While artificial intelligence has been making headlines in recent months, another innovative technology has been intriguing industry experts for some time now: blockchain. These two technologies have very different objectives, which could open up interesting perspectives if their strengths are combined for certain applications.
By ensuring the integrity of information, blockchain could potentially support a more accurate, reliable, and ethical AI framework, while AI can in turn dramatically increase the utility of data stored on blockchains. Below, Forbes Technology Council members discuss some innovative ways AI and blockchain technologies are combining to better serve everyone from patients to content creators to business decision-makers and more.
1. Sharing patient data
Integrating blockchain and AI in healthcare enables secure and intelligent sharing of patient data. Blockchain ensures data security, integrity, and interoperability by creating a decentralized, immutable ledger. AI analyzes encrypted data to provide insights, predict outcomes, and personalize care. This combination improves data security, patient outcomes, and transparency and reduces fraud and errors. – Trisha Swift, Mula Integrative Health & Wellness
2. Coding and trading rare AI ingredients
AI and blockchain are at opposite ends of the digital spectrum. While blockchain creates digital scarcity, AI creates digital abundance. Blockchain’s role in the AI revolution is to encode and exchange scarce ingredients for AI, such as licenses to valuable content or datasets created as non-fungible tokens. This allows companies to monetize their content or data for model training or inference support. – Chris Tse, Composable Labs
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3. Enable collaborative learning for AI
An innovative integration of blockchain and AI can be achieved through federated learning (or collaborative learning). This method allows AI models to be trained on decentralized devices without sharing raw data, thus ensuring privacy. Blockchain technology secures and transparently records model updates and verifies contributions, thus strengthening trust and collaboration between participants. – Ivan Tankoyeu, AI Superior GmbH
4. Analysis and verification of blockchain transactions
One innovative way to integrate blockchain and AI is to use AI to analyze and verify transactions on a blockchain network, thereby improving security and fraud detection. Such a move would be beneficial because it combines the transparency and immutability of blockchain with the advanced analytical capabilities of AI, creating a safer and more efficient system. – Mark Vena, SmartTech Research
5. Detect, diagnose and treat diseases
The combination of blockchain and AI could save lives by facilitating early detection of diseases and faster diagnoses and suggesting accurate and alternative treatments. All patient data would be stored, managed, updated and secured on-chain. AI could ingest patient, practice and research data to create a list of commonalities and potential outcomes. This result could lead to better and more informed treatment recommendations. – Robert Martin, Oil City Iron Works, Inc.
6. Allow control over data shared with AI
Blockchain can enable a greater degree of control and ownership over data shared with AI systems. The biggest issue with AI today is copyright protection. With blockchain, authors can choose to share information with certain services they trust, rather than not knowing who is getting their data for training AI and generative AI models. – Ashok Balasubramanian, Open Weaver Inc.
7. Implementing Verifiable AI
Blockchain immutability is essential to implementing verifiable AI. Responsible AI standards can be clearly stated as requirements in the blockchain, acceptance criteria can be displayed and enforced during AI development, and key assets can be immutably recorded for operational use of AI. Blockchain and AI are a perfect match for responsible AI use. – Scott Zoldi, FICO
8. Interpreting complex and changing data on the chain
We see ways to leverage and connect these technologies to solve interesting challenges, such as using a large language model to interpret blockchain data and determine the freshness and temperature, over time, of a pallet of food products. Blockchain can be used for these types of cold chain scenarios, and LLMs can be used to interpret this complex data. – Pete Bernard, tinyML Foundation
9. Protection and transfer of intellectual property rights
Artificial intelligence and blockchain can be combined to help protect intellectual property. Blockchain can record and verify ownership and transfer of intellectual property rights, while AI monitors for unauthorized use or infringement on digital platforms. This combination provides strong protection for creators, ensuring they receive fair compensation and recognition for their work. – Aaron Vick, AaronVick.com
10. Rationalization and verification of supply chains
Integrating blockchain and AI into supply chains can enable secure, transparent, and automated decision-making. Blockchain ensures data integrity, while AI analyzes that data to derive predictive insights. This combination improves traceability, reduces fraud, and improves demand forecasting. The initiative ensures trust and efficiency, ultimately leading to a more resilient and responsive supply chain. – Richard Lebovitz, LeanDNA
11. Promote transparent and autonomous decision-making
Integrating blockchain and AI into decentralized AI models leverages the transparency and immutability of blockchain. This approach increases trust, security, and accessibility in AI training and deployment. Industries such as healthcare, finance, and logistics can benefit from secure, transparent, and autonomous AI-based decision-making, improving efficiency and reliability. – Anand Santhanam, Amazon Web Services
12. Promote ethical sourcing
Integrating blockchain and AI for supply chain transparency could revolutionize ethical sourcing. AI analyzes data to predict issues, while blockchain ensures immutable records. For supply chains, this combination improves traceability, reduces fraud, and builds trust. It enables real-time, data-driven decisions and compliance, which is crucial for companies facing increasing demands for ethical and sustainable practices. – Victor Rijo, Phrasly AI
13. Create decentralized AI markets
One way to integrate blockchain and AI is to create decentralized AI marketplaces. In this case, blockchain can facilitate transactions while AI algorithms analyze and connect suppliers and consumers in a secure environment. This setup would democratize access to high-quality datasets, encourage sharing, and spur innovation by providing a broader and more verified range of data for training and development. – Thomas Griffin, OptinMonster
14. Creation and monitoring of smart contracts
The combination of blockchain and AI for decentralized and autonomous smart contracts can revolutionize industries. AI optimizes contract terms based on real-time data, while blockchain ensures tamper-proof execution transparency. This integration improves trust and transaction efficiency, reduces legal costs, and enables automated and secure agreements without intermediaries, resulting in cost savings. – Sarah Choudhary, Ice Innovations
15. Take advantage of TEEs
If AI is untrusted, it is effectively useless. Trusted execution environments provide a secure environment in which AI models can run without the risk of manipulation. In regulated industries such as finance or healthcare, TEEs play a critical role in developing sophisticated AI capabilities. For example, oracles within TEEs can ensure that patient data remains confidential while remaining auditable. – Igor Kiselev, Accenture
16. Help Blockchain networks run more smoothly
One of the reasons for combining blockchain and AI is to make blockchain networks run more smoothly. AI can predict when there will be a lot of transactions and adjust the system to better handle the increased load. This makes the blockchain faster, less energy-intensive, and able to handle more users. – Margarita Simonova, ILoveMyQA
17. Securing financial transactions and combating fraud
In the fintech sector, the integration of blockchain and AI promises transformative benefits. Blockchain’s immutable ledger ensures transparent and secure transactions, reducing fraud and building trust. AI complements this by analyzing transaction data in real-time, detecting anomalies and patterns that indicate fraudulent activity. It strengthens compliance, fostering a trusted financial ecosystem. – Deepak Gupta, Cars24 Financial Services
18. Maintenance of industrial equipment
Predictive maintenance of industrial equipment is an innovative integration of blockchain and AI. AI analyzes sensor data in real-time to predict maintenance needs, while blockchain timestamps and stores this data securely, ensuring its integrity and transparency. This initiative improves reliability, reduces downtime, optimizes costs, and facilitates regulatory compliance in industrial operations. – Vamsi Krishna Dhakshinadhi, GrabAgile Inc.
