I’ve been thinking about the relationship between blockchains and AI lately. Both are emerging foundational technologies and I think it’s no accident they are both coming of age at the same time.
Multiple writers have already expressed this view:
AIs can be used to generate “deep fakes” while cryptographic techniques can be used to reliably authenticate things against such fakery. Flipping it around, crypto is a target-rich environment for scammers and hackers, and machine learning can be used to audit crypto code for vulnerabilities. I am convinced there is something deeper going on here. This reeks of real yin-yangery that extends to the roots of computing somehow
From Venkatesh Rao: https://studio.ribbonfarm.com/p/the-dawn-of-mediocre-computing
I think AI and Web3 are two sides of the same coin. As machines increasingly do the work that humans used to do, we will need tools to manage our identity and our humanity. Web3 is producing those tools and some of us are already using them to write, tweet/cast, make and collect art, and do a host of other things that machines can also do. Web3 will be the human place to do these things when machines start corrupting the traditional places we do/did these things.
From Fred Wilson: https://avc.com/2022/12/sign-everything/
In both writers’ examples, blockchain helps solve some of the problems that AI creates, and vice-versa. I’m reminded of Kevin Kelly who said, Each new technology creates more problems than it solves.
Blockchains and AI have a sort of weird and emergent technological symbiosis and I’m here for it.
So the brain flatulence below is just my way to think aloud, using the writing process to work through the question(s).
*Note: when I say “blockchain”, I include what Fred Wilson calls web3 and Venkatesh calls crypto; there are just a few canonical applications that we’re all familiar with (namely, bitcoin and ethereum); and when I say “AI”, I am thinking about the most popular machine learning models like GPT3 and Stable Diffusion
*Note also: I am just a humble user of these new and powerful AI tools, and can barely understand the abstract of a typical machine learning research paper; so part of the reason why I’m writing this is to find out where I’m wrong a la Cunningham’s law
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A blockchain is a tool for individual sovereignty; while an AI is a tool for individual creativity
A blockchain operates at maximum transparency; while an AI operates largely as a black box
A blockchain clearly shows the chain of ownership and history; while an AI… (does something like the opposite in the way it aggregates and melds and mutates as much data as possible?)
A blockchain is “trustless”, in the sense that what you see on-chain is the agreed upon “truth” of all its users; while an AI is (?), in the sense that what it generates is more or less unique to the specific prompt / question / user (and even this can change as the model is updated, or new data is added]
An AI is much easier to use than a blockchain
An AI can create vast quantities of content, very cheaply; while a (truly “decentralized”) blockchain is limited by scalability and cost
An AI is centralized (to a specific company, or model, or data set) in the sense that decision making rests with a team or company; while a blockchain is decentralized and decision making is distributed
A surprising user experience – as in, an unexpected but delightful output – is typically net positive for a user of AI, while seeing something happen on a blockchain that you don’t expect would generally be pretty bad (yes, of course there are airdrops)
Blockchains are a competitive threat to industries with a high degree of centralization (such as fiat currency issuance, and payment networks); AI is a competitive threat to many individual online workers (such as language translators, and freelance writers, and basic QA/QC employees)
Both blockchains and AI have multiple open source products that can be forked by developers
Both blockchains and AI are platforms upon which many other products and services can be built
Both blockchains and AI are technologies that exploded into the popular consciousness in the last 10 years
Both “blockchain” and “AI” are very broad suitcase words, in part because they are both the product of many technologies combined in innovative ways: for blockchain that is everything from cryptography to smart contract programming to PoW mining to distributed consensus mechanisms; for AI that’s, uh…well everything listed here and more, I suppose
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I’ll end here for now, but let me know what I got wrong, what I’m missing, and what questions or ideas this might inspire
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Addendum #1: I asked ChatGPT
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Addendum #2: This NYT article notes that SBF (“Sam Bankscam Fraud”) donated at least $500M to organizations researching AI alignment and AI safety. Not exactly the kind of symbiosis I want to explore, but worth noting.
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Addendum #3:
Blockchains can only give precise answers, while AI can give approximate answers or even fabricate answers
Blockchains are censorship resistant, while AI is centralized (most are created by small doxxed teams) and have implemented restrictions on usage (most have rules against, for example, CSAM or nudity)