“The most exciting thing about this is that it’s a perfect storm,” said Dr. Matthew Green, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies blockchain and artificial intelligence, “”It combines two areas where we’re very strong in terms of innovation and also where there’s a lot of room for improvement,”
Green says he believes the combination will lead to breakthroughs in both fields. He cites the example of how Bitcoin has enabled financial transactions without a central authority or middleman like banks.
What’s more, the fact that all the data is public can be interpreted by computer algorithms and can be transferred anonymously through the internet already allows for many financial applications that weren’t possible before such as trading financial derivatives or insurance.
Although the combination of the two sounds revolutionary it might still be at least several years before we see anything practical come out of this research. The early adopters and the testing that needs to be done, especially on how the two technologies interact with each other, for example how a decentralized system can enforce a set of rules on a network that can be interpreted by a blockchain, is going to take some time. However, the technology race between the US and China isn’t over just because they’ve created a working ant-arctic base.
The other countries that have been extremely active in AI research like Israel, China and even a few western countries like the UK are going to continue pushing forward with their research, and as the US and China are already ahead in research and development because of their large budget allocations to the field, it’s only going to get harder for them to stay one step ahead.
Especially considering how the two countries are already having a trade war. As a result of this technological arms race, powerful players are inevitably going to get involved in this cutting edge technology. Rumors already around that the East Asian countries are already in contact with each other to share their research. Of course, the other rumor is that a multi-national company like Microsoft or IBM is just going to buy up all the leading AI research institutions and companies and become the new internet.
In any case, you can see why the military is so interested in this technology. The US Air Force is already training drone pilots and other personnel to fly in these conditions. The Army is also interested in autonomous weapons systems that can make independent decisions. Does this all sound a bit…HUMAN?
Fortunately, the military isn’t the only one interested in this cutting edge technology. There are already companies that have started to adapt this for regular consumers, such as Amazon with their experimental “Fire” service that uses this technology to make the in-house delivery service faster and more efficient. Companies like DeepMind are already working on using these types of technologies for the “healthcare” industry.
So if you’re interested in this field, your career choice has never been more wide open. With advances in this field coming so fast and furious, you never know where it’s all going to lead.
Next pege: This is the future. Welcome to the Blockchain.
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