Why AI NEEDS Blockchain (esp Polkadot)

The world is seeing an explosion of investment in Artificial Intelligence, with US investments hitting $196 billion in 2023 and projected to reach trillions. Amidst this rapid growth, Polkadot is emerging as a critical foundational layer, uniquely positioned to fuel AI's advancements. The integration of AI and blockchain is not just a buzzword; it's a fundamental necessity, addressing key challenges like privacy, data verification, and efficient resource sharing, with Polkadot and its ecosystem projects like OriginTrail and Phala Network playing a pivotal role.

Here's a deeper dive into why AI truly needs blockchain and how Polkadot is contributing:

• Massive AI Investment and Polkadot's Unique Position

  • AI is dominating conversations, from Apple Intelligence to huge investment figures, making it an inescapable topic.
  • US investments in AI were $196 billion in 2023 and are expected to grow into the trillions.
  • Polkadot is seen as a key player building heavily to support AI advances, not just on one layer but as a "hub of many layers," making it perfectly suited for AI growth.
  • Now is a crucial time to observe Polkadot's AI developments, as they provide the necessary fuel and resources for the next big market upswing, especially seeing AI and crypto converging.

• Why AI Needs Blockchain: Privacy Concerns

  • Privacy is becoming a significant issue with deep AI integration into personal devices and products, as highlighted by Elon Musk's strong reaction to Apple Intelligence.
  • AI is constantly learning from user inputs and outputs, which poses a huge privacy risk because it continuously "knows what you're doing."
  • Blockchain offers a solution through "secure compute," which is the ability to run computations without even knowing what's inside the data.
  • Private compute, enabled by blockchain, is seen as the future, eliminating the need for extreme measures like banning devices for privacy reasons.

• Why AI Needs Blockchain: Verifying Information and Factual Accuracy

  • A major problem with current AI is its tendency to "make stuff up" or hallucinate, creating confusion about whether the data or the AI itself is at fault.
  • There's an urgent need to verify information and data to ensure its truthfulness.
  • Blockchain provides "decentralized truth," similar to how Bitcoin ensures the truth of fund movements.
  • Public blockchains are powerful for businesses because they allow participation without any single entity controlling all information, fostering trust.
  • This universal language of blockchain allows large corporations, despite their inherent distrust (e.g., Facebook with Amazon, Amazon with Apple), to work together and share information for AI services on an equal playing field.
  • Polkadot's design, as a Layer Zero with parachains on top, is particularly advantageous, allowing companies to build their own chains and use Polkadot to communicate between them for AI services, enabling seamless multi-company AI interactions.

• Why AI Needs Blockchain: Resource Sharing

  • Blockchain facilitates simple payments between platforms, allowing for the tokenization of anything, including time on GPUs.
  • This opens the door for huge decentralized platforms that could supersede existing services like AWS by being more geared towards AI and offering decentralized resource sharing.
  • It allows for the sharing economy of GPU, CPU, and co-computational power for any AI project.

• Polkadot's Contributions to AI: OriginTrail

  • AI currently operates like a "black box," where the reasoning behind its outputs is unclear.
  • OriginTrail aims to provide both information for AI and traceability to understand how AI arrived at its conclusions.
  • Its core is the Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG), which serves as the fundamental knowledge asset AI needs, distinguishing OriginTrail by its tracking capabilities.
  • The project specifically addresses AI hallucination by making AIs more accurate and easier to trace wrong information back to its source.
  • OriginTrail acts as a support tool for various AI models (OpenAI, Apple Intelligence, Google Palm), ensuring information provenance.
  • It's a foundational architecture, with early applications like ChatDKG.ai, but its true power will be seen as more applications are built on top of it.

• Polkadot's Contributions to AI: Phala Network

  • AI is power-hungry, requiring significant CPU and GPU resources.
  • Phala Network provides a decentralized solution with over 34,000 online workers, allowing anyone to contribute their compute power.
  • It acts as an integration hub, helping AI applications connect and interact (e.g., Arweave connecting to Twitter or Binance).
  • Phala's growth since 2019 demonstrates a clear market need for cheaper, diversified access to compute power for AI startups.
  • Its decentralized nature means it can scale far faster than traditional centralized cloud services like AWS, which require physical server purchases and infrastructure building.
  • Built on its own Polkadot parachain, Phala offers powerful computation without network congestion, combined with built-in privacy, meaning users don't have to worry about data leaks.

• Conclusion: The Future of AI and Blockchain

  • Blockchain has immense potential to drastically accelerate AI growth by adding security, verifiability, and robust transaction capabilities.
  • AI is set to fundamentally change how the world works, from everyday tasks to more complex scientific endeavors.
  • The integration of AI and blockchain is critical, addressing core challenges and unlocking new possibilities.
  • Investing in the future of AI through its underlying infrastructure, like Polkadot and its projects, is a pragmatic approach.