AI Meets Crypto: Hype or Hope? A Professor’s View
As a professor, I’m often skeptical when two trending topics are mashed together and labeled revolutionary. Too frequently, this leads to solutions in search of problems. The intersection of AI and crypto might seem to suffer from this hype, with the crypto world sometimes advocating “decentralization for decentralization’s sake” without delivering real utility.
However, if we strip away the noise and focus on first principles, there are clear, impactful ways in which these two technologies can complement one another. This post outlines how AI can benefit from crypto, how crypto can be enhanced by AI, and key pitfalls to avoid.
How Can We Make AI Better With Crypto?
1. Decentralized Data Collection and Valuation
Large foundation models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 rely on massive datasets scraped from the internet — often with dubious legality. A decentralized system could compensate data contributors fairly, creating an economy around high-quality data contributions. Think of it as a decentralized version of Scale AI.
For example, individuals could contribute anonymized images, audio, or text from their devices, feeding it into a training pipeline using algorithms like Federated Learning. Using techniques like…
