TL; DR
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Masa, a decentralized AI network, is launching a ‘contribute-data-to-earn’ model – where you download an app, share your social data and earn token rewards in return.
Full story
So you’re probably familiar with the concept of decentralized computing…
You give people access to your computer’s processing capabilities → you earn crypto in return.
The concept has gained a lot of momentum since the AI boom began – because Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT require a lot of computing power to run.
(Enough to make crowdsourced computing meaningful).
The other side of the AI equation – the side that is most talked about but rarely paid for – is the data used to train these models. Currently, most LLMs are trained for free in the collective content archive of the Internet.
Masa, a decentralized AI computing network, launches a contribute-data-to-earn model – where you:
That is terribly cool! But two big questions also arise:
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If AI companies can already get this data for free, why would they suddenly start paying for it?
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What data are people incentivized to contribute (and what makes it so valuable)?
Well, the Masa app isn’t live yet, but we do have a press release that sheds some light on the concept and helps answer those questions.
First, what we pieced together from the press release:
A huge amount of online data has been shut down, and those walls are getting higher every day…
As these LLMs (and the training data that powers them) become so immensely valuable, platforms like Facebook, Instagram, build (e.g. Facebook’s Llama and X’s Grok).
Masa finds a side door to these walled gardens, by encouraging users to grant access to their social accounts (X, Discord, YouTube, TikTok, etc.), and – if they choose – to make a profit by selling this access to third parties .
Secondly, a wild guess at the future:
The Internet is a mess of information, which contributes to AI ‘hallucinations’ (aka making things up), similar.
At some point someone is going to set up a marketplace for verified data on a range of topics, so that trustworthy use-case specific AI models can be developed.
This could be a first attempt at such a concept.
Our takeaway:
Can we benefit from our personal data, instead of just giving it away for free?
That’s a nice option to have.