In this week's episode of Yahoo Finance Future Focus, our host Brian McGleenon spoke to Outlier Ventures Research Lead Jasper De Maere who underscored the need for integrating blockchain technology with artificial intelligence (AI) applications to tackle prevalent issues of security, privacy, and centralisation. De Maere pointed out the vulnerabilities in the current state of the internet (web2), particularly concerning data privacy and security practices within AI. He advocated for the synergistic potential of combining blockchain and AI, envisioning a future internet in a better state. De Maere also delved into the challenges posed by AI-generated art and its impact on intellectual property (IP) rights. To address this, he proposed the use of blockchain as a transparent and immutable database for storing IP information, ensuring the integrity and authenticity of AI-generated content. Moreover, De Maere highlighted the role of blockchain in democratizing access to AI tools by decentralizing storage infrastructure, fostering equitable value extraction from data.
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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)