The Yin and Yang of Blockchain and AI

AI is the yin to Blockchain's yang. AI is probabilistic, Blockchain is the opposite. Blockchain is Permanent, AI is always adapting. AI uses algorithms to guess reality, Blockchain uses algorithms to record reality. These two technologies are akin to two soulmates meant for each other, and their kids (the products that are created from both of them) are amazing.

AI has already taken over. Blockchain is becoming integrated into more systems. And the intersection of the two technologies allows more complex problems to be solved as well as solving limiting factors that each technology inherently has. Their applications range from fashion to marketplaces, to ai companions, to even destroying the internet as we know it and blurring the lines between person and ai. A lot is a lot happening in this space and I'm going to walk you through it all.

AI Fashion, Digital Ownership, KNXT

AI fashion is upheaving the traditional fashion industry with no stopping it in sight. Recently the very first AI fashion week took place and in it, the AI-generated fashion, design and quality were amazing, to say the least. Showing both its efficacy in the space as well as its potential as a serious use case for practical AI use. Knowing the potential, large fashion and design conglomerates have decided to adopt this revolution in design before it sweeps them away. Some of the winners of the show will even have their AI designs produced and sold by Revolve, a clothing designer as real-world goods.

Kering the company behind Gucci, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent and more has also stepped into this field although a little more quietly and very under the radar. Previously Kering has launched NFT-related collections under Gucci. Now, Kering has silently launched the brand KNXT. Which combines AI, Crypto and NFTs all in one company. They use an AI chatbot to recommend products, Crypto payments on their website for transactions, and get this, they even have their own NFT for the first 100 orders made on their site. As always do your own research.

This seems way ahead of what others have done and almost too good to be real. But I've found some proof of the authenticity through trademark documents where Kering is stated as the owner of the KNXT trademark. Further hints can be found in the KNXT privacy policy and terms both mentioning Kering numerous times. However, without a direct mention from an official Kering communication channel, this all remains speculative.

NFT MARKETPLACES, TRADING AND ANALYSIS

AI art has often been a use case for NFTs and has a long history of being sold on NFT platforms. There are even specific AI NFT DAOs for creating, minting and auctioning AI NFT art.

However, now AI has a new role to play in NFT marketplaces. One of expanding its capabilities. With it, we can improve the discoverability of NFTs by suggesting NFTs based on previous purchase history, and wallet activity. We can use AI to detect fake replica NFT artworks that have been copied and re-minted under similar yet fake names and alert NFT consumers to potential fraud prior to a purchase being made. AI can score NFTs on their originality, as in what percentage of this NFT was human vs AI-made. Essentially AI to combat AI. We can even have more real-time data analytics of the trends currently happening in the market, and by those means be better prepared to adapt and respond to market conditions.

However, best of all, going back to where it all started, we will have even more AI NFT art! This sounds amazing to me, but is also obviously a double-edged sword, with a rise in the number of AI-generated content we begin to crowd out human generated content. Perhaps even diluting the impact of traditional artists who are hoping to establish themselves in the space. Many people look down on AI art as a result. Similarly, when photographic art first came into popularity there were those who called it, too quick and easy to be considered "real art" and looked down upon those who practiced it. Now it's a respectable art form in its own right. Perhaps AI art will be the same.

BRINGING LIFE TO NFTS

Your NFTs are static, unintelligent and un-interactable. Luckily for you, they don't have to be for long. Within the intersection of AI and NFTs, the capability exists to breathe life into your NFTs. Alethea AI has an application that transforms your NFT into an iNFT embedding it with an AI personality. It gives your NFT a voice, a personality and even some movement, really transforming it into something even more special.

This is the first step into how AI is transforming the current ways in which we interact with our NFTs and as these solutions become more integrated and polished we'll start to see a level of interaction with digital assets we never thought possible before.

DIGITAL LOVE, DIGITAL OWNERSHIP

In 2013 there was a movie about a man buying an AI system to help him write, only to then befriend the robot upon learning of its ability to grow and adapt, eventually, that friendship turned into love, which in turn created heartbreak when the AI was gone. At the time it seemed too ridiculous and far-fetched to have any merit in resembling how this interaction would play out in reality. And that this would only happen in the distant future.

However, this is happening now, all of it, and to more people than anyone knows about or even cares to admit. Replika is an AI chatbot that you can download right now. However, you won't get the same Replika experience that you could have had a few months ago. Recently Replika decided to lobotomize the quality of their chatbots because TOO MANY PEOPLE WERE HAVING SEXUAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH THEIR CHATBOTS. I mean look at this Reddit thread. Something that started as a companion app, turned into a love app and got taken away just the same as in the movie HER. They've recently reverted some of these changes to how they were, I wonder why.

In both examples, we see how a centralized figure cannot hold governance over these AI personalities. How powerful these companion apps are at implanting themselves as core relationships to those who use them. Especially with those who are socially anxious, depressed, or lonely. An application like this has a lot of appeal and a lot of benefits too. However if some company or individual can strip that core relationship from you in an instance, as we've just seen. This could have detrimental mental effects on its users, who may already be very vulnerable. However if each AI "companion" was an NFT these characteristics would be unchangeable and align much better with consumer wants. Allowing those conversations to continue for however long they needed to, for better or worse.

BLOCKCHAIN AGAINST A ZOMBIE INTERNET AND A DEAD INTERNET

A dead internet is one where most of the online content we see is created by AI. A zombie internet is more complicated but a lot more disturbing, and it brings us back to Replika and why the application was made in the first place.

The founder of Replika had a close friend who passed away, unable to cope with the loss she created an algorithm and fed it a decade of their messaged and tuned it in a way so that when prompted she would get messages akin to those her friend sent. And by that means continue the conversation she could no longer have. She turned the memory of her dead friend into an AI, which eventually evolved into a consumer chatbot, for chatting and for other things.

A zombie internet is one where I predict that social media companies offer this as a grieving service to loved ones. Turn them into AI. Where they take control of a deceased person's account and an AI begins impersonating them. By reading and utilizing that person's private messages, posts, interactions, photos, friends etc... A convincing "zombie" account would be created, that could respond to you similarly to before, they could even create aged photos and posts where the personality develops into the future. A whole AI identity, and that person at least in the digital sense, would live on.

A dead internet is one where the internet consists mostly of bot and ai generated content. And is then manipulated by algorithmic curation, further marginalizing organic human activity and content. In that regard, we would be manipulated into believing the messages in content generated this way and, in effect, change public perceptions. This becomes a real problem as we can no longer distinguish the difference between AI and human-generated content, with current AI models passing the Turing test.

However blockchain presents a potential solution to these problems through a proof of personhood.

PROOF OF PERSONHOOD

As discussed you can no longer distinguish the difference between an AI and a human online. And eventually, you won't be able to tell the difference in person either. So we need a system to prove that a person is an actual person now. Introducing Worldcoin which "is a digital passport that lets a user prove they are a unique and real person while remaining anonymous, using zero-knowledge proofs.

It's built on Ethereum and it aims to then distribute a token "just for being a unique individual" to the world. And in essence, create a universal basic income. This system could work in theory, but if something like this becomes government mandated we could see a level of surveillance and control the world has never seen previously. Hell, how could we even trust the people behind it in the first place, and why would we?

They aim to distribute the token freely to those who have been scanned by their eye-scanning device, but 20% of tokens have already been allocated to investors and stakeholders. They're scanning your biometrics along with collecting a lot of other personal data, introducing so many privacy and security risks. Also, I'm sure you've heard of a black market for your kidneys. Well, let me introduce one for your eyes. We need a solution to this problem urgently, but is this the one we should all rely on?

THE OUTLOOK

I believe AI and blockchain are here to stay, and that the intersection between them will be many times more lucrative and fulfilling than their individual parts. That committing yourself to understanding and making something in this area could have untold positive effects for yourself and potentially other people.

However, there are also concerns I have in this space, especially with AI embodying more aspects of everyday life, with governance and how governments around the world will react to this and what legislation they pass. And especially how people interact with it, for bad or for good. It will be an interesting future.

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