This week, over 1,000 technology leaders and researchers, including Elon Musk, urged artificial intelligence (AI) labs to pause the development of more advanced systems post- ChatGPT-4’s launch, warning that AI tools present “profound risks to society and humanity”.

The open letter, released by the nonprofit Future of Life Institute, called for a pause in the development of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, introduced this month by the research lab OpenAI. The signatories want to introduce “shared safety protocols” for AI systems and ensure that “powerful AI systems” only advance “once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable”.

AI could pose an existential threat to the future of humanity, but it doesn’t have to be this way. We need a different approach to AI that takes into account how harmful this technology could be if controlled by a group of centralized, unaccountable corporations or governments.

On the opposite end of the internet, we also have the growth of new internet protocols built on shared value, ownership, and decentralized decision-making. This new decentralized economy has come to be recognized as Web3. (download a starter kit on blockchain here to get up to speed)

Web 3.0 is characterized by a particular set of principles, technical parameters, and values that differentiate it from its precursors, Web 2.0 and Web 1.0. It helps envision a future where centralized corporations no longer dominate, and individuals have complete authority over their data. This is achieved through leveraging transparent transactions recorded on blockchain platforms that have databases accessible to all. Web 3.0 lowers the barrier to entry for accessing the global economy to simply having an internet connection.

Recently, after the exponential rise of AI, some people are referring to AI as the new Web3.

I welcome this conversation.

Both are not mutually exclusive.

If AI takes advantage of the collective intelligence of the internet, through billions of our collective inputs, then contributors ought to be rewarded for their contributions and have shared ownership of the systems they are empowering.

This can be achieved through Decentralized Artificial Intelligence (DAI).

DAI is an AI system that employs Blockchain technology for data storage and processing. In contrast to being governed by a central authority, decision-making processes in a DAI system are decentralized and determined through consensus among multiple nodes.

If you believe people ought to own their own data, and opt for it to be included or excluded from the large language models (LLMs) driving AI outputs, then DAI may be the solution.

AI shouldn’t be controlled by a centralized entity or authority. It should be distributed.

Decentralized control over AI, or at least LLMs guided by the collective community, with shared ownership and responsibility, is worth considering.

AI Frontend. Blockchain Backend.