Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence
By: Crypto Suss
Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, AI, Bitcoin

It is always exciting to keep an eye on the new and cutting edge technology that is shaping the world that we live in. What’s even better is when two of these emerging technologies are combined. Today we want to look at how blockchain technology is being combined with Artificial Intelligence. We will outline some of the projects leveraging these technologies in the crypto space.

Let’s start by briefly defining these two technologies.

What is Blockchain?

We did an entire article recently explaining Blockchain technology. For the purpose of keeping it simple, Blockchain can be defined as follows:

A blockchain is an incorruptible and decentralised digital ledger of transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually anything of value.

As mentioned above, Blockchain ledgers work through decentralisation. This means that there is no one central controller of the ledger. It is maintained and updated by the network. In the case of Bitcoin, the network is made up of thousands of devices all over the world.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial intelligence or AI , is an area of computing all around the creation of intelligent machines. Artificial Intelligence has actually been studied since the 1950’s when there was the emergence of neural networks. This was followed by machine learning techniques in the 1980’s.

Today we see deep learning pushing a new boom in the Artificial Intelligence space. While there are many applications of AI for enterprise and business purposes, it is slowly engulfing much of the technology we use on a daily basis ourselves.

Ride-sharing apps like Uber and Lyft utilise machine learning techniques to predict the price of your ride and minimise wait times. Your email service provider likely uses artificial intelligence to filter spam messages coming into your inbox. Google maps uses anonymised data from smartphones to update traffic statistics in real time. Plagiarism checkers use AI to scan for plagiarised content.

Facebook, Snapchat and instagram all use AI for facial recognition and your favourite filters. So Artificial Intelligence is all around us. We are interacting with it on a daily basis, even though we may not even realise it. The AI Robots we see in the movies is but one form of AI we should concern ourselves with. The ways in which neural networks, machine learning and deep learning can be applied in our lives today can make our world much easier to manoeuvre. There are many projects in the cryptocurrency space trying to make this happen today.

So what happens when Blockchain and AI are combined?

There are some very ambitious projects in the cryptocurrency space seeking to make the best of these two technologies.

Matrix AI Network

Matrix AI network appears a very ambitious project on the surface. Videos on their website paint the picture of an Artificial Intelligence assistant helping us navigate nearly every facet of our daily lives. They describe themselves as an open source public intelligent Blockchain platform. They want to help bring old technology into the new world and propose to do this by utilising easily programmable smart contracts on their platform.

The area where they seem to merge Artificial Intelligence into the project is through Deep Learning based code generation for smart contracts. They recognise that programming smart contracts on the likes of Ethereum requires having to read and write code. Matrix aims to leverage AI to generate smart contracts for users. Users will only need to insert basic information like input, output, and transaction conditions. Being able to write smart contracts without having a coding background will allow a much larger pool of people to use their platform.

Also outlined in their white-paper is an interesting AI-enabled security and enhancement mechanism. Matrix’s built in compiler scans the smart contract code in order to try and find vulnerabilities and execution problems. It even carries out rule based checking and code revision. On top of all this they have a “deep learning based framework to discover the hidden intention of smart contracts and detect complex patterns of security vulnerabilities.”

Matrix’s blockchain, coupled with the above implementations means their blockchain will learn and evolve over time. Using AI to constantly search for vulnerabilities means that it will be able to serve up better and more refined smart contract code for users over time.

Potential Partners…

There is also much speculation that Matrix is working closely with the Chinese government. The Chinese government are working on some huge initiatives. The resurrection of the Silk Road connecting China back across Asia to Europe is one example. Could Matrix AI have some partnerships lined up on some government ventures? It is all speculation for now.

Nonetheless, Matrix AI network is a very interesting project and its implementation of AI seems very practical on the surface. If their machine learning algorithms can serve up easy to programme smart contracts this is sure to make Matrix AI network one to watch.

DeepBrain Chain

Deepbrain chain (DBC) is another initiative in the crypto space leveraging AI technology. They describe themselves as an Artificial Intelligence computing platform driven by Blockchain. In its whitepaper, DBC outlines a number of advantages of its platform. They focus on serving AI companies and already integrate deep learning frameworks such as TensorFlow (Google), Caffe (Facebook) and CNTK (Microsoft).

While Matirix AI network runs on its own native blockchain, DeepBrain chain will release their DBC coin on NEO. They will also run the DBC Coin issuing algorithm on NEO’s smart contracts.

It appears that DeepBrain Chain want to position themselves as the go to platform for AI companies. According to their whitepaper many of their benefits will stem from AI companies accessing DBC’s neural network computing power. By pooling together computing power from all over the world they say they can reduce the amount of money AI companies spend on computing power by up to 70%.

They are not simply providing a decentralised supply of computing power though. DBC are also seeking to create an AI data trading platform, an AI algorithm trading platform, an AI model trading platform and much more.

Where does this all lead?

With the examples above, its clear that there could be some very interesting use cases for the merging of Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence. Both projects are creating initiatives that result in a form of decentralised intelligence. Leveraging elements of AI like machine learning and neural networks means that these blockchains can become more efficient and evolve over time.

Add to this the ability for them to assist users in exploring and creating smart contracts and applications and it makes for a very interesting future. It is clear that AI can therefore aid us in not only creating a better user experience, but more efficient outputs in terms decision making and business performance.