AI and Web3: Ushering in the Next Generation of Users - TOKEN2049 Singapore 2023

welcome so um let's just do uh really quick intros so of course uh bacillus you are um uh Global lead of web3 and BD Microsoft and uh you are Mo you are the co-founder of Aptos very briefly I think everyone knows what Microsoft is um you describe very briefly what is Aptos and why should the people here care about what you're doing yeah so first of all thank you all for coming Aptos is a layer one blockchain that was designed many years ago inside of a different entity it was designed to be a permissionless payments Network to support billions of people and when we looked at everything that was out there in the market we realized this network needs to exist we spun out of our parent company which is meta in 2021 in 2022 we launched uh we launched the protocol it's built using move as a virtual machine and its own smart contract language but today it's one of the most performant blockchains out there in Market with complete reliability has had no downtime performance of 30 000 transactions per second with sub second latency and a transaction cost a fraction of a penny and so when you tie all these things together and if you're an innovator if you're a builder or you're a large Enterprise like Microsoft you're going to trust Aptos for your future of what three and so we're excited to be out here and Market with that great so the reason why the two of you are on stage together is that uh Microsoft and Aptos recently announced a partnership and I want to delve a little bit into the into the details of that partnership but first I want to ask a question to you facilis about Microsoft and Microsoft's relationship with web3 um you know so Microsoft relative to many of the other big companies in the space has been relatively quiet about its involvement in crypto you know I've seen things from Microsoft about blockchain but crypto itself I think you guys have been very careful to get involved why is that and what is it about this relationship with Aptos that made you guys decide to change and kind of do this thing very very open and publicly yeah I think it's a fair question and hello again for myself um there there are a few things behind that question so number one we did have our own Azure managed blockchain service that we retired a few years ago but when it comes to web3 which is a more of a of a denominator for the industry we we took a very conscious decision to be to to wait and see how the market will evolve right we didn't want to move fast and break things right uh so we and we were very conscious also of the fact that we come with the gravitas we are Microsoft one of the biggest organizations in the world with a long history and with a centralized kind of you know structure right so what is that all of a centralized company like web 2 giant and web3 we we wanted to wait to to see how the market evolves and then enter with a very principled approach so that's the reason behind a little bit the reluctance to engage very early in crypto now we are here we take a partner first approach we don't have a first we do have some first party Solutions but they're not Holistic blockchain Solutions and that's why we're always seek to formulate Partnerships with the leading web 3 natives one of them is Aptos so now I'm moving to the second part of your question like why Aptos right I mean we're chain agnostic but also we we want to do business with uh l1s and l2s that really reflect our values and our principles as a company after is such a company from the very first moment that I connected with Mo and the team I knew that they look at the space very seriously they want to bring innovation in web3 and last but definitely not least I'm sure you're gonna allude to that point is they're going to see how they can use AI to take web through the next stage Microsoft the last 12 months is a very AI focused company as probably Mall of you know so that was let's say the angle that made sense for both of us interesting so you know the substance of this panel is about the intersection of AI and crypto and there's been a lot of hype and a lot of uh big promises that people are making I want to hear from each of you what aspects of the excitement around the intersection of crypto and AI what part of it you think is and what part of it do you think is we're going to see in the very near future first it's uh all unless it's Aptos and Microsoft um the way we think about it is there are very serious problems in web 3 and in AI that I think the two of us together can start to solve and so From aptos's perspective we're seeing you know we want the ability for people users to use natural language to be able to query simply and we want those queries to be high signal verified information and so imagine seeing you know what is the coolest nft Dutch trading if they're stable coins moving around the world you can ask you know how much stable coins moved around the world and if they're on chain on Aptos you now see get those verified results and that gives a lot of usability to why web3 makes uh um it's useful for a user I think the second thing which is interesting for us is you know we always hear it's difficult to develop in web3 especially on some of the projects that have been around for a while and so how do we make that easier for the web3 developer and even the web 2 developer to enter into the space and so this is where you know we look at GitHub copilot as an amazing opportunity for Aptos so if you wanted to write a move smart contract or if you wanted to build a web3 application you can do that using GitHub co-pilot and Aptos together so we think that's something that's a game changer and definitely not um I think the third thing is what where the future lies right there are so many interesting use cases within finance that we've imagined web3 can potentially solve and I think D5 has done an amazing job of just you know cracking uh sort of the tip of the iceberg there's so much more you can enable if you were to add AI to that mix we just announced a partnership with sushi swap we're the first non-evm chain that they've selected to partner with and so we're incredibly excited for them to take pick Aptos move but imagine now adding Microsoft's AI chat bot into the mix and all the interesting things that you can do together and so you know we're starting to lay down the fundamentals on the building blocks of you know how these different Industries can be impacted and we're really excited for you know users to benefit ultimately as a result of AI and web3 coming together so that's what's your take definitely I Echo the comments that mermaid but I really love the fact that you act a very direct question I think people always appreciate it so I don't think and I'm very honest I don't think there is any BS kind of use case between a and web 3 but I do think that there are some use cases which are more ready to be introduced to the industry more well-baked right so for example as you said right how you can query a blockchain using natural language with a gbt kind of llm how you can have developers be 10 times more productive with the co-pilot I think those things are are real and will happen already happening there are some other things which a little bit on a horizon toward a horizon three nobody knows whether they will materialize so I don't know if you categorize it as a BS but I think at the end of the day anything that brings value to the user to the Enterprise is great you are a VC right you know that better than anyone else right so who knows what will bring value but right now I think the productivity and the and the ux are definitely the the low-hanging fruits right so right now you know people think of crypto as a mechanism to create trust yeah and AI very clearly right now has a trust problem uh there's been a lot of criticism of open Ai and some of these sort of closed Source uh ironically companies that basically have amassed enormous amount of power without a lot of visibility into you know what exactly they're doing where they what are they doing with one's data where are they scraping all this data from how do you think about the mechanisms of web 3 being able to bring more trust into what's happening in the in the realm of AI yeah I think that's a great point is it okay I think it's a great Point um I do believe that this actually I think that the revolution of AI llm is the best thing that ever happened for web3 right because it it's now very clear that web3 can add this layer of transparency verifiability if I may call it this way to AI so AI is huge it will become even bigger in the in the next months we are very happy as Microsoft to have this partnership with open AI but also with open source llms for many people do not know that uh you can use llama on azure and I'm giving that example because we are both about open source and more closures uh so I would say that what web3 can bring is exactly this how you can verify but an llm has either been trained on the right data has verified parameters and also the inference part which is the last mile can also be zero knowledge proven so I do believe that those two technologies will convert very naturally and they will convert into something much more valuable for everyone so that's one thing I don't know more um with you yeah the same way I mean just to add to that I mean I agree with everything you said um that trust component is a really important one for AI to get right and this is where a protocol a blockchain makes a lot of sense um I think you know if you want high quality High signal data essentially in these models you can get that from a blockchain right now what can you do with that Beyond just getting access now you're you're instilling confidence in your searches from there you can actually extend that into well how do you continuously evolve and grow these models in a more trusted way you can even start to offer rewards to people that contribute to these models so imagine you know everyone getting paid to contribute to open AI somehow um and that trust now creates this mechanism where you know there might be different models out there but if there's a reward system there's a ranking system there's a rating ultimately you know which models are you going to trust as an end user Which models are you going to trust if you're an Enterprise a business a developer probably the ones that have reputation high quality content in there and you can get of course solicit that by actually having these reward models so they create this nice Loop of continuous trust that I think will be very exciting for the future for AI so one of the things that I think in the AI world has been getting a lot of hype lately is the content of Agents so agents being not just chat Bots where you say something it gives you response but rather these these uh agentic AIS that are going out and doing things right accomplishing goals in a free-form way um what do you guys think happens when agents start finding their way onto the blockchain I don't know it's a little bit of uh I mean this token 2049 we're here thinking about the future um what do you guys think happen when agents find their way under the blockchain yeah I mean I can take this one first I mean they're they're agents on the blockchain today right sure okay fine we might call them something different so there's plenty of activity that exists that you know we're not sure you know how to trace it back to a human the I think what actually happens when AI starts to enter into the web web 3 world through things like agents you can have good outcomes obviously you can have some negative outcomes and so you know from aptos's perspective we want to make sure that there's proper credentialing there's you know so you know who you're interacting with there's nothing wrong with interacting with an agent right it might actually Empower you to do something good but you know I don't want to be fooled that I'm interacting with agent versus you know I'm interacting with haseeb or vasilis and so I think that's where web3 credentialing becomes very interesting and you know we're obviously working on that with um with some interesting Partners including folks like MasterCard okay no shame here I actually don't think it's necessarily bad if you have agents acting or semi-autonomously writing blocks I think you already have them there are some telegram Bots doing defy and all those kinds of things I think we will see use cases that we cannot currently imagine so I'm positively inclined to Innovation now how you can verify those agents how you can verify who if there is a person behind those agents which llm is feeding those agents it goes back to your initial question right and I think there's another big I would say Trend right now which is the whole idea of proof of humanity proof of personhood how you can verify that someone is a is a human being is a unique human being right we do have some interesting startups like World coin in that space But again intersection right zero knowledge web three AI those things in my mind symbiotic relationship I don't see them as different things I see them as amazing Innovations with when you mix them great things happen yeah so coming coming building off that you know one of the other concerns I think many people have is the cost of generating synthetic content has been plummeting with the Advent of especially you know with the video based Generation image based generation audio based generation you know how in in the very near future the next time you hear some you know Barack Obama saying something on Twitter how are you going to know whether it's real or not is there a role that blockchain web3 can play in a world where synthetic content suddenly becomes incredibly cheap to generate how do you guys think about that yeah I'm happy to go on this one so I think synthetic content is actually very interesting in a way that it can be quite positive right um it can inspire people it cannot actually serve as a thought partner um I think the cost of synthetic content going down is actually positive right anyone can now leverage this and you know in ideally a positive way now of course you'll have your um Bad actors just like any new industry does or any industry does um but I think what web3 can do is basically help try to solve for that right I mean tying this maybe back to the agent point right for a second I would love for there to be a model that understands Mo deeply have an agent that represents me that agent is verified because you know I have on-chain credentialing so you know you're dealing with Mo's agent not Moet himself and you know maybe that agent has created some synthetic content to respond to haseeb's email um or or whatever it may be right and so you know and and that's okay and I think you know ultimately the end user needs to get to a point where they feel comfortable engaging with that because there's credentials that this is most agent trained on and synthetic content you better have a white list on your agent because I'm not talking to your agent okay we go we go straight to each other obviously yes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah no it's the same here same here I to be very transparent on a personal level I am worried about that scenario about the flood of synthetic content how it can transform public opinion it is something I've been thinking a lot about to them the utility that the blockchains can have is exactly what we discussed before putting this stamp it's the same in my mind the same when you go to to a grocery store and you want to pick an organic fruit it has a stump right it says it's organic now of course you have to trust that the person who put the stamp it's actually organic and that's what the blockchain does but I know there is a lot of discussion and public debate about the if AI will kill all humans Etc I think one very valid concern is the synthetic content and how it can change the Dynamics in our society and blockchain could be a solution on that yeah and and for that stamp you're willing to pay more yeah right and so you're going to be willing to pay more for a credentialed you know Out product uh that's verified on chain and I think the market will basically be demanding this right I mean it's demanding it today right essentially yeah that's fair okay well we cannot have a panel talking about the future without mentioning Peter Thiel so there's a there's a very famous quote by Peter Thiel that I want to get each of your reaction to as we're closing out this panel the quote is AI is communist crypto is libertarian do you think this is true and if so how do you reflect on how that changes as Ai and crypto start to intersect with each other I love the question is it okay if I start please look this is a multi-layered question so but I want to be very fair because sometimes words can be interpreted in the wrong way so I will tell you how I interpret Peter thiel's quote I think by communist he means very centralized top-down and by libertarian he means uh power to the people every person has his or her own liberty that's how at least I interpret because other people may say Communists they interpret it in a different way so if that's the case if Peter Thiel means what I think he means I believe he's partially right but more importantly he's correct so let me explain the difference he's correct because at least that's how we see the things evolving we see most AI models being sent moving towards a centralized model right Microsoft Google AWS so is that communities I don't think it's communist but I understand that it's a it's a very top-down approach um now crypto libertarian I understand where he comes from again that's actually what is happening many people are entering crypto because they do not have trust in institutions they want to have self-custody of their assets I think though it's not the ideal State my ideal State now I'm talking as and I was reading uh a book about Hayek the famous political philosopher when I was flying to Singapore I think crypto can be the ideal liberal state by liberal from the classical meaning which is every person has autonomy self-soverinity but we all live in a in a society where we respect each other and we have common Norms so in my ideal State crypto is liberal rather than libertarian but I understand what Twitter tell said and having said that many years ago probably it speaks a lot about his uh abilities to predict the future fair enough well what's your take I mean very beautifully said um I'm American is my answer okay um but if you if you think about I mean I I going back to like studying Marxism I do think there was this like idyllic state that could exist that I think AI is kind of naturally transcending towards I think uh the libertarian view of web3 actually adds a lot of value to that state and what I mean by that is you can now have decentralization actually help facilitate different models where there is you know egalitarian and um you know Fair access so you know if you can contribute to these models you might be not only be able to be rewarded for it but you get access to these models as well and if you get access to these models in a free open way then I think you now create an opportunity where anyone can create and so you know I I do think it is interesting to think about the melding of the two um I don't know where capitalism falls in the Spectrum um but yeah I think it's very exciting uh to actually see Peter thiel's uh two Dynamic views coming converging together at the intersection of two very amazing Technologies absolutely yeah well we're up on time but I appreciate the two of you sharing your perspective let's give a round of applause for the amazing panelists thank you thank you