What a Shared Record Can and Can’t Do

Artificial intelligence (AI) can generate a product description, flag a suspicious transaction or summarize a stack of documents. Blockchain does a different job. It lets multiple parties maintain a shared record of what happened. Put them together and you get an interesting possibility. AI can do the work while blockchain helps track where the inputs came from and what happened along the way. This interesting topic came to us from Binance in their article, “The Relationship Between Blockchain and AI.”

Consider a group of publishers licensing articles to an AI developer. A shared ledger could record which versions were licensed and under what terms. Each publisher could check the same record if a dispute arose. The articles themselves could stay in controlled storage, with the ledger holding digital fingerprints that help verify which files were registered.

There are trade-offs. Maintaining a shared ledger adds cost and complexity, and some networks use substantial energy. Putting personal information directly on a blockchain can also make it hard to correct or remove. And fundamentally, a ledger can preserve a false claim just as faithfully as a true one. If someone registers an article they have no right to license, the record alone cannot settle who owns it. And tracing an AI system’s inputs only goes so far in explaining why it produced a particular answer.

The deciding question is who needs to trust the record. If one organization manages the entire workflow, a conventional database with an audit log may be enough. If independent organizations need a common history they can verify for themselves, blockchain has a clearer role alongside AI.

Keeping data safe and whole is important. Making data accessible is something we know a little about. Whatever you are searching for, it is important to have a comprehensive search feature and quality indexing against a standards-based taxonomy. Choose the right partner in technology, especially when your content is in their hands. Access Innovations is known as a leader in database production, standards development and creating and applying taxonomies.

If this got you thinking, there’s more where it came from. Subscribe to Taxodiary for the latest insights from our experts.

Melody K. Smith

Data Harmony is an award-winning semantic suite that leverages explainable AI.

Sponsored by Access Innovations, where smarter AI starts with structured, meaningful, well-governed knowledge.