With newer innovations coming to the fore every day, it is difficult to predict how many jobs will be taken by robots in the coming years and how many will be left out for humans. The disruptive technologies like Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are the superpowers that will transform the traditional industries.
Current Business scenario
The present scenario of the business world shows that many enterprises are loaded with abundant data but are unaware the means to make it available to the world. On the other hand, many startups are equipped with the resources and technology to turn data into value using AI but have sparse data. Only very few companies (like Facebook, Google, etc.) have both datasets and the AI knowledge needed to turn this data into value. However, to make the best use of modern AI and computation, the access to this data needs to be equalized.
The blockchain is a relatively new approach to manage/monitor financial and other transactions. It is a decentralized database that is different from the traditional big-data distributed databases. It helps in sharing datasets for higher-accuracy models and securing large-scale data management mechanisms for coordinating the information of several individuals. Thus, Blockchains provide a much greater scope of potential activity than its currently envisioned deployment opportunities in reinventing currency.
It won’t be an exaggeration to say that AI is the greatest threat to the mankind now. However, retrieving its potential for the advancement and welfare of humanity also rests with mankind itself. AI with its subsets of machine learning and artificial general intelligence (AGI) is widely used to control systems. For example, how a simple thermostat adapts to a target temperature may be governed using AI. With the combination of hardware, software, infrastructure, and machine learning trained programs, AI can be used to facilitate planning, control, coordination, and decision making in an organized and iterative manner.
Integration of Blockchains and AI
Blockchain technology in itself is a transformation, and its integration with AI paves the road to a surfeit of unimagined opportunities that can be explored by the business stakeholders. Blockchains and AI together constitute the two closed components digital business. While Blockchain enables the exchange of value embedded data without any friction, AI facilitates the tapping of this data to create value without much (almost nil) human effort.
With the advent of new technology solutions such as Blockchains, human errors have been replaced by a technical failure. So, while Blockchains help in verifying, executing, and recording, AI aids assessment, understanding, recognition, and decision-making. Similarly, while AI aids in finding new opportunities and improves decision making, Blockchains automate the verification of the transactional parts of the process.
Blockchain-enabled thinking can be compared to an input-processing-output computational system. You may consider Blockchain as a product containing small blocks of a brain in the form of dust. However, the innovation efforts of many publicly traded asset managers and banks are involved in this brain block dust quest. Thus, the brain’s sensation, action, interaction, perception, and cognition abilities are simulated by the computers.
So, in order to guard an innovative database in a smart set-up, an inbuilt component of artificial intelligence is needed for joining blocks by giving the reference to the previous block.
Blockchains can transform AI
Blockchain can act as a global or planetary database for AI that enables unlocking opportunities with a modular managed approach with memory by providing for data sharing and better data model. AI-based mobile applications can widely benefit from the potential Blockchain technology holds. Blockchain-enabled thinking allows random generation of as many copies of any instance of memory, as many copies there can be of any digital file. An example of one such promising feature is the biometric authentication feature associated with mobile wallets. Certain advantages of Blockchain can open up new opportunities for AI practitioners. A few major ones are:
Data sharing due to decentralized/shared control: The decentralized or shared control structure of Blockchains allows data sharing from silos, which in turn helps in forming better data models due to the availability of more data. Sometimes when data from silos are merged, the new dataset obtained is not only quantitatively better but is also a qualitatively new data that helps generate qualitatively new models. These qualitatively new models can provide an opportunity to garner new insights and have new business applications. Moreover, data sharing allows shared control of AI training data and models.
Immutability/audit trail: In order to be reputed, data needs to be immutable. AI can maintain immutability in a Blockchain network. This improves the trustworthiness of the data and models as it leads to provenance on their training/testing. This can be used to create the most secure ecosystem for transactions and data exchange in the world.
Native assets/exchanges/shared global registry: Traditionally, datasets have been scattered across the web with many lists here and there, pointing at the main datasets. Of these many datasets that have value are proprietary. Blockchains help create a global database and application of AI to Blockchains leads to training/testing data and models as intellectual property (IP) assets. This decentralizes data and model exchanges.
Conclusion
There are surely more ways that blockchains help transform AI or vice-versa. This makes the Blockchain and AI combination explosive! Some long-standing dreams of AI and data analysis work can be realised, and several opportunities can be opened with this alliance of Blockchain and AI. Thus, the world’s most consistent technology-enabled decision-making systems that are virtually secure and provide solid insights and decisions can be created using a combination of AI and Blockchain.
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