Artificial intelligence is at a crossroads. Often described as humanity’s most powerful tool, it’s also one of the most dangerous instruments if left unchecked or misused. For decades AI has been evolving at an accelerated pace, more so than any other technology, but although we interact with AI on a daily basis, we see only surface-level information. We don’t know how it is used or misused. Although it belongs to humanity, it is in fact held hostage by giants of the tech world and corporations. AI needs a savior.
Help is already on the way, but what is interesting is that it comes from an unexpected source, which at a first glance, seems to have nothing in common with AI. This unexpected hero is the humble non-fungible token (NFT), which has attracted the world’s attention, but for totally unrelated reasons. The first question that comes to mind is — what in the world do pictures with monkeys have to do with artificial intelligence? Well, besides the gross oversimplification, the answer to this question will most likely surprise most of you.
One company that has made it its mission to prove to the world that AI needs NFTs is Humans.ai. which aims to democratize artificial intelligence by making it accessible to everyone while also ensuring its ethical and fair use.
This is definitely a tall order for anyone, but Humans.ai is up to the challenge and plans to achieve its goal by mixing the innovative fields of artificial intelligence and nonfungible tokens to create AI NFTs, a new type of asset class that enables anyone to own a piece of AI and determines how it will be used.
With the technology developed by Humans.ai, NFTs are transformed from a static art form into a complex instrument that combines form with utility, enabling the creation of AI that generates real-world value. A major advantage of AI NFTs is that they can encapsulate any type of AI. Text to speech, text to video, text to image, any AI can become an AI NFT.
AI-generated NFTs, the first intersection between AI and NFTs
Standard NFTs are pieces of code that reside inside a blockchain network that can be linked to digital or physical assets to provide immutable proof of ownership. The most important property of NFTs is the fact that they are non-fungible, meaning that they cannot be replaced with something else and that they retain their value. This feature has made NFTs an ideal medium for digital art, as they act as a unique representation of the asset in question, be it music, images, videos, or text that cannot be replicated or copied, while also acting as a certificate of ownership that resides inside a blockchain network.
AI-generated NFTs are a new type of NFT that cater to a broader audience of people from different communities like artists, tech enthusiasts and people passionate about artificial intelligence, blockchain and the up-and-coming Metaverse. By leveraging deep learning techniques in areas like computer vision, language and speech processing, creators can leverage these two technologies to manifest new ideas and trends.
Although innovative and highly collectable, AI-generated NFTs do little to help the cause of AI technology, nor do they make NFTs more intelligent per se.
From NFT to AI NFT
Humans.ai promotes a new approach to NFTs, one that adopts a utility-first approach in which AI is encapsulated inside an NFT, transforming NFTs from a collectable image or piece of audio into a container that holds a representation of artificial intelligence inside of it, bringing it to the blockchain.
How does this benefit artificial intelligence?
In multiple ways, in fact. By incorporating AI and governance capabilities into NFTs, they can evolve from basic proofs of ownership to intelligent, self-governing forms of ownership that enable richer experiences and a higher utility for researchers, artists, AI creators, NFT creators and consumers. By design, AI NFTs solves the issue of ownership because blockchain, the infrastructure behind NFTs, provides ownership guarantees.
The NFT-based system built by Humans.ai also acts as a safety net that guarantees AI isn’t misused. Proof of Human is a cornerstone of the Humans.ai ecosystem, which guarantees that behind every AI there is also a real human who closely monitors its activity to ensure its ethical use. The traceability provided by the underlying blockchain network further raises accountability concerning how AI is used.
NFTs play an important role in bringing AI out into the open. Increasing the visibility of AI by moving it to a blockchain network has two major benefits. The first benefit is that you can easily create a community around your artificial intelligence. If the blockchain network is open to everyone, people can come and interact with it, essentially democratizing access to the technology while also ensuring its ethical use. Secondly, NFTs and blockchain enable the tokenization of artificial intelligence, essentially creating an economy around each AI which supports its growth and development by unlocking a new method of financing.
NFTs ensure high levels of security for AI. Blockchain ranks among the most secure tech infrastructures due to the complex cryptography it employs, consensus mechanisms and design. Encapsulating AI in NFTs that reside in a blockchain network significantly increases the technology’s resilience to cybersecurity attacks.
Conclusion
The greatest benefit for the AI domain is the democratization of the technology, giving access to real people to artificial intelligence-related products. Embedding AI inside NFTs, Humans.ai is bridging the gap between machine learning and AI researchers and end-users who can use directly the most powerful tool invented by humankind. With blockchain on top of that, nobody can question the ethical use of AI.
