As we stand at the precipice of the artificial intelligence revolution, blockchain technology is set to reign in its worst aspects, and help form a democratized AI landscape.
Cloud computing has become an invaluable tool for internet services providers and application developers in the past decade, offering simplified, ready-to-use distributed hardware and infrastructure that reduces costs and manpower for upstart businesses.
Worth an estimated $495 billion in 2022, the value of the cloud computing industry is expected to near $2.5 trillion by 2032. But the rapid growth of cloud computing isn't without its concerns.
Consider that 45% of data breaches are thought to emanate from cloud infrastructure alone, and we see that the rise of the cloud has also attracted a never-ending array of would-be hackers, who seek to scrape sensitive information (usually customers' personal details) to sell on the black market.
Facebook, LinkedIn and Alibaba are just some of the household names to have experienced horrific data breaches in the past few years — with over 2.3 billion users' personal information being stolen in those three breaches alone.
But now, developers have caught on to a way to apply the benefits of the blockchain to the cloud computing model, presenting an innovation that could also address another major data privacy concern which looms on the horizon — namely, artificial intelligence (AI).
Blockchain has earned a reputation for being a secure, private, fault-tolerant solution for record-keeping, but its distributed nature — where nodes are spread across thousands of computers around the world – also makes it an attractive prospect for decentralizing the cloud computing industry.
This moves cloud computing away from large, centralized data centers, creating less of a target for would-be hackers. Additionally, because blockchain networks are built using the latest, cutting-edge encryption techniques, a blockchain-based cloud brings much enhanced security to the process of setting up on the cloud.
Combined with the fact that blockchain-based applications allow the end user to retain control over their own data at all times, it becomes clear that infusing blockchain into cloud computing can effectively eradicate all of the cloud's weak points in one fell swoop.
In the short time that artificial intelligence chatbots have been live, there have already been several major data breaches from companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, and many others. In addition, some AI chatbots are now being shown to be subject to human bias, dictated by the individuals or corporations who control what data they're trained on.
So what could the blockchain-cloud combination do to address the AI problem? The answer, according to NeuroChainAI founder, Julius Serenas, lies in doing the same for AI as what blockchain networks like Ethereum did for decentralized app-creation.
"Just like Ethereum created distributed, community-driven infrastructure for blockchain developers – free from top-down interference — I foresee blockchain having a similarly democratizing effect on AI," said Serenas.
NeuroChainAI is a Decentralized AI as a Service (DAIAS) ecosystem which employs blockchain to host AI models, using the power of the distributed community to provide computational power and source and validate training data from the ground up. The company is also developing a DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network) that connects community GPUs to form a shared computation network crucial for the operation of AI models.
A system of gamification and rewards encourages the community of users to add to a high-quality data pool, which can then be leveraged by developers looking to build their own decentralized AI programs hosted on NeuroChainAI's blockchain network.
This grass-roots approach saves time, cuts costs, and ensures enhanced security thanks to the decentralized nature of the blockchain, but more importantly, according to Serenas, it all adds up to the creation of an open-source AI ecosystem where anyone can spin up their own bespoke AI programs backed by the power of a decentralized community.
"AI tools are poised to become part of our everyday lives in the very near future, and the all-encompassing role they're set to play is too important to be left to a small handful of giant tech companies. By applying the benefits of the blockchain we can free AI from its corporate constraints and make it open-source — of the community, for the community and by the community," added Serenas.
To recap: unlike the current plethora of corporately owned AI's, a blockchain-based AI ecosystem would eradicate data breaches (because users control their own data), ensure data suitability (because it is vetted by the community of users), reduce costs (because computing power can be gathered from a worldwide network of CPUs and GPUs), and foster a community-driven, collaborative approach to AI creation.
Our AI-based future is already assured, says Serenas. "We just need to make sure it's a future that we as users are in control of," he added.