Artificial intelligence is undoubtedly one of the hottest topics in the cryptocurrency industry (and far beyond) in recent years.

With the emergence of companies focusing their efforts on further improving and developing various AI-based tools and programs, many crypto projects have also integrated new technologies into their protocols.

You can take a look at some of the top AI cryptos in one of our in-depth reports on the topic.

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, recently attended the Ai4 conference, an artificial intelligence event held in Las Vegas from August 12 to 14. He delivered the keynote address and addressed some of the challenges posed by the merging of blockchain and AI.

AI uses blockchain

IOHK’s Chief Technology Officer Romain Pellerin summed up his keynote speech.

Hoskinson said artificial intelligence has the ability to leverage blockchain-based technology as a trust and incentive layer to build decentralized marketplaces for data, reasoning and models.

He explained that blockchain’s role in AI could “revolutionize data management, encourage sharing, and create decentralized marketplaces for computation and reasoning.”

In addition, the Cardano founder explained that tokenization and incentives could provide solutions to AI’s dependence on enormous amounts of data and computing power.

What about the challenges?

Although the manager identified many common ground, he also pointed out that many challenges still lie ahead.

The fundamental difference between blockchain and AI, such as privacy concerns, resource scarcity, and determinism, leads to incompatibility. Coordination remains key, but bringing these systems together could prove difficult.

In addition, he said that privacy remains a critical issue when developing AI solutions, but fully holomorphic encryption (FHE) could potentially enable private smart contracts and secure data sharing without compromising on privacy.

The integration of AI and blockchain is hampered by technical incompatibilities and the first-mover problem, but complementary solutions may emerge that overcome these challenges, said Hoskinson.