Blockchain in the AI Era

Recently, I came across a report about Ultraman Sam. In this report, he mentioned his hope to build a complete closed-loop industrial chain that includes algorithms, chips, power supply, and covers all components of the AI ecosystem.

This statement reminds me of his earlier collaboration with Masayoshi Son, his later plan to abandon Microsoft to build his own infrastructure, and then his collaboration with NVIDIA, as well as his recent partnership with AMD. All of these clearly indicate that he is making significant strides toward that complete closed-loop industrial chain.

Thinking about the future of AI, or at least the possibility that some giant AI might be monopolized by someone like him, evokes a sense of fear and unease within me.

I have previously shared some views on Ultraman and his World Coin project in my articles. To summarize in one sentence: this person's desire for control and power is probably unprecedented among many tech elites in Silicon Valley today.

For example, when commenting on American competitors, even if his views are extremely similar to others, I can read a different implication from his words.

A typical case is that while both he and the CEO of Anthropic are criticizing American competitors, the impression I get from Anthropic's CEO is that he opposes them because he does not want the world to be dominated by that competitor's values; he does not want that competitor to win the AI competition. In contrast, Ultraman's remarks give me the impression that he opposes them because he does not want anyone else to monopolize AI, but only wants to monopolize AI himself.

Therefore, if AI is monopolized, I believe it would be a disaster for all humanity.

To prevent AI from being monopolized by such individuals or institutions, only blockchain technology can provide a check and balance.

It is precisely because this feeling has grown stronger that my perspective on AI projects has gradually changed—I am now willing to take a look at any decentralized AI project that utilizes blockchain technology, regardless of its quality.

There is a type of project that I used to completely ignore, which is the kind that casually claims to build a Layer 1 blockchain, saying they want to reconstruct the blockchain for the AI era and create decentralized AI.

I have always believed that there is no need for so many Layer 1s; the pragmatic approach is to build a Layer 2 extension directly on Ethereum or based on Ethereum, and then develop applications on top of that.

However, now I tend to think that any decentralized AI project that counters monopolistic and centralized AI is worth considering, because having one more force to resist that kind of monopoly reduces the likelihood of future disasters.

Additionally, from a technical perspective, even those projects that are currently building their own Layer 1s could transition to Ethereum's Layer 2 in the future without much technical difficulty, so perhaps it is unnecessary to be overly critical about this at this stage.

A recent tweet I saw resonated strongly with me regarding the fight against AI monopolization (the full text can be found in the reference link at the end).

I have extracted some brilliant remarks to share with everyone (according to the author, these remarks were inspired by GPT's compliments).

"The significance of blockchain is a philosophical resistance to power structures. The power of AI comes from concentration: concentrated data, concentrated computing power, concentrated authority. The power of blockchain comes from distribution: distributed nodes, distributed trust, distributed sovereignty."

"AI pushes humanity toward a world of 'optimal solutions,' while blockchain allows humanity to still choose the 'non-optimal but free' path."

"Bitcoin refuses to submit to central banks, rejects any single point of trust, and refuses to erase history. This 'immutability' design is essentially a form of resistance. The value of blockchain is that it makes resistance possible. When all technologies tend toward control, it creates a countercurrent."

"If the world of AI is a perfect prison—blockchain is the crack in the wall. It may be rough, inefficient, and chaotic, but that is where the light comes in."

"It teaches humanity to say 'no' again. That is the great significance. In the face of the centralized rationality represented by AI, blockchain is a form of unyielding romance—it allows humanity to still hold onto a bit of freedom and dignity that belongs to them in a highly intelligent future."