A16z New Year Reprint: Blockchain brings AI and the Internet back to the hands of users

Original Title: Blockchain innovation will put an AI-powered internet back into users' hands

Original author: Zoltan Vardai

Source of the original text:

Compiled by Tom, Mars Finance.

Blockchain innovation will return the AI-driven Internet back to the hands of users.

The views of those doomsayers are wrong. AI will not end the world, but it will indeed end the internet as we know it.

Since the dawn of search, there has been a core economic convention on the Internet: a few companies (mostly Google) provide the demand, and content creators provide the supply (and derive some of the advertising revenue or awareness from it). Today, AI tools have begun to upset this balance by generating and summarizing content so that users don't have to click through to visit the content provider's website.

Meanwhile, AI-driven deepfakes and bot accounts will make us question what is real and erode trust in the online world. Large tech companies with the ability to handle the most data and computing power will continue to invest in AI, making them even more powerful and further reducing the already dwindling open internet.

Technological progress is unstoppable. I point out these phenomena not to shout doomsday or stop development, but to help ordinary users take control of their digital lives. Prudent government regulation may be helpful, but there are also risks of slowing down innovation. Moreover, attempting to come up with a “one-size-fits-all” solution often brings as much trouble as it solves. The reality is that users will not exit the online world, so what can we do?

In history, major technological waves are often intertwined - think back to the rise of social, cloud computing, and mobile computing in the early 21st century. Today is no different: AI requires the computational capabilities empowered by blockchain. Why is that? Firstly, blockchain can ensure ownership. Blockchain can make trustworthy commitments around property, income, and permissions. A group of decentralized computers (instead of a large company or any centralized institution) validates transactions, ensuring that rules and records are tamper-proof without consensus. Smart contracts can automate and enforce these ownership rights, giving the system transparency, security, and trustworthiness, allowing users to have complete control and ownership of their digital lives. For content creators, this means they can decide how others (including AI systems) use their work.

Another basic property right that can be enforced by blockchain is identity. If you are who you claim to be, you can sign a declaration in an encrypted manner to prove yourself. We can use the same identity across the Internet without relying on third parties. On-chain identity can also help distinguish real users from robots or impersonators. In the 1990s, nobody knew if you were a dog online. Now, people can know whether you are a dog or a robot. With recent technological advancements, we will see more 'proof of humanity' appearing on the Internet in the coming years.

Blockchain can also create tamper-proof digital content records to combat deep fakes. When a video, photo, or audio is created, blockchain can store a unique digital fingerprint. Any changes to the content will alter the fingerprint, making it easy to detect tampering. Blockchain can also store metadata and verify claims of credible sources, further ensuring the authenticity of content.

In the end, blockchain is expected to help the Internet return to its original ideal state, maintaining the creativity, openness, and diversity of the Internet. Currently, users rely on a few Internet giants, which are heavily investing in AI and calling for regulatory measures to block smaller competitors. Many once open websites and applications have added paywalls, restricted or closed APIs, deleted archives, edited past content without permission, and added a large number of annoying banners and pop-up ads. Blockchain-based alternatives will provide more choices, open-source innovative models, and community-controlled options, thus continuing the torch of the open Internet. Cryptographic technology can take power back from large tech companies and return it to users.

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This article comments on a column called '2025 World Outlook' published in Wired UK on December 11, 2024, based on the original ideas proposed by Chris Dixon in his book 'Read Write Own: Building the Next Generation Internet'.