During a recent episode of TechCrunch’s Chain Reaction podcast, host Jacquelyn Melinek interviewed Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov about a range of topics including unexpected use cases for smart contracts, the value of cryptographic guarantees, and the promise of Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP).
Melinek also invited Nazarov to elaborate on how blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies can be combined to benefit society and how society can prepare to combat their misuse.
While blockchain and AI are often discussed together, Nazarov highlighted how different they are.
“I think they’re both rapidly developing. I think they’re solving different issues though,” he explained.
“AI solves a very important efficiency issue about one of the defining properties of human beings which is cognition and intellect. Blockchains are all about privacy, and security, and reliability, and hyper-reliable, mission-critical systems that can secure value. So they’re different problem spaces.”
He described two points where AI and blockchain might intersect. Blockchains can help protect against the misuse or misalignment of AI by creating the foundation for decentralized systems that are AI-resistant. AI can also optimize blockchain-based systems by providing insight and analysis regarding the effectiveness of various risk management strategies.
Nazarov said plans for the Chainlink Network could include interacting with AI on both of these planes, by “making systems that are resistant to AI misuse” through “AI-resistant infrastructure” as well as “utilizing AI to help detect various risks and help optimize for the best reliability and the best security from an oracle network that would be possible.”