AI is now the darling of the investment community. The emergence of OpenAI’s ChatGPT has given us the future we have been waiting for. Top tech companies like Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Amazon are racing to bring out the next best Artificial Intelligence. Chipmakers like Nvidia are seeing massive growth despite the bear market. Billions of dollars are being poured into this new technology. Some are saying crypto is dead because of this. However, top executives from blockchain projects have expressed their opinions that these two emerging technologies can benefit from each other.
Last September, the Messari Mainnet conference hosted a fireside chat between top executives from different crypto projects. Present were Greg Osuri, founder and CEO of Akash Network; Ilya Polosukhin, Near’s co-founder; and Jacob Steeves, a Core Developer from Bittensor.
A Closer Look at AI
Most of us have probably used AIs like ChatGPT or Bing, which are categorized as Large Language Models or LLMs. LLMs can generate natural language based on inputs. Using these AIs can be likened to chatting to a real person. These are also supercharged search engines. They can pass exams, create programming codes, and more.
Generative AIs, like DALL-E and Midjourney, are also gaining popularity. These types can generate images based on text inputs. You can ask a generative AI to create an image by simply describing what you want.
Just like Proof-of-Work (Pow) Crypto blockchain networks, these AIs need a lot of computing power and energy. One of the reasons why chip maker Nvidia became a trillion-dollar company is that the company is the top producer of graphics processing units (GPU), which power AI models. Its flagship product, the Nvidia H100, is the choice of big tech companies. Giants like Meta, Microsoft, and Google have spent hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars to buy GPUs to train AI models.
Where is the intersection of Crypto and AI?
It takes a lot of resources to create and maintain AIs. A single Nvidia H100 GPU is worth at least $30,000. And GPUs consume a lot of electricity. In the Messari Mainnet Conference, the three blockchain executives discussed this and they all agreed that AI companies can either keep the project open source and decentralized or closed source and controlled by a single entity.
Companies like Microsoft and OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT) are not open source. The public does not have access to their codes. These AI models are also controlled by the company. While these might seem alright, there is a possibility that users of these AI models will be taken advantage of without them knowing it.
Greg Osuri, Akash CEO said it best:
“AI is so powerful, people who control AI are going to be our new lords.“
But how can we avoid a future where AI models are controlled by a select few? This is where crypto comes in.
Bittensor’s Core Developer Jacob Steeves said:
“We need to bring the crypto power, the decentralization, the resistance to outside and centralized control into AI world…. To stop AI from being controlled by these large corporations.”
Near co-founder Ilya Polosukhin also shared the same sentiment:
“It takes money to build it, it takes money to attract talent… where crypto comes in… Crypto has been innovating how to monetize open source.”
A Closer Look at the Proposed Model
Bitcoin (BTC) was created after the global financial crisis of 2007-2008. Satoshi Nakamoto saw that traditional finance is controlled by an elite few and ordinary people can’t do anything about it. Anybody can use BTC and nobody can control it.
AI in its current form, is in its infancy. It holds a lot of promise and is poised to be one of the most powerful tools created. However, the cost of creating and maintaining it is so expensive that only a select few can invest the necessary amount. If we continue with this path, then it will be no different from traditional finance. In a few years, AI will be controlled by a few companies.
But crypto can change this. Developers can create decentralized and permissionless AI models with the help of the community. Instead of waiting for big venture capitalists or mega-corporations to invest and take control of their projects, the community can instead chip in. Contributions can be made secure and tamper-proof via blockchain networks. Any change in the AI model can be voted by the community based on their token contributions.
Crypto and AI Are Both Needed
The Internet was said to be a fad when it was introduced. But look at us now. Our lives are now governed by the Internet. AI was quickly adopted by a lot of people. In a few years, it will be embedded in our daily lives. It sounds exciting but also scary. Let us not think about the “Terminator” movie, but let us focus on something equally frightening. What if the tool that has become an essential part of life is controlled by a select few?
The AI that controls your smart home or the AI that controls your autonomous car can all be under one company. That is a lot of power for one entity. There is a saying that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Osuri was right in saying that those who control AIs will be our new lords.
But it is not too late. Crypto was created to give us a choice. And that choice can be extended to AI. Crypto will make sure that it stays decentralized and permissionless. The question is when will developers start the marriage of these two innovative technologies. Hopefully soon, while we still can.
About the Messari Mainnet Panelist
The Messari Mainnet Panelist:
- Greg Osuri is the co-founder and CEO of Akash Network, a decentralized cloud computing platform that aims to transform the future of cloud computing.
- Ilya Polosukhin is the co-founder of NEAR Protocol, a scalable and user-friendly blockchain platform for decentralized applications and smart contracts. He is also an artificial intelligence researcher and software engineer and has worked at Google and NVIDIA.
- Jacob Steeves is the co-founder and CEO of Bittensor, an open-source protocol that powers a decentralized machine learning network.
