The Blockcrunch Podcast AI is NEAR: Why AI OG Wants to Build a Blockchain for AI - Illia Polosukhin, NEAR Protocol, Ep. 259
Jul 18, 2024
Illia Polosukhin, NEAR Protocol Co-Founder, discusses NEAR's early days, AI x Crypto verticals, user-owned AI models, NEAR's AI R&D lab, and why NEAR is poised for AI. They also touch on Chain Abstraction, NEAR's roadmap, and the intersection of AI and blockchain technology.
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From Google Research To NEAR
- Illia describes leaving Google to build products and starting NEAR after struggling to deploy ML at Google due to latency and scale constraints.
- He recounts pivoting from an AI startup to solving blockchain scalability and onboarding problems that birthed NEAR.
Where Crypto Truly Adds Value
- Crypto excels at capital formation and building incentive marketplaces but those marketplaces often have low margin and limited value capture.
- Tokenized real-world assets like compute can capture value by yielding revenue and aligning incentives for investors and operators.
Corporate AI Vs. User-Centered AI
- Corporate-owned AI optimizes for company revenue and attention, which can bias training data and user outcomes.
- User-owned AI flips incentives to optimize individual well-being and community success instead of corporate monetization.