The Future Is Intertwined for Web3 and AI
The integration of blockchain with AI streamlines processes and accelerates productivity, and blockchain can be used to guide the evolution and application of AI. Understanding these technologies can enhance trust among users and businesses, drive broader adoption, and potentially revolutionize the system and impact the world. To delve deeper into this topic, we have invited Nate Holiday, CEO and co-founder of Space and Time.
As Web3 evolves, it seeks to apply its new model of digital ownership to more and more up and coming technologies. The integration of AI has been particularly interesting, and despite its critics, many are working on using blockchain to fix some of the problems of generative AI.
Historically, the internet has facilitated the exchange and storage of data for various purposes, including business and content creation. With the advent of Web2, data collection skyrocketed with corporations holding all the keys to it. Corporations know everything about its users, and there’s justifiable angst at applying the same framework to AI. Privacy issues with AI data collection and training are raised ever more frequently.
In this context, Web3 aspires to create a secure environment where users retain custody of their assets, both fungible and non-fungible, while ensuring the availability of verified and reliable information.
The integration of blockchain with AI streamlines processes and accelerates productivity, and blockchain can be used to guide the evolution and application of AI. Understanding these technologies can enhance trust among users and businesses, drive broader adoption, and potentially revolutionize the system and impact the world.
To delve deeper into this topic, we have invited Nate Holiday, CEO and co-founder of Space and Time, a decentralized data warehouse leveraging AI and Zero Knowledge technology to handle complex and flexible queries. Nate Holiday, formerly the Senior Vice President of Go-To-Market Operations and Growth at Teradata, also serves as a Strategic Advisor to Bain & Co. and Chainlink Labs.
Hello Nate, and thanks for being with us. Nowadays, people in crypto often talk about “Web3” and how the blockchain is the next step in the Web’s evolution. Can you share a bit about what this means, especially for a person who’s only ever heard of Bitcoin?
NH: The best way to understand the evolution of the web is as a progression of capabilities and ownership.
Web1 refers to the earliest era of the internet, when it served primarily as a way for people to retrieve information. Web2 refers to the circa-2010s era of big tech and social media, where people all over the world are creating and posting content, but that content is owned, controlled, and assigned value by large, centralized corporations like YouTube or Facebook.
Now we’re entering the era of Web3, a revolutionary new age that allows individuals to not only read content from the web and write content to it, but also own the content that they create. Those that create in Web3 are able to capture the value of their work and own it as an asset in perpetuity.
Will we see Web3 having an impact on real-world cases, too? Do you think businesses and consumers have any interest in adopting Web3-based technology?
NH: Adoption is already here and as time goes on the lines between Web2 and Web3 will become invisible. We’re already seeing spot ETFs for Bitcoin, soon Ethereum, and I think we’ll see ETFs on groups of digital assets in the near future.
Asset tokenization is a great example of a real-world financial use case for blockchain, which will continue to expand. For example, assets which are complex to transact around today, like real estate, will be increasingly tokenized.
That said, providing verifiable data and computing to smart contracts is essential for businesses and financial processes built on blockchain technology to scale. This is why Space and Time exists.
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