Human stories and knowledge are the lifeblood of civilization and must protected at all costs in the age of artificial intelligence, according to Tracverse founder Amos Thomas.
Since their mainstream debut roughly two years ago, generative artificial intelligence solutions such as large language models (LLMs) have come under fierce criticism for reportedly sucking up the knowledge and creative outputs of humans, without credit or compensation, to train their algorithms.
The solution to this major issue lies in minting humanity’s stories on the blockchain, says Thomas.
Thomas spoke with Cointelegraph’s Jonathan DeYoung at DKGcon 2024 in Amsterdam, where he presented his Tracverse project, in an exclusive interview for episode 49 of The Agenda podcast.
Harnessing the power of stories and knowledge
Thomas described Tracverse as a “community-governed, community-owned storytelling ecosystem” that seeks to “capture the power that stories has had on humanity since its inception.” The project aims to categorize and protect them through the immutable, traceable nature of blockchain, particularly by relying on OriginTrail’s Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) technology.
Using the example of a blog post, Thomas shared that creators can use Tracverse to upload and protect each element of their content, from the pictures to the text. “All of that is stored in the DKG, and then Tracverse mints it [as an NFT] onto whatever blockchain you choose when you connect to the website.”
Source: Tracverse
Generative AI models feed off of the creative output of humans, which is used to train and fine-tune the models in a process that has drawn lawsuits from many creators, who allege their intellectual property rights were infringed upon.
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“What happens when AI consumes content that I am paid to do, and then it just replicates it without paying me back? Well, it just stole from me and devalued my work,” argued Thomas.
“That’s really why Tracverse says, hey, we need the [Decentralized] Knowledge Graph in our ecosystem. Because fundamentally, stories are knowledge, and we need to protect this knowledge.”
Will AI replace human creativity?
Thomas told The Agenda that while he wants to protect humanity from AI overreach, he does not actually buy into the argument that AI is replacing human creativity. Rather, he argued that it continues to open the doors for more people to experiment creatively than ever before and compete in industries previously gatekept.
Once the average person can create a full, immersive movie with just a single prompt, “that’s when it’s here,” Thomas said. “That’s when Marvel is here, or Marvel 2.0. That’s when DC 2.0 is here, for sure, because then everybody is equal to a PhD-level content creator at Hollywood.”
“So, really and truly, the only thing that matters after that is about organizing the content and making it discoverable and verifiable.”
He said that AI still needs human input to function properly, but he conceded that eventually, humans may be irrelevant. “Until we get anything close to that, we’re too valuable in the AI food chain for AI to try to get rid of us. It needs us to still continue. So, what needs to happen now is we need better alignment. And alignment means when you don’t steal from me, we’re friends.”
To hear more from Thomas’ conversation with The Agenda — including how an “omniverse” differs from a metaverse, the benefits of graph non-fungible tokens, and whether AIs will ever have guaranteed rights — listen to the full episode on Cointelegraph’s Podcasts page, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And don’t forget to check out Cointelegraph’s full lineup of other shows!
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This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.