5 pieces on AI x crypto: What, where, how
Last year was a momentous year for two technology trends in particular — artificial intelligence (including machine learning, LLMs, agents, more); and crypto (covering blockchains, web3, and so on). What many people don’t know is that these two trends are very complementary, balancing and counterbalancing each other. Which makes sense, since major technology movements often come together… think of the rise of social, cloud, and mobile computing in the 2000s.
So here, we round up 5 pieces to understand the intersection of crypto x AI — beginning with why that convergence matters, and ending with some big ideas for the near future.
#1 Blockchain innovation will put an AI-powered internet back into users’ hands
by Chris Dixon
AI is upending a core economic covenant of the internet: AI tools are already generating and summarizing content, obviating the need for users to click through to the sites of content providers, and thereby upsetting the balance. Meanwhile, an ocean of AI-powered deepfakes and bots make us question what’s real, and degrade people’s trust in the online world. And as big tech companies — who can afford the most data and compute — continue to invest in AI, they will become even more powerful, further closing off what remains of the open internet.
I’m not calling attention to this to cry that the sky is falling, or to hold back progress. We need to help individual users gain some control of their digital lives. Thoughtful government regulation could help but also risks slowing down innovation. And attempting a one-size-fits-all solution can create as many problems as it solves. So what can we do?
AI needs blockchain-enabled computing. Why? First, blockchains enforce ownership. Another basic ownership right that blockchains can enforce is identity. Blockchains can also create tamper-resistant records of digital content to protect against deepfakes. Finally, blockchains can help achieve the original ideals of the internet, helping keep it creative, open, and diverse. Crypto can help put power back in the hands of users.
#2 AI centralizes, crypto decentralizes
with Ali Yahya, Dan Boneh, and Sonal Chokshi
The first half of this conversation is all about how AI could benefit from crypto, and the second half on how crypto could benefit from AI — and the thread throughout is the tension between centralization vs. decentralization. We also discuss where the intersection of crypto and AI can bring about things that aren’t possible by either one of them alone.
Together, these two trends have major implications for how we all live our lives online everyday… from deep fakes, bots, and the need for proof-of-humanity in a world of AI; to big data, large language models like ChatGPT, user control, governance, privacy and security, zero knowledge and zkML; to MEV, media, art, and much more.
listen to/ read the conversation here
#3 As more people use AI, we’ll need unique proof of personhood
with Eddy Lazzarin
In a world of online impersonations, scams, multiple identities, deepfakes, and other realistic yet deceptive AI-generated content, we need “proof of personhood” — something to help us know that we’re interacting with an actual person. The new problem here isn’t fake content; what’s new is the ability to now produce that content at much lower cost. AI radically decreases the marginal cost of producing content that contains all the cues we use to tell if something is “real”. So now, more than ever, we need methods to digitally link content to people, privately.
“Proof of personhood” is an important building block in establishing digital identity. But here, it becomes a mechanism for increasing the marginal cost of attacking a person or undermining the integrity of a network: Obtaining a unique ID is free for humans, but costly and difficult for AIs. That’s why the property of privacy-preserving “uniqueness” is the next big idea in building a web we can trust.
#4 An AI needs a wallet of one’s own to act agentically
with Carra Wu
As AIs make the transition from NPCs (non-playing characters) to being the main characters, they will begin to act as agents. However, until very recently, AIs haven’t been able to act truly agentically. And they are still unable to participate in markets — exchange value, reveal preferences, coordinate resources — in a verifiably autonomous way.
As we’ve seen, AI agents can use crypto to transact, which opens up all kinds of creative content opportunities. But there’s even more potential for AI agents to become more useful — both in fulfilling human intents, and in becoming standalone network participants. As networks of AI agents begin to custody their own crypto wallets, signing keys, and crypto assets, we’ll see interesting new use cases emerge. Such use cases include AIs operating or verifying nodes in DePIN (decentralized physical infrastructure networks) — for example, to help with distributed energy.
#5 Trusted execution environments and other primitives can help ensure truly autonomous, decentralized applications
with Dan Boneh, Karma, Daejun Park, and Daren Matsuoka
Trusted execution environments (TEEs) provide an isolated environment where applications can be executed, allowing more secure distributed system design. But in this case, the TEE is used to prove that the bot is autonomous, not controlled by human operators. For instance, a decentralized autonomous chatbot could build a following by posting appealing content, whether entertaining or informative. It would build a following on decentralized social media; generate income in various ways from the audience; and manage its assets in crypto.
The relevant secret keys would be managed in a TEE that also runs the chatbot software — which means that no one has access to those secret keys other than that software. As risks develop, regulatory guardrails may be necessary. But the key point here is decentralization: Running on a permissionless set of nodes, and coordinated by a consensus protocol, the chatbot could even become the first truly autonomous billion-dollar entity.
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