Intertwining Artificial Intelligence With Blockchain
Except for those folks living under rocks (sounds uncomfortable), everyone knows about or at least has heard of bitcoin. However, not everyone understands the technology of bitcoin, which extends well beyond Internet-based currency.
For the rock people, bitcoin is an Internet-based currency that allows for transparency with respect to each transfer of the currency through the use of a distributed database. Each transaction is locked in a block, and blocks are connected to form a “blockchain.”
Blockchain is an open source technology that facilitates creating each block, locking each block, and connecting the resulting string of blocks. Because it is a write-only database that never can be edited or deleted, the blockchain gives integrity to the complete history of the transaction.
For example, if we purchase a new tablet online using bitcoin, the seller wants certainty that the purchaser actually owns the bitcoins used to purchase the tablet. Also, the seller wants to be certain that the bitcoins have not already been spent by the purchaser for other goods.
The blockchain shows the ownership history of the bitcoins used before the purchase of the tablet. As a result, blockchain makes it difficult for a dishonest person to break the law by stealing some else’s data.
We are now entering a time when blockchain is expanding to wider, nonmonetary activities — at least since earlier this year, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration signed an agreement with IBM to explore Watson, famous from Jeopardy!, and blockchain to protect electronic health records.
As a matter of fact, the use of Watson’s artificial intelligence recently has expanded beyond the FDA deal to other important areas. For instance, IBM earlier this year began offering Watson/Blockchain as a Service, so we likely will see even more AI interfacing with blockchain.
AI is hardly new — it has been a part of the IT world for about 50 years. However, it was not until 2011 — when Watson became a public success in on Jeopardy! — that most people began to understand AI as more than just something from a science fiction novel.
Today, one only has to acknowledge the recent and extensive media coverage of driverless cars to realize just how ubiquitous AI has become.
Back in 1955, James McCarthy of Dartmouth College and a team of researchers defined AI as follows:
The process of self-improving computers, AI, or machine learning has an inherent legal risk if the process violates a law in one or more countries.
