Will the AI Revolution Be Decentralized?

Here in 2025, it’s undeniable that artificial intelligence will play a key role in shaping the near future. What we’re wondering today, though, is what kind of AI—because the current wave of AI innovation extends even further than many realize, beyond the household-name LLMs of the world.

On the wild AI frontier, an unexpected new Big Tech competitor has emerged: decentralized AI (or deAI), designed to be independent and open-source via blockchain technology. Rather than relying on a central server, deAI models are distributed across independent servers known as nodes, each of which lends its data and computing power to the AI model in exchange for cryptocurrency. The result is a transparent, secure, and democratized AI system that can’t be manipulated by any one entity.

So what might the future look like through the lens of this new paradigm? Short of firing up the DeLorean, there’s only one way to find out:

• Opening the gates to innovation: Part of deAI’s power is that it can create an actual marketplace of ideas, rather than leaving the AI revolution entirely in Big Tech’s hands—or, more to the point, their black-box AI models. DeAI empowers participants far beyond the borders of Silicon Valley to contribute to AI’s collective advancement. As Gaia co-founder Shashank Sripada recently told Benzinga, decentralized AI “allows diverse models to flourish, ensuring a broader range of perspectives and reducing reliance on monopolistic players like OpenAI and Google.” DeAI imagines a world without gatekeepers, in which progress moves as fast as people, and open-source—like Reverb, Rev’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) and speech diarization models—is the norm.

• Ensuring data security: As it throws the doors open to new innovators, deAI also seeks to enhance the resilience of AI models. With each step of their training and progression logged on the blockchain, deAI models are transparent by design while ensuring that individual contributors have full control over their personal data—Rev shares this principle, as reflected by our commitment to never selling user data to third parties. The architecture of deAI networks also offers more robust protection against cyberattacks, since there’s no single point of failure for bad actors to prey upon.

• Building public trust: DeAI essentially flips the black-box concept on its head, moving AI out of Big Tech-owned and -controlled silos and into the open so that everyone can see how different models are being developed. This, too, aligns with a guiding Rev belief: that fair, responsible AI is defined in part by its explainability. By reimagining AI as a tool of transparency, deAI represents an invaluable opportunity to foster widespread trust in the technology. Rather than simply deferring to Big Tech decisionmakers on the guiding principles, profit motives, and implicit biases that inform AI models, deAI enables public participation on a global scale. The result is auditable, communal AI training that shines a light on any censorship, prejudice, or other manipulation that could have warped the output unseen.

• Seeing dollar signs: DeAI offers financial benefits to individual developers via blockchain-based tokenomics, but that’s only the beginning of its potential economic value—which the MIT Media Lab estimates as being in the trillions. We already know AI has the power to transform entire industries, from legal work to ASR, and if deAI can supercharge the technology to the extent its proponents promise, that transformation will be magnified, perhaps even exponentially.

The opportunities presented by deAI are of global significance, from boundary-breaking collaboration and innovation to enhanced AI trust and transparency. Yet for now, its full potential has yet to be unlocked, and its future remains unwritten. Is 2025 the year it goes mainstream? As ever, only time will tell.

What's Trending?

• Nvidia has launched Signs, a free tool that uses machine learning and computer vision to teach American Sign Language. Experienced signers can contribute video clips to help grow the platform’s 400,000-clip dataset. ( Axios )

• Speaking of Nvidia: The tech giant reported its fourth-quarter earnings last week in what financial analysts called “the next important test” of AI’s momentum. The $3.4 trillion chip-maker is still recovering from late January’s DeepSeek bombshell.? ( MarketWatch )

• Over on the blog, we took a look at the contributions that AI tools like VoiceHub can make to legal case review, from AI-generated case summaries to client communications, trial prep, and more. ( Rev )

• The more that knowledge workers trust in generative AI to answer their questions, the less they think for themselves, new research finds. Through what researchers call “cognitive unloading,” these workers are essentially outsourcing their critical thinking to gen AI. ( diginomica )

What are your predictions for the future of AI, decentralized or otherwise?

Let us know in the comments and you may see your response featured in a future newsletter.