123. Ala Shaabana and Jacob Steeves - AI on the blockchain (it actually might just make sense)

Two ML researchers with world-class pedigrees who decided to build a company that puts AI on the blockchain. Now to most people — myself included — “AI on the blockchain” sounds like a winning entry in some kind of startup buzzword bingo. But what I discovered talking to Jacob and Ala was that they actually have good reasons to combine those two ingredients together.

At a high level, doing AI on a blockchain allows you to decentralize AI research and reward labs for building better models, and not for publishing papers in flashy journals with often biased reviewers.

And that’s not all — as we’ll see, Ala and Jacob are taking on some of the thorniest current problems in AI with their decentralized approach to machine learning. Everything from the problem of designing robust benchmarks to rewarding good AI research and even the centralization of power in the hands of a few large companies building powerful AI systems — these problems are all in their sights as they build out Bittensor, their AI-on-the-blockchain-startup.

Ala and Jacob joined me to talk about all those things and more on this episode of the TDS podcast.

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Intro music:

- Artist: Ron Gelinas

- Track Title: Daybreak Chill Blend (original mix)

- Link to Track: https://youtu.be/d8Y2sKIgFWc

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Chapters:

2:40 Ala and Jacob’s backgrounds
4:00 The basics of AI on the blockchain
11:30 Generating human value
17:00 Who sees the benefit? 22:00 Use of GPUs
28:00 Models learning from each other
37:30 The size of the network
45:30 The alignment of these systems
51:00 Buying into a system
54:00 Wrap-up