On 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.

Video Transcript

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BRIAN MCGLEENON: An exciting development has arisen recently and that is the intersection between innovations in artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. Now, today in the studio, we are excited to welcome back Jasper De Maere, Outlier Ventures research lead who is going to tell us a lot more about this. Jasper, welcome to this week's episode of Yahoo Finance Future Focus.

JASPER DE MAERE: Hey, Brian. Thanks for having me.

BRIAN MCGLEENON: OK, so 2023 was a big year for artificial intelligence developments. We had ChatGPT. We had Google Bard. Now, these systems, these applications seems to be running well using centralized infrastructure. Why does artificial intelligence even need blockchain technology?

JASPER DE MAERE: Yeah, you're right. In '23, and it all started at the back end of 2022, we saw generative AI capabilities falling into the hands of the masses. Billions of users are now using generative AI in their day to day. And we're actually seeing like meaningful impact in terms of productivity on a personal or on a work-related level.

So while this is all great, I think the fact that these are diffusing across society also puts the light on the actual issues. And the reality is like AI is great, but it also has some shortcomings. And some of the big ones here are questionable practices around data privacy and data security. For example, these are centrally-stored databases, which AI then uses data extraction tools from in order to generate whatever questions or queries we give them.

And secondly, there's also the big question around the democratization of access. Because if this is such a meaningful impact to productivity, we need to make sure that everyone has access to these tools. And that's truly where blockchain comes in. Blockchain unlocks the ability to decentralize the way the data is stored from which AI can then pull the data to extract value from. So in case of data privacy and data security, we believe that blockchain has the ability to enhance this in a transparent and immutable way.

And then also in terms of democratization in, blockchain decentralizes the infrastructure of which AI uses. So again, decentralization, democratization, so these are just a couple of examples of how blockchain can help. But we believe that the convergence of AI and blockchain is basically where the future is headed.

BRIAN MCGLEENON: One of the big sort of worrying things about AI and the development of it is this sort of argument that generative AI is just this really, really very sophisticated plagiarizer. So how can blockchain protect say, for instance, artists' work, intellectual property rights?

JASPER DE MAERE: Yeah, this is, I think, top of mind for many as, obviously, we've seen generative AI in terms of like, obviously, ChatGPT, Midjourney, and other digital asset generating-- gen AI capabilities coming online. IP protection is top of mind, right? Like, a lot of artists in different segments are looking at it.

How it would be possible is you can look at blockchain as this database where all IP is stored upon in a transparent and immutable way. So it becomes this register of, like, data points around who generated the assets, who owns it, who was previous owner. So all this metadata is stored.

And then ultimately, when you generate content using gen AI, you can cross-check it with this register. You can cross-check your actual assets with what's on the database in terms of intellectual property. And it sounds very trivial, but if you look at the current state of IP, it's very fragmented. And a lot of centralized, siloed databases are keeping track of intellectual property. So blockchain is just a very open infrastructure to store all IP on from which we can cross-check, like, the actual integrity or the authenticity of the asset.

BRIAN MCGLEENON: Is this why we really need Web3 and not Web2 anymore?

JASPER DE MAERE: It's a very interesting question. Because, currently, if you look at the state of the internet or Web2, as we are currently living in, there are some structural issues. There's issues around data privacy and security.

Bots are running rampant. There's a centralization. So the combination of blockchain and AI would actually be able to, like, pull us into, like, a better state of the internet.

BRIAN MCGLEENON: So Jasper De Maere, thank you very much for coming again. And thank you for joining us on this week's episode of Yahoo Finance Future Focus.

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