Stop Feeding AI for Free | OpenLedger, Ram Kumar

00:00I learned the world through internet. I think for my daughter, they will learn the world through AI. A company called Scale AI, which is known for being a data referring company. They've got so much data from across the globe. People sorting, labeling, and sifting reams of data to train and improve AI for companies like Meta, Open AI, Microsoft, and Google.

00:20Meta is paying nearly $15 billion for a scale AI stake. I've confirmed with a source. This just shows you how much there is a need for data. We all contribute data to AI. Your tweet, the posts that you do on Facebook, the videos that we upload on YouTube are the ones AI models are trained on.

00:35But us as users, we don't get paid for it. The data economy today is valued about $1 trillion. This is the data. It's across the globe from enterprises, organizations, and individual people on the internet. And let's assume about 5%age of that is contributed by individuals.

00:50That's close to about $500 billion. $500 billion worth of data that's taken away from you and you're not getting paid for it. We want to change that. What if we can flip the switch here and have people have the ownership to that? We want to build a system where you can contribute your data and you get paid for that.

01:06It's not just for AI researchers or developers, right? The common man who owns a lot of data. We have close to about a million users who are contributing data sets for that. It's like how nations went ahead and fought for oil. Now larger organizations are going to fight for data, right?

01:21Data is the new oil and people have to realize that that they own that oil. They own that data. But it's time to fight back and earn a piece of that. I'm Ram. I'm one of the core contributors at Open Ledger. Open Ledger is an AI blockchain where people have the data sets.

01:37AI systems need these data sets. So as an application, you can use Open Ledger to go ahead and contribute a data set that you own. We have lot of data contributors that initially came on board. We have close to about 10 ecosystem projects building AI models on us.

01:51We have close to about a million users who are contributing data sets for that. I've been in this industry close to a decade right now. The idea was to build an R&D company around blockchain and machine learning. We saw there is a need for enterprises to bring in fairness and like transparency within their ecosystem like within their organization.

02:15We had an opportunity to work with enterprises like Walmart, Sony, GSK and many more. And what we realized is that especially a technology like blockchain brings equality among every user that uses that. Open ledger is a contribution from that.

02:29Idea was to not just service enterprises uh build a product that can be used by anyone across the globe and figure out how AI is impacting everyone lives. We all have this epiphany at one point of time where you have conversations with your friend about a product that you want to buy and you see that ad on Instagram you know that your data is being used.

02:48I've had multiple epiphanies as that and we've worked with firms where we that is visible right people's information was used to make their product better sure it gave convenience right but it also took privacy that's going to happen with AI as well AI is going to make money all these large organizations going to make money out of it but you're not going to be part of that as we evolve right as models evolve models will become specialized where they need data sets from people and in that case we need to make sure that we can own our data and we get paid for it and that's what open

03:18is trying to solve It's a platform where users can come and contribute data sets which could be let's say a knowledge that they have about trading or a knowledge about a particular subject. Let's say I know to cook well I can go ahead and contribute that and then models can use this data and if they use that data and they build an AI out of that and this AI makes revenue or creates an impact you should be a part of that you should get a piece of that revenue.

03:42We want to bring in famas to this ecosystem. The people who contribute data or a model developer or a comput provider or any kind of resource provider gets paid as part of the process and that's what opener is all about. A lot of people say that AI is going to make people lose jobs.

03:57I don't think so. It might be a temporary thing but it's going to create a lot of jobs. Data contribution itself could be a great gig economy. Data is also very relevant with enterprises. Data you find on internet is very generalized but the data that you would find in a firm in an enterprise is very specialized right and all of his knowledge did not come on the internet right people don't write blogs about it a surgeon doesn't write about how what his experience in actually doing the surgery an artist doesn't write about how he actually painted a picture so it's all comes down to the

04:28individual person's knowledge that they own this knowledge would be needed for AI right for AI to truly get into all parts of our lives more than just a chatbot it needs to no knowledge about the entire world. It needs to know about very intricate details.

04:40Right? In that case, people would reach out to you know individual users to get their knowledge. So we knew that chart GPD moment will not going to be there as just a spark. It's going to become much more bigger. We're going to build AI systems that are very specialized in various use cases.

04:56But there is not enough data out there on the internet. We've seen lot of independent developers who have lot of innovative ideas who are actually building interesting AI models in the Asian region. They contribute data sets by using our nodes which is basically a node they can download and have it as a plug-in.

05:11They can contribute data sets for that. If you take a look at uh web 3's nature internet was supposed to be decentralized but because of convenience we let larger organizations take that. So making sure that it does not go back to bunch of centralized larger firms is very important.

05:26We don't have money to fight for it. All we have is our own power people coming together and building something against the larger organizations. In order for that to happen, you need to make people to come together and community building is very important as part of that.

05:40Building a very strong culture, building a very strong community. Having the same goal, building systems that are open, verifiable, and rewarding is what makes people come together. Let's take an example of Ethereum itself. Ethereum is a very communitydriven blockchain and that is why it's so strong today.

05:57Even though it has its ups and down, uh Ethereum as an ecosystem is very strong. That's why I think community is very important in what we're building. So to explain uh proof of attribution in a very simple manner, what if there's a tracking mechanism where you can see and who actually contributed for all of this and you can also see it on chain that everyone who contributed are getting paid for it.

06:19So it's a tamper-proof record of your data's ownership. It's a record of how your data was used and it's also a record of how much you're going to get paid if your data was used as well. So the reason why we have the proof of attribution is because we need to have a trustless system where they don't have to believe RAM right they can believe the system they can believe the code I think that's very important as a data contributor you can go ahead and choose the model that needs the data and you can start contributing data sets to that it's that cyclic uh ecosystem you

06:49want to build all the data that is contributed is record on the blockchain because so that we can track this and we can pay this as a user I know that I can prove my ownership by having it on chain Another interesting side that we have started to see a smaller model developers and innovative you know people who want to build something interesting have started using our product.

07:08A good example that's being built on open edger is a bunch of doctors are building uh a sleep model. The model is trained on sleep data sets high quality sleep data sets across the globe. Uh they want to get access to the sleep data sets from various parts of the world so they can cover various races.

07:24This particular data set is very unique because they're going to correlate that with their health vitals and then once the model is ready you can just upload your sleep data and then it's just going to tell you what's your body vital looks like.

07:35So like this we have very interesting players who are building models on us very niche innovative ideas where you need data which is quite unique. We are quite excited about them. So a lot of people ask me like why this has to use blockchain it could be a traditional AI company but I don't think so.

07:49If you take a look at generalized models, the era of that will slowly fade away. Agents will become much more specialized. There'll be an agent for healthare. There'll be an agent for legal. There'll be agents for every other sector out there.

08:00And you can have a general model power that you need to have a specialized model that powers it. And the data set is among actually people. And these data sets can eventually become models, specialized AI models which then can be consumed by apps and agents that are going to be built on top of that.

08:15So I think every aspect of our life will change. How we take a ride home, our doctor visits and what we learn from all of that will change. I learned the world through internet. I think for my daughter AI will create a huge impact, right? They will learn the world through AI.

08:31So that AI has to be responsible. So building a responsible AI system is upon us. If we encourage larger ecosystems to go ahead and consume our data and not reward us, then that's what is going to happen. Right? I think now it's time to change it.

08:46If we can realize how important our data is, probably that's the best output that we can see out of AI.