Blockchain Depends on its Community.
A strong link is forming between the two most powerful emerging technologies of the decade. On one side is AI, the data-hungry machine that is replacing humans at breakneck speed. On the other is Blockchain’s trustless systems – not where trust doesn’t exist, but where trust isn’t a variable; it’s true or it isn’t. This makes it easy to understand why governments around the world are afraid of adopting blockchain. If you pay road-tax and it can only be used for road-repairs, where is the scope for the government to redirect that money into other projects? Now couple that trustless protocol with an AI system that is constantly monitoring billions of data-points at a time. Which part of the road will that tax pay for first?
And this is where the community comes in. Who are the data points?
The recent wave of who owns your information has fuelled this and amongst the many ideas are some that allow you to be the benefactor of your data. The AI depends on data derived from what we do, where we go, how we get there
A strong link is forming between the two most powerful emerging technologies of the decade.
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology, the data-hungry machine, excites almost every sector of the world’s economy. This technology promises not only to automate the work process and free us to enjoy life but also to grow humanity’s ability to analyze information and answer questions that no person, company, or government will ever be able to solve.
Blockchain technology, for some, is all about money, speculations, and lots of moon memes but for those who understand just a little technology and business, the magic is really about an amazingly simple idea. This innovative technology is made possible mainly by connecting existing technologies such as encryption, a peer to peer protocol, and a verifiable data structure. This structure we call the blockchain. Combining these into one protocol makes it possible to create an immutable ledger.
We never before (since bitcoin blockchain deployment in late 2008) had the capacity to create and maintain a ledger, a database where no records can be tempered with. On this ledger, every piece of information is stored forever and can not be deleted or changed. This baseline technology opened the doors for trustless applications, allowing users to rely on the data without trusting any central body to do the job of hosting and securing the data.
The first application to run on the blockchain was a currency ledger to allow value transfers. This is known as the Bitcoin ledger. Today Bitcoin is used to transfer value equal to billions of dollars around the world.
The money printed by central banks and governments around the world and distributed unwisely, now has competition from a digital rival where trust is not needed, transparency is built-in and the protocol governance rules are proven for over a decade to allow healthy scaling of the technology to allow support for global usage.
Decentralized solutions are gaining popularity beyond the original application of currencies and payments. We witness the deployment of many platforms, and applications where the trustless, decentralized model wins users’ preferences.
Some of the most innovative solutions are emerging on the cross-roads of AI and blockchain.
Using the two technologies to replace traditional systems is demonstrating the quantum leap we are expected to see on many processes we take for granted today.
We can explore one out of many real-life use cases, for example, a supply chain management system, used by producers and markets to track and report on the production and logistics process.
Traditionally such systems will require a network operated by private organizations and hosted on servers, carrying heavy hosting and security costs. Such a system when compared to the new generation (blockchain-based), is suffering from a lack of interoperability, limited analytics, and alerts capabilities, and fewer reports. In addition to less attractive models for data security and quality verifications.
It Is all about the data
The new generations of solutions are starting to replace the traditional database with the blockchain or running a blockchain alongside the legacy systems. The AI can now use verifiable data sources and generate analytics and reports based on data from a wider set of contributors while rewarding good players in the ecosystem like data verifications or entry points.
For the AI this type of design is setting the stage for next-level capabilities.
When verifiable data is flowing on the blockchain, organizations are empowered by sharing this resource. In the corporate world, we can see IBM launch a supply chain network for food and general cargo shipping. However, it is not necessarily the corporate world that will win this race.
Projects like open ai and Ethereum are providing the capability for entrepreneurs to utilize public blockchain and AI tools to come up with innovative solutions. On the consumer side, there is a trend to be more vigilant with the data we share and awareness that our information has value and in some cases, we should be rewarded instead of just being bombarded with ads.
Blockchain projects were the first to start deploying combined solutions.
Solutions such as Marketing bots with tokenize rewards for the participants or trading platforms with automation and forecasting abilities. These and many more are the fruits of decentralized projects where the community can launch its own token and create value by offering application solutions working with the data collected from stakeholders and users.
Many industries are now deep into the research, development, and deployment of such innovative solutions. From insurance companies running by the crowd to whole organizations working in a decentralized manner, there are hopes the future will be less wistful and more human.
