Technological innovations have hands down taken the world by storm. The hottest of them is AI and Blockchain.

Before these sensational buzz words invade our lives completely, which they already have to a large extent, don’t you think we should know a little more about them?

Without further ado, let’s delve into the world of AI-

For starters, AI or Artificial Intelligence is nothing new. It has been around us for more than 60 years now. Coined by McCarthy, back in 1955, it was described as – “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.”

Now, Intelligence here refers to generalized learning wherein a learner (machine)-

• performs effectively in situations it hasn’t encountered before.

• possesses the ability to reason wherein it can draw inferences and conclusions.

• solves problems that mean it finds x when such and such data is given.

• starts perceiving.

Artificial intelligence is doing most of them, if not all.

The most interesting part? You’re using AI day in and day out without even realizing it.

If today, you asked Alexa to order a pizza for you or browsed Netflix movie suggestions, then you did use AI.

Yes, we are that into it.

How else do you think your SIRI gives you a list of the nearby grocery stores or the closest restaurants for that matter?

It converts your voice into text format, feeds it into the search engine, the search engine then reads back the answers to you in human syntax. Amazing? It is!

There’s also yang to the yin of AI. It can make AI- a little less artificial and a lot more intelligent.

We call it Blockchain.

We all have heard of it, today let us know what it actually is.

In a world where data has become our biggest asset, its security has become crucial than ever before.

That is precisely what blockchain takes care of.

Blockchain is a distributed ledger that is open to everyone. It was originally invented to timestamp digital documents so that their tampering becomes impossible. It has been around for many years but rose to prominence only in 2009 when Satoshi Nakamoto founded Bitcoin- a digital cryptocurrency.

Speaking of structure, it is a chain of blocks that contain information, hence the name – Blockchain. Each block contains – data, hash, and hash of the previous block.

It works on a peer-to-peer network and isn’t managed by a single entity. All this adds to its security.

Now, to tamper the data in the blockchain,

• one needs to tamper all the blocks,
• take control of more than 50% of peer to peer networks.

And that is quite impossible to achieve.

To make it simpler, what it essentially does is-

It removes the third party from the picture and decentralizes the power of data management.

Hence, the power is distributed among the peer-to-peer network and the transactions become absolutely transparent and secure.

AI and Blockchain convergence – what can you expect?

Individually, AI and Blockchain have garnered much interest in the technological sphere.

Let’s look at their differences first-

ASPECT

AI

BLOCKCHAIN

Nature

Centralized

Decentralized

Access

Closed

Open

Transparency

Black box

Transparent

Approach

Probabilistic

Deterministic

The two technologies are quite opposite in nature and integration is sure to be intense!

A lot of data is being generated and AI makes use of it. But with this massive amount of data, there’s a continuous threat to its security. Blockchain comes to play here! It cannot analyze the data but provides it a decentralized base, and makes the transactions transparent thereby lending a highly secured system.

How do they complement each other?

• AI, being a black box, and by the courtesy of its probabilistic approach might make a mistake in case of faulty data input. And that can cause havoc! Therefore, a secure and transparent way is needed to overcome this. That’s how Blockchain compliments AI.

• Coming to Blockchain, consists of multiple miners that verify the data at every stage thereby leading to wastage of energy. AI can streamline this process and can decrease the mining cost.

• AI can also compliment Blockchain by making smarter decisions about data storage and maintenance.

How will they change the MOBILE INDUSTRY?

I want you to imagine 24 hours without your mobile phone. Difficult? Quite impossible, actually. We live in a world where every aspect of our life heavily relies on our mobiles.

Therefore, it’s only wise to understand how the attractive convergence of AI and Blockchain will affect the mobile industry.

Here are 6 ways in which the game will be changed forever-

1. Security- Well, this has to be the first on this list. We have practically lost the count of the number of applications that have our data. With AI and Blockchain, we can be sure that it won’t be mishandled or tampered by hackers.
2. Increased transparency- The data that we give out, in numerous ways, is processed by AI. Blockchain can monitor and control this data so that no interference is caused by third parties.
3. Decentralized marketplace- Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, etc are AI giants that have the centralized power to manage our data. This data, however, cannot be shared among the AI’s. With Blockchain in the picture, not only the security and privacy of data will be ensured, but also the merger and interaction of the data will be made possible.
4. No fraudulent transactions- In today’s time, we are heavily dependant on e-transactions, and thus securing them is of utmost importance. With AI and Blockchain, these transactions will become entirely transparent to the data owner and any fraud or breach will be reported in real-time.
5. Highly personalized experiences- AI will no more fail to serve the customers with personalized experiences due to the tampering of data at some stage, as blockchain will make sure that data remains immutable and secure. That simply means more privacy in terms of experience on platforms like Amazon and Netflix.
6. Self- auditing- Yes, the user will be able to monitor how his sensitive data is managed and employed.