According to the records shared by Kaito AI research partner Sandra, Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase and former general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, delivered a thought-provoking speech at an artificial intelligence conference in Singapore, discussing the relationship and future potential between cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence (AI). He provided a simple and concise framework that revealed how these two multi-billion-dollar technologies complement each other and shape the future.
Cryptocurrencies and AI are relative in many aspects. For instance, the rise of AI is top-down, originating from renowned research laboratories and eventually promoted by institutions like OpenAI. On the other hand, the rise of cryptocurrencies is bottom-up, initially obscure. Despite this, both are equally important large-scale technologies, although their rise patterns differ significantly.
Furthermore, modern AI is primarily based on statistics and is probabilistic, while cryptocurrencies are programmatic and deterministic. Diffusion models and large language models (LLMs) essentially start from probabilistic models, whereas cryptocurrencies demonstrate determinism through verifying digital signatures, among other means.
However, this does not mean that these two technologies contradict each other. Balaji Srinivasan believes that, in fact, the two technologies can complement each other perfectly. For example, AI represents digital abundance, making things easy to counterfeit, while cryptocurrencies represent digital scarcity, making counterfeiting difficult. AI generates content, and cryptocurrencies authenticate content.
By linking digital content (whether it is articles, images, certificates, or other information) with blockchain transactions, clear and trustworthy records of content origin, authenticity, and any subsequent interactions can be established. Essentially, while artificial intelligence can “preach” through widespread dissemination of messages, cryptocurrencies can verify these messages, ensuring that they are trustworthy and authentic.
In addition, AI model training is a highly centralized task, requiring significant computing resources. On the other hand, cryptocurrencies demonstrate the ability to mobilize vast amounts of capital through crowdfunding (collecting resources in a decentralized manner). Many of the largest crowdfunding campaigns in the market are cryptocurrency projects, although the current applications are still very inefficient. However, breakthroughs are expected in this field.
Finally, Balaji Srinivasan stated that
