Bitcoin experts Joshua Henslee, Jackson Laskey, Zack Weiner, and Rafa Jimenez discussed AI and its potential integration with blockchain technology in the latest CoinGeek RoundTable. As you’ll soon see, there are some extremely exciting possibilities ahead.
Introducing the Roundtable participants
Joshua Henslee probably needs no introduction to regular CoinGeek readers. He’s a BSV thought leader and developer with a fast-growing YouTube channel covering BSV. He has also created some BSV applications like Windbell.
Jackson Laskey is the founder and CEO of Asset Layer—a platform for creating NFTs as well as integrating and sharing them across platforms. He was one of the founding members of Unbounded Capital and has been in the BSV space for half a decade.
Zack Weiner is the founder of VXTech, the firm that built MagicDapp.io as well as many other applications. Weiner also recently launched AskHapi.com to allow anyone to utilize AI via micropayments.
Rafa Jimenez is the CTO and co-founder of HandCash—one of the most popular wallets for BSV. He also has some background in AI, having worked in industries like autonomous driving and more.
How can AI integrate with blockchain technology?
Laskey tackles this question first, saying AI right now is all about taking old data and using it to create new data. He thinks blockchain can help get insight into the input data, helping us understand what that data is, where it’s from, and pay the rights holders. He points to the Haste Arcade Instant Leaderboard Payouts as an example of how people might be paid for their data.
Weiner agrees but takes a different approach to the question. He’s a big believer in the authenticity and integrity of data. He sees a world where AI models sign their outputs so that consumers can evaluate the outputs of specific models. This will grow increasingly important as AI models proliferate.
Jimenez says blockchain can help with the monetization of AI-powered services. It’s an obvious use case for nano and micropayments as an alternative to subscription models. When users still aren’t sure how much value these services can provide, they may be reluctant to commit, and the type of small, casual payments Satoshi Nakamoto spoke about when he released Bitcoin can bridge the gap.
What’s the primary use case for AI that could integrate blockchain technology?
Laskey imagines a world where there are a handful of AI models that are general-purpose and truly dominant. However, we’re likely to see a wide proliferation of different models. This could pose a challenge for people who have to interact with many different models. The more models that proliferate, the more it will be necessary to have both data integrity, as mentioned previously by Weiner, and micropayment models, as mentioned by Jimenez.
Weiner says that, on AskHapi.com, there are two modalities: text and images. Focusing on imagery, five or six models are tailored to output a specific type of image, such as anime images, realistic ones, tiny photos, and so on. He sees a future where model creators utilize the blockchain to create business models to incentivize people to come and check out their models. Again, small, casual transactions come into play here. He points out that many people don’t even have credit cards, who won’t be able to subscribe to things like ChatGPT, who will benefit from this.
Jimenez highlights that the marriage of these two technologies makes it much easier for developers to experiment, pulling together different elements both quickly and easily. This will lead to exponential adoption growth and many new opportunities. Jimenez doesn’t think people fully grasp the impact all of this will have.
The participants agree that this technology will create new roles. For example, social media managers did not exist in the 1980s, but today, every company has one. Likewise, many new roles will be created by AI, such as sourcing data, cleaning it up, and figuring out where micropayments need to go to compensate the owners of said data. Being able to track the data to its origin is extremely valuable.
How are the roundtable guests integrating AI technology into their companies?
Laskey answers that Asset Layer, while a general-purpose NFT platform, has a specific love for games. He acknowledges that there’s a lot more going into creating assets for games, and his firm has done so to generate items in Duro Dogs. Laskey says that, right now, the models need to be more precise to generate assets that plug directly into Duro Dogs; their internal artists still have to work on them. Overall, he says AI has accelerated their process.
Weiner doesn’t think AI has a place in Magic Dapp just yet. For him, this is about people and companies being able to store data in a provable way forever. However, he thinks AI becomes relevant for applications like BitChat Nitro, which now has a personality inside it that can answer questions relevant to smart contracts built on Bitcoin SV. He sees a great business opportunity in this; training specific AI models closer to truthiness.
Jimenez says HandCash is not integrating AI broadly in its business. They’re focused on helping people experiment and understand they have a monetization alternative. Answering a viewer question, he agrees that logging in with HandCash could be equivalent to logging into apps with their own AI API key.
Is it possible that in the future, every AI query, update, etc., will be mapped to a Bitcoin transaction?
Henslee tackles this question first. He says the answer to the viewer’s question is that it can be done trivially. You can take inputs, hash them, put them on-chain, and allow someone to prove they created specific prompts. While it can be done, there has to be a business use case for it.
Weiner says that the number of transactions required to do this will certainly need a big block blockchain. However, he says it’s probably a bit soon to consider doing this right now.
Should AI have mandatory pay channels so it doesn’t go full SkyNet?
Jimenez answers that whether AI needs some regulations or control is a hot topic and is extremely complex. However, bad guys don’t care about the rules, and they won’t be able to stop them.
Laskey wonders what an AI that escapes its black box could do. There’s this concept that a superintelligence could take over the world, but he’s skeptical.
Henslee does think there needs to be some control. He notes that there are good and bad in every tool. He worries it could become the all-seeing big brother.
Weiner notes there are two ways an AI can refuse to answer a question; it can be polite, and it can be rude and brash if you push it, too. He thinks the technology will progress faster than checks and balances can be put in place. Therefore, it will be up to the consumer to decide who to pay and fund via subscriptions and payments.
In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek’s coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI.
Check out the previous Roundtable videos on CoinGeek’s YouTube channel.
New to blockchain? Check out CoinGeek’s Blockchain for Beginners section, the ultimate resource guide to learn more about blockchain technology.
