Combining the best of both worlds: Blockchain and AI
A rather fascinating technological combination of the 21st century is Blockchain and AI. Many people think that AI and Blockchain are to be treated as separate technologies, however, we can combine these two technologies to unleash greatness in the world.
So, how can Blockchain change AI?
Data Protection
AI is highly dependent on data since it uses data to retrieve what’s happening in the world and things around it. Blockchain, therefore, can be a safe storage facility in which AI models can be built upon. Since every block is protected by hash encryptions, it ensures that we have a fully secured database. Along with being secure and reliable, the blockchain is decentralized which means that approved parties can look up to the database safely and efficiently. This also prevents hackers from tampering the data and changing machine learning models.
Diverse Datasets
Even though we have such great machine learning models, it takes time and effort to copy the model across different platforms. This is a hindrance to how AI can spread across the globe and benefit the world. For this reason alone, Blockchain’s peer-to-peer network property can be used to copy machine learning models across different platforms. This means that if a customer saves his/her preferences on a device, other devices linked to the blockchain will know the preferences of the customer. For example, big companies like Stop&Shop and Walmart can pair up to save customer preferences. If a customer goes into any of the shops, the devices can tell the customer which product relates to the customer’s preference. This results in customer satisfaction and a profitable partnership among companies.
Increase in efficiency
Often, AI researchers don’t know which part of their data resulted in a given output. This is also one of the challenges of explainable AI. AI researchers might spend days just to track what error in the data resulted in the wrong output which leads to inefficiency. However, if we use Blockchain in AI systems, we can see how individual actions affect a given output as the data is in an organized manner of blocks. Each block is designated with a specific data and will allow us to easily go back to the set of data and see where things went wrong. This, in turn, increases efficiency and reduces the time and labor that would have otherwise been without blockchain.
BUT! CAN AI HELP BLOCKCHAIN!?
Of course! AI models can help improve blockchain systems in many ways. How?By….
Saving costs and energy
Every technology has its own downside and with blockchain, we have to remember the costs and energy it comes with. Therefore, in order to keep up with the costs and energy, we can build AI systems to keep in check with the energy consumption used by the blockchain. AI systems might also be used to pause a blockchain once the blockchain has passed a certain energy and/or cost limit.
Programming AI systems/models to build their own blockchain!
As blockchain technology gets popular and demand for blockchain developers increases, there might be a few developers to meet the requirements for building a blockchain. Therefore, in this case, companies can build AI systems that could code their own blockchain! This might take some time to develop, as AI is still a developing technology, but as we get more advanced in AI, this can be possible! These AI public ledgers will have the ability to code something as simple as a smart contract to send transactions.
Optimizing Security
AI systems/algorithms can be used to detect unusual patterns or anomalies in the different nodes of the blockchain. Therefore, if there’s a problem with one of the blockcahin nodes, this process can save us time and labor as the AI systems have already detected the problem.
Conclusion
These are just a few drops in the ocean of how blockchain and AI can be combined to improve the current systems of the world. However, we still need many experiments to prove that Blockchain and AI can be a successful combo. And, if people say we CAN’T combine the two most hottest technologies of the 21st century, prove them wrong and show them this blog!
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