The prospect of artificial intelligence has been around for some time now; that being said, the discipline is not recent but an old one. Artificial intelligence was first perceived as a principal science in itself that can allow computers and other integrated networks to communicate with each other for the sake of solving complex and even human-intensive problems. This is the basic definition of what artificial intelligence is; in the earlier times, the concept was extremely simple; even solving a complex mathematical problem or imitating a human reaction was considered a feat of artificial intelligence.

Since that time, artificial intelligence has come a long way; it has widespread and sub-divided itself into multiple disciplines and branches such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, cloud technology, DevOps technology, along with many other computing elements that have now become associated with that of artificial technology. Blockchain technology, on the other hand, is quite recent and the most extended history that you can find on the subject is not more than ten years old. This says a lot about blockchain technology and the aspects that the technology was able to conquer over the years. It was first believed that the prospect of blockchain technology would be unreal and impossible.

But with the prospect of decentralization, cryptocurrencies tokens, and many other digital offerings, blockchain technology has come a long way. It has regulated the fields of finance, medical, education, politics as well as other various disciplines with utmost regard to transparency, immutability as well as incredible security around the clock for whatever discipline or element is being discussed or being executed at the moment. Both artificial intelligence and blockchain technology have recently formed a synergy that is going to be extremely important moving forward and will be able to unlock the true potential of both technologies and the areas that they serve.

Why is Artificial Intelligence (AI) Created?

As depicted earlier artificial intelligence is an old discipline that has been renovated multiple times over the years to reach its present form. It is nothing but the ability of a program or a computer algorithm to learn and adapt just like a human being. Multiple computer programs are interconnected with each other sharing a common mind that allows them to process streams and monuments of data drawing insight from concepts and performing certain actions that are beyond the realm of general computing.

These algorithms in unification could be used for the sake of understanding multiple patterns merging in a file or a jumbled stream of data that are not traditionally recognized or indistinguishable by humans or general computing elements. These insights that are drawn from data could be used to solve multiple problems, and all of this could take place without human supervision.

Anyone who is affiliated with the concept of computing knows that a human being submits commands to a computer or a computing body, and that system, in return, executes the command. But artificial intelligence could be programmed to make the whole process more automated, thus bringing ease and comfort to the whole crusade. There are two different types of artificial intelligence, and these are known as narrow artificial intelligence and strong artificial intelligence. More details about these specific terms will be shared below.

Narrow artificial intelligence is specifically designed to target limited tasks that don’t require the extensive exercise of the computing elements involved to carry out a series of tasks. Facial recognition, spam filtering, or organizing a meeting of one user with the others, which is a very basic task, are some of the use cases for narrow artificial intelligence.

Whereas, strong artificial intelligence is capable of executing a much-complicated task that might adhere to certain levels of complexity. It might or might not have the cognitive ability of a human being and, for that reason, would be able to execute a task that a normal human being can. The concept of narrow artificial intelligence is present today and is being used in multiple domains, whereas strong artificial intelligence still needs to be developed, and its use case is not presently active.

Many professionals have even argued if strong artificial intelligence could be employed in the near future or if a whole new infrastructure for research and development needs to be curated just to start working on strong artificial intelligence and to get it going. There lingers multiple side effects or ways strong artificial intelligence would be able to manipulate multiple industries and domains. AI can run wild if not properly controlled and, therefore, could result in a massive blow over where computers, by the vote of confidence from other computing systems, get in charge discarding humans and their interference in multiple scenarios and decision making altogether.

This is merely is sci-fi concept and nothing original, but the possibility of it happening can’t be neglected altogether. As for blockchain technology and artificial intelligence, there is a link there, and in the future, both disciplines could intertwine with each other to make things better and more approachable to other people.

Both will be able to not only help each other but forming a casual synergy that would be able to help the whole world, streamline processes, automate finances, and taking part in some of the most complicated actions where people could enjoy utmost security immutability, and complete transparency. If this union is bound to come, then one could only hope for a better and more transparent future away from the clutches of the centralized governing bodies.

Convergence of Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain

Artificial intelligence paired with blockchain technology is going to pave the way for modern-day finance and other associated disciplines and domains of life to become faster, more accessible, and rudimentary. Artificial intelligence would be able to improve blockchain technology by miles, and the difference would be noticeable even from afar. The mining aspects of blockchain technology are memory intensive and require a lot of computational power and energy for efficient calibration of processes and the execution of numbers for the sake of finding the answer to the problem which the miner set out to unveil in the first place.

Blockchain technology is doing incredibly, trying to honour immutability and censoring the personal information of the users, but that requires a lot of computational power, and in regard to distributed Ledger technology, only small scale and consistently strained computational power is left to fuel mining and other important aspects of blockchain environment. Artificial intelligence can optimize the energy consumption for mining along with taking care of various other disciplines that are controlled and powered by the same computational process.

This will help in improving not only mining algorithms but other domains of the blockchain environment, such as transparency, immutability, and censoring of the personal information of the users so that the whole domain could be much more secure and accessible to people. Blockchain technology requires tons of energy for efficient working on top of its high requirement for computational power.

The security practices that are involved in the blockchain environment add or stress the need to have more computational power and energy requirements. But if these were to be cast out of the equation, then the requirement for high computational power and energy would be cut out immensely. But if these aspects are cut out from the blockchain technology, then only little is left as an offering to the people who rely heavily on these aspects of the blockchain environment and decentralization.

Proof of work is the present working algorithm for the Bitcoin network and many other cryptocurrencies, and it is a bit older as well. Proof of stake, which is a refined and much recent mining algorithm, has been introduced and is being used by Ether along with various new cryptocurrencies. It is faster, convenient, and doesn’t require as much computational power; therefore, its energy requirements are also manageable. But incorporating artificial intelligence into the mix, certain areas of the blockchain environment could be optimized to a more standard space for managing computational requirements as well as the energy needs for the blockchain systems.

The storage needs of the blockchain technology could also be optimized by artificial intelligence by incorporating certain algorithms and processes which would require the subjection of data into semiactive nodes, therefore, putting no stress on the main storage array of blockchain technology. This way, the data could be subjected to these semiactive relays for the time being a transaction is validated, and once the validation is completed and the information is subjected to the block, the semi-active relays could be used to store the data for the next transaction in question, therefore, saving a huge amount of storage space.

High storage requirements slow up the process of validation for transactions, and therefore a huge queue is formed, which comes out as strangling and time-wasting; not only this, but the decentralization aspect of the network is also compromised. If people can’t go to a certain process or entity for the sake of making transactions or performing certain digital actions, then the whole concept of decentralization is lost. Database sharpening techniques could be introduced by artificial technology, which would help in reducing the size of the blockchain storage environment and optimizing the incorporation of data while making everything more efficient than it already was.

Data Economy

In a world that is governed by data, it ultimately becomes the most valuable asset there is, and the need to preserve data and secure it in a rather safe manner is over the top. There are multiple artificial intelligence systems that are dependent on data, its processing, its interpretation, and the volume in which it is made available to these systems. Blockchains have become the common norm when it comes to the safe storage of data, and some of these can store data with a rather impressive degree of reliability.

If you subject some kind of data to a blockchain medium, then rest assured the data will be there even after years of no interaction made by the user because this is how we centralized structures secure data. Blockchain works as a distributed database among multiple users and therefore is secure, it might not be an established concept that no kind of hacking attempt could be performed to destabilize blockchain technology, but it significantly becomes more difficult to launch an attack up to 51% of consensus needs to be reached.

This means that more than 50% of the users must vote unanimously to authenticate the attack on the blockchain network, or otherwise, it would be thrown away. This makes decentralized structures more reliable, secure, and intimate as compared to the centralized and less regulated structures of the financial world. There is talk of developing a new kind of data economy among decentralized exchanges. Because relying on the blockchain systems, this feat is going to be rather easier subjected to blockchain medium rather than to the centralized exchanges with extreme scrutiny and regulatory stance becoming harder and more strict with every passing day.

One of the biggest benefits of choosing blockchain technology and artificial intelligence to regulate the storage of data is that people would have much easier access to this huge stream of data and also in a secure fashion. The same couldn’t be said about the centralized structures and data centres or even the cloud technology, which is often put in charge of storing people’s data. You need to think about artificial intelligence in a subjective sense. It is nothing but a program that is capable of learning from the available stream of data.

The more intensive and platonic the data is more advanced artificial intelligence would get because of the reason that it is getting its hands on such an unrestricted supply of data made available over the blockchain systems. Other than that, algorithms developed using this specific technique would also be exchanged or transferred from one marketplace to another, thus opening a portal for not only the exchange of information but the technology that is capable of making sense of that strained data. Any person or user out there that is connected to the blockchain environment in some potential way could rent out their storage space, thus adding to the vastness of blockchain technology and the data that it is currently holding.

These people could get paid in tokens for the service that they are providing in terms of offering their local storage. This way, the game could be snatched from the centralized data centres and other possible localities that are presently in charge of storing data and charging horrendous fees to the users for this service. If you think that this is a concept that is far from reality and couldn’t be made possible just yet, then you would be shocked to know that most of these marketplaces are already working, and our present out there, not only this but they are reaching a potential stage of maturity as well.

This is a symbiotic relationship that could be developed between blockchain technology and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence would be able to better regulate the storage of the data as well as its processing, whereas artificial intelligence would get its hands on a decentralized and abundant supply of data to learn from.

Decentralization and Supercomputers

If you are thinking that you can just put together data from any potential source without verifying the context in which it is gathered and can orchestrate the training of artificial intelligence through the data, then you are clearly in the wrong. To train artificial intelligence and to have it perform certain tasks and actually learn from the data, the quality of the data also matters, which means that it should be top-notch and must be categorized and interpreted properly before being fed to artificial intelligence.

Artificial intelligence is known to utilize a computing element that is known as an artificial neural network, and these are the systems that actually learn from data and are able to perform certain tasks by taking into account various manifestations of the data and the prospect in which it is taken or meant.

These artificial neural networks require tons of computational power for the sake of processing millions and millions of parameters from the available data to reach that consensus and to perform a particular task. When you see artificial intelligence changing your speech into text, you might be thinking that this is taking place right then and there without any computational power. But in reality, there are possibly millions of strands of data that are being interpreted, categorized, organized, and then subjected to text that you see emerging in front of you on a blank screen.

So it isn’t taking place simultaneously in the literal sense, but to your eyes, it is consistent, which is why people often ignore the background process that accompanies the execution of a certain task. Data can be shared from one blockchain network to another, so what is limiting the sharing of computing power from one place to another? In some blockchain environments out there, users are able to lend their computational power in a peer-to-peer environment for the sake of validating transactions and stepping on complex computations.

These users are then provided with an incentive in the form of either a crypto token or some other compensation for the issuance of their computational power. Artificial intelligence systems could carry out the task much more efficiently whereas, reducing the cost factor substantially.

There won’t be any requirement for people to become nodes for a dedicated blockchain environment, whereas artificial intelligence systems could take charge and provide the computational power required for not only the processing of data, and validation of transactions but also the subjection of the completed transaction into their retrospective blocks. This synergy or union of AI and blockchain technology would finally be able to bring the world of finance and tech together and truly capture the essence of FinTech.