Blockchain for Artificial Intelligence

Blockchain for Artificial Intelligence Explosive Growth of AI

In recent years, we have witnessed explosive growth in the capabilities and applications of AI. This includes significant advancements in text-image models and advanced language models, which are being utilized in numerous business cases, from research and recommendations to facilitating software development and big data analysis. Generative AI alone is expected to represent a $1.3 trillion market by 2032, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42% over the next decade.Blockchain and AI: Two Key Aspects
The intersection of blockchain and AI presents two main aspects:

1. Utilizing AI/ML (Machine Learning) modeling to enhance blockchain platforms, decentralized applications, and on-chain digital asset trading.
2. Leveraging blockchain capabilities to provide value to developers and users of AI/ML products and services (the primary focus of this document).

Core Capabilities of Blockchain

There are several core capabilities of blockchain that can be leveraged for the development, implementation, and operation of AI models. These capabilities relate to cryptographic primitives, blockchain protocols, and smart contracts. They enable the following fundamental properties, all highly relevant to AI use cases:

• Data Security: Helps store data immutably and tamper-proof, with high availability using decentralized servers that are less susceptible to attacks, manipulation, censorship, and denial-of-service (DoS).
• Data Provenance, Traceability, and Auditability: Immutable and transparent recording of transactions and assets, facilitating tracking of data origin, ownership, provenance, and agreements with digital signatures and timestamps. This also provides a verifiable and controllable audit trail.
• Decentralized Decision-Making: Allows decisions to be made by different entities or directly between two parties in contexts where there is no prior trust relationship between them or with a central entity.
• Autonomous and Transparent Code Execution: Enables the execution of programs like smart contracts that are transparent to all stakeholders and operate autonomously without requiring centralized and trusted intermediaries.
• Decentralized Identities: Will provide mechanisms for secure digital identities that allow users to interact with services without compromising privacy.
• Micropayments: Provides a secure and lightweight way to make low-friction payments.

Benefits of Blockchain for AI

The AI ecosystem features various stakeholders interacting with each other on data, models, and computing infrastructures. Due to the administrative and economic boundaries dividing potential stakeholders, these interactions require trust and payments—blockchain can assist in both cases.We can classify the potential benefits of blockchain for AI and the corresponding products and services that can be developed into four main classes, illustrated in the following figure. We will discuss them in detail below.Specific Benefits

• Data and Model Integrity: Blockchain can be used to develop solutions that help users and developers ensure that data and models have not been altered without their knowledge. For example, an API-based service could allow data owners and AI developers to register timestamped hashes of datasets and models to ensure their integrity and record the entire model development process and the datasets used to track the entire lifecycle, in a way that could be made available to third-party auditors or regulatory bodies. The system could even be integrated directly into ML development tools. This could help improve the integrity and reliability of models by making their development process more transparent and secure.
• Privacy: Blockchain can be used to protect user privacy by enabling data analysis without revealing sensitive personal information.
• Scalability: Scaling solutions like rollups can enhance the scalability of blockchain-based AI applications, allowing for a greater volume of transactions and data to be managed.
• Interoperability: Blockchain can facilitate interoperability between different AI systems, allowing for secure and reliable sharing of data and models.

Conclusions

The combination of blockchain and AI represents a unique opportunity to transform numerous sectors. Blockchain can provide a solid foundation for the development of more reliable, secure, and transparent AI models.