00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - An exciting development has arisen recently,
00:07 and that is the intersection between innovations
00:10 in artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.
00:13 Now today in the studio, we are excited to welcome back
00:16 Jasper Damare, Outlier Ventures Research Lead,
00:19 who's gonna tell us a lot more about this.
00:21 Jasper, welcome to this week's episode
00:22 of Yahoo Finance Future Focus.
00:24 - Hey Brian, thanks for having me.
00:26 - Okay, so 2023 was a big year
00:27 for artificial intelligence developments.
00:29 We had ChachiPT, we had Google BARD.
00:33 Now these systems, these applications
00:35 seems to be running well using centralized infrastructure.
00:39 Why does artificial intelligence
00:41 even need blockchain technology?
00:43 - Yeah, you're right.
00:44 In '23, and it all started at the back end of 2022,
00:47 we saw generative AI capabilities falling
00:49 into the hands of the masses.
00:51 Billions of users are now using generative AI
00:53 in their day-to-day, and we're actually seeing
00:56 meaningful impact in terms of productivity
00:58 on a personal or on a work-related level.
01:02 So while this is all great, I think the fact
01:05 that these are diffusing across society
01:08 also puts the light on the actual issues.
01:11 And the reality is like AI is great,
01:14 but it also has some shortcomings.
01:16 And some of the big ones here are questionable practices
01:20 around data privacy and data security.
01:22 For example, these are centrally stored databases
01:26 which AI then uses data extraction tools from
01:29 in order to generate whatever questions
01:31 or queries we give them.
01:33 And secondly, there's also the big question
01:35 around the democratization of access,
01:37 because if this is such a meaningful impact
01:39 to productivity, we need to make sure
01:41 that everyone has access to these tools.
01:43 And that's truly where blockchain comes in.
01:46 Blockchain unlocks the ability to decentralize
01:49 the way the data is stored, from which AI
01:51 can then pull the data to extract value from.
01:55 So in case of data privacy and data security,
01:57 we believe that blockchain has the ability
01:59 to enhance this in a transparent and immutable way.
02:02 And then also in terms of democratization,
02:05 blockchain decentralizes the infrastructure
02:08 on which AI uses.
02:10 So again, decentralization, democratization.
02:14 So these are just a couple of examples
02:15 of how blockchain can help, but we believe
02:18 that the convergence of AI and blockchain
02:22 is basically where the future is headed.
02:24 One of the big worry and things about AI
02:27 and the development of it is this argument
02:29 that generative AI is just this really, really
02:32 very sophisticated plagiarizer.
02:35 So how can blockchain protect, say for instance,
02:38 artists' work, intellectual property rights?
02:41 Yep, yep.
02:42 This is, I think, top of mind for many,
02:45 as obviously we've seen generative AI
02:47 in the terms of obviously ChachiPT, Midjourney,
02:51 and other digital asset generating
02:54 gen AI capabilities coming online.
02:56 IP protection is top of mind, right?
02:58 Like a lot of artists in different segments
03:01 are looking at it.
03:02 How it would be possible is you can look at blockchain
03:06 as this database where all IP is stored upon
03:10 in a transparent and immutable way.
03:13 So it becomes this register of like data points
03:17 around who generated the assets, who owns it,
03:22 who was previous owner.
03:23 So all this metadata is stored.
03:25 And then ultimately when you generate content
03:27 using gen AI, you can cross-check it with this register.
03:32 You can cross-check your actual assets
03:34 with what's on the database
03:37 in terms of intellectual property.
03:39 And it sounds very trivial,
03:40 but if you look at the current state of IP,
03:42 it is very fragmented and a lot of centralized
03:45 siloed databases are keeping track
03:47 of intellectual property.
03:49 So blockchain is just a very open infrastructure
03:52 to store all IP on from which we can cross-check
03:56 like the actual integrity or the authenticity of the asset.
04:00 - Is this why we really need web three
04:02 and not web two anymore?
04:03 - It's a very interesting question
04:05 because currently if you look at the state of the internet
04:08 or web two as we are currently living in,
04:11 there are some structural issues.
04:13 There's issues around data privacy and security,
04:15 bots are running rampant, there's a centralization.
04:19 So the combination of blockchain and AI
04:22 would actually be able to pull us
04:25 into a better state of the internet.
04:27 - So Jasper Damare, thank you very much for coming again.
04:30 And thank you for joining us on this week's episode
04:32 of Yahoo Finance Future Focus.
04:33 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:37 (cymbal crash)
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