Michael Casey: "Data Ownership Crucial with Emergence of 'AI Agents'... Blockchain Needed"

Michael Casey, Chairman of the Decentralized AI Association
Speaks at Dunamu's 'UDC 2024' Dialogue

Lee Seok-woo, CEO of Dunamu (left), and Michael Casey, Chairman of the DAIS Association, are having a conversation at the 'Upbit D Conference (UDC) 2024' on the 14th. Photo by Dunamu

"In the future, machines called 'Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents' will appear to trade or buy clothes on our behalf."

Michael Casey, former chairman of CoinDesk Consensus and chairman of the Decentralized AI Society (DAIS), focused on the emergence of so-called 'AI agents' and their connection with blockchain technology at the 'Upbit D Conference (UDC) 2024' event on the 14th.

Chairman Casey held a dialogue with Lee Seok-woo, CEO of Dunamu, on topics such as 'Blockchain, AI, and Web3,' stating, "Eventually, machines will act on my behalf, so only machine-readable languages will be necessary instead of human-readable languages," and added, "Because of this, the web itself could disappear."

He also criticized, "The reason power is concentrated in Web2 platforms like Meta and Alphabet (Google's parent company) is not because they are rich, but because they possess people's data," and said, "It is very dangerous that these six platforms own or manipulate all the data and can use it in ways I don't even know."

He then pointed out, "Blockchain is a completely different paradigm," explaining, "This structure involves decentralized ownership, and by tokenizing it, ownership is spread very widely."

He continued, "Having ownership of my data, being able to track where my data has gone, which model it enters, and whether it is being used and developed in the direction I truly want is extremely important."

However, he acknowledged that this is not an easy task in terms of the costs involved in distributed computing, as it requires large-scale advanced semiconductor chips.

Chairman Casey suggested, "For example, instead of forcing computation into the system, we can think of other models," adding, "It could be a model like OpenAI's large language model (LLM) or another method to expand computational power."

He also explained, "Payments will be very important in the AI era," referring to "how AI will transact with other AI, whether it will wait for settlements, and so on."

He diagnosed, "Unlike the method of waiting for banks to open to settle, AI could transact at a much faster speed," and added, "Because transparency is needed in this process, smart contracts will play a fundamental role in the emergence of AI agents."

Connecting this to the emergence of AI agents leads to the conclusion that computational power must be distributed. This is because explosive computational activity will be required if each Earthling individually owns an AI agent.

Chairman Casey emphasized, "This computational power must also be distributed to the edge," and pointed out, "Our TVs, iPhones, Galaxies?all of these must communicate with each other and operate locally."

He then stressed, "The issue is whether we share this process together or let the Big Seven (the seven major companies) own it," and added, "By doing so, blockchain and AI must be integrated with each other."