OriginTrail on AI, real-world adoption and the value of knowledge: The Agenda podcast

Artificial intelligence (AI), large language models (LLMs) and machine learning have infiltrated just about every aspect of our technology-connected lives. Tools like ChatGPT offer an array of helpful utilities, but they also come with a potentially dark side, as ChatGPT and other LLM chatbots are known to occasionally spit out information that is factually incorrect, potentially biased and possibly even harmful.

AI is just the latest example demonstrating the importance of being able to verify information. Complex systems such as supply chains, where verifiability has always been important, have long been touted as areas where blockchain technology and decentralization can offer real-world benefits.

One project seeking to realize this potential is OriginTrail, a multichain protocol building what it describes as the first-ever decentralized knowledge graph — a type of data layer that helps establish and verify relationships between various data points.

On Episode 14 of The Agenda podcast, hosts Jonathan DeYoung and Ray Salmond chat with Žiga Drev and Tomaz Levak, co-founders of OriginTrail, who break down knowledge graphs, the importance of decentralization for AI and supply chains, their experience working with enterprise clients, and more.

A “trusted knowledge foundation”

According to the founders, OriginTrail is building a “trusted knowledge foundation” that can help combat misinformation, whether related to AI hallucinations or fraud in medical supply chains. To do so, it created the “Decentralized Knowledge Graph” (DKG), a decentralized version of the same relationship-revealing tools used by Google to tailor its search recommendations and Amazon to suggest products.

When asked why knowledge graphs need to be decentralized, the founders argued that centralized services, by their very nature, consume user data and build knowledge without said users receiving equal value in return. Drev told the Agenda.

“We’re not benefiting from these kinds of technologies because we’re not involved.”

With OriginTrail, users can create “knowledge assets” on the DKG that they will be able to leverage and extract value from in a similar way to how tokens can be leveraged in decentralized finance today, according to Levak and Drev.

As adoption of the @origin_trail DKG continues to expand, so does the count of #AI-ready Knowledge Assets! We’re heading towards reaching 1 million Knowledge Assets published on the #DKG before the current Turing phase concludes, as we celebrate the creation of 500,000 assets… pic.twitter.com/FXvxkxzwcd

— OriginTrail (@origin_trail) August 18, 2023

The founders also argued that having a trusted knowledge foundation will help users verify the validity of information generated by AI chatbots, for example, by allowing users to trace the origins of their outputted statements.

Related: Altcoin Roundup: Three blockchain protocols taking the supply chain crisis head-on

According to Drev, “By decentralizing AI, what we give users actually is an ability to verify from which source an answer was extracted. Or even if you use a generative AI, you can still check what is the information trail and where does that information come from.”

Bringing the blockchain to the real world

One common critique of the crypto space is that most projects only exist to solve problems created by other projects, and that there is little real-world need for blockchain technology. A core goal of The Agenda is to find and explore those use cases that are impacting, or have the potential to impact, the world outside of the cryptosphere.