After only a little over a year or two of being captivated by VCs and executives everywhere, generative AI already seems to have entered the so-called “valley of disillusionment.” Can long-standing blockchain AI projects turn this into a David and Goliath moment and seize the opportunity to shine?
GenAI’s rapid fall from grace can be explained by several factors. Failure to deliver promised productivity gains is one reason it is falling out of favor with executives, while regulators, campaigners and makers have raised a raft of concerns about the underlying data. These include antitrust cases involving the overreach of major tech companies, lawsuits brought by copyright owners such as The New York Times, and allegations of algorithmic bias along the lines of politics or race.
Of course, all technology undergoes a similar trajectory, otherwise Gartner would not have been able to create such an accurate model to describe the phenomenon. However, the fact that Sam Altman has stated that ChatGPT needs copyrighted material in order to exist indicates a certain lack of willingness to attempt to address the many problems that exist with the underlying data.
However, in a competitive market, refusing to address the problem simply creates a gap in the market for those willing to go the extra mile. While none of the major tech companies have yet been able to come up with solutions robust enough to satisfy their various stakeholders, there are some intriguing projects in the area of blockchain and AI convergence that hold promise for addressing some of the issues AI companies face.
Furthermore, some of these initiatives have shown remarkable foresight, having been around much longer than ChatGPT and most of the current AI platforms. AI-meets-blockchain projects like SingularityNET
Disrupting the status quoWhile blockchain is not a silver bullet, it does provide a very simple and elegant answer to many of the underlying challenges of the established generative AI model. Putting transactions and algorithms on chain will improve transparency and provide the opportunity to provide fair compensation to copyright owners. Making data and algorithms more freely available also avoids scrutiny from antitrust regulators. Developments such as zero-knowledge technology can support user privacy.
Yet blockchain-based models are turning the centralized business model on its head, which focuses on generating profits for shareholders. As such, blockchain projects struggle to compete with the scale of OpenAI or Anthropic, with their big tech backers.
However, in a David and Goliath scenario, it’s all about maximizing your own strengths while taking maximum advantage of your enemy’s weaknesses. Of course, the biggest challenge for any startup is gaining traction, and this challenge is even sharper in a blockchain scenario, where network effects are at the core of success. In this regard, it is a difficult prospect to take on the tech giants when they have all the odds in their favor: cash-rich companies with an established base of users and investors and access to all AI training data they need.
For this reason, entering the ‘valley of disillusionment’ represents an important opportunity for AI blockchain projects to demonstrate how they can offer something different and try to draw a stark contrast to big tech-funded AI companies that are apparently simply shrugging their shoulders to retrieve. shoulders.