CryptoSlate’s Editor-in-Chief Liam “Akiba” Wright and CEO Nate Whitehill recently interviewed Max Li, Founder and CEO of OORT, about the transformative potential of decentralization in artificial intelligence (AI). OORT is a blockchain-powered data infrastructure that aims to address transparency, privacy, and ethics concerns as AI systems become increasingly integrated into daily life.
Li emphasizes that transparency is key to building trust in AI systems, which centralized platforms like Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services currently lack due to their closed infrastructure. OORT’s decentralized data cloud aims to ensure data collection and storage are open and verifiable. Li also discussed how centralized AI systems raise privacy concerns, as users have little control over their data’s use.
With OORT, decentralized storage guarantees data integrity and prevents unauthorized modifications. He highlighted the ethical implications of AI, suggesting a decentralized ecosystem could support the development of “auditing AI,” where independent agents assess the ethical compliance of various AI models.
Li believes closed AI systems cannot fully address transparency and ethical challenges and pointed out that major AI initiatives like OpenAI still rely on centralized platforms for training and deployment. OORT supports open-source AI and enables users to maintain control over their data and verify its authenticity.
This open infrastructure contrasts traditional AI models, where data ownership and manipulation remain contentious issues. Li envisions a future where decentralized platforms like OORT collaborate to create a network of trust-based AI systems. By incorporating open-source principles, the platform encourages global contributions to AI development while maintaining transparency.
He also emphasized that the decentralized model would empower users to influence AI development directly. Li concluded that integrating blockchain with AI has transformative potential, and decentralized infrastructure will be increasingly important as users demand more accountability from AI systems.
He predicts a network of decentralized platforms working together to support AI built on trust and transparency.
