally novel ways. Similarly, theoretically, the integration of another tech like machine learning and AI with blockchain or the other way around could possibly enhance blockchain’s underlying architecture and increase the efficiency of AI.

Presently, a lot of processing power is required to perform tasks on any blockchain that runs on standard computing systems. AI could potentially boost the efficiency of blockchains by overcoming these issues. Let’s look at some AI+Blockchain applications that are going to happen quite soon and discuss their next level implications.

Creating Diverse Data Sets

While public blockchain technology powers cryptocurrencies, private blockchain networks are capable of being applied to multiple industries to introduce decentralisation.

For example, SingularityNet focuses on using blockchain to encourage a broader distribution of data and algorithms, ensuring the development of artificial intelligence and the creation of “Decentralised A.I.”

Data Security

Blockchain is essentially a technology that allows for the storage of data in an encrypted manner on a distributed ledger, all while providing access control. This combination of AI and Blockchain can provide a highly foolproof decentralised system for valuable personal data.

“Over time, the best entrepreneurs, developers, and investors have become wary of building on top of centralised platforms. We now have decades of evidence that doing so will end in disappointment. In addition, users give up privacy, control of their data, and become vulnerable to security breaches. These problems with centralised platforms will likely become even more pronounced in the future.” – Chris Dixon

Trusting AI's Decision Making

As AI progresses further, it will become difficult to understand how certain programs come to their end conclusions. This is a result of AI algorithms being able to process incredibly large amounts of data through repetitive learning. Hence data auditing will be a very significant and daunting task at the same time!

Since Blockchain can provide an immutable record of all the data and processes used by AI to arrive at a particular decision, it can act as a bullet-proof audit record.

Data Monetisation

We know that monetising collected data is the prime revenue earner for the tech giants like Google and Facebook. The cost of these profits is borne by you as the end-user whose data is being sold for profits, making you stuck in a place where you are not sure how to feel about this.

The article “Feeling Invaded? Time for a Revolution” highlights how Blockchain allows us to secure our data and give access to our data as we see fit, at our personal discretion. In order to learn and develop, AI networks will have to buy data directly from its creators through different data marketplaces in a democratised manner.

Hence, you can see Blockchain acting as a foil against the pitfalls of AI, thus leading to two revolutionary as well as complementary thoughts -

• Decentralised AI Marketplaces
• AI Networks & Decentralised Autonomous Organisations

With this, I leave you all to wrap your head around the above ideas during this winter break. Looking forward to catch you all next year with a bigger and bolder bet and most likely, a part 2 version of the above!

I am super excited for what's in store next, how about you?

Cheers