Insights: The role of artificial intelligence and blockchain in Web3

How do you see the growth of artificial intelligence in the Middle East?
The Middle East region has always delivered on ambitious visions. This region has realised that artificial intelligence (AI) will be ubiquitous in every part of life in the next five to 10 years, will bring huge cost savings and/or efficiency gains and the governments are looking at harnessing the power of AI as quickly as possible.

What are the new trends that you have seen?
We have seen the following trends:

Upskilling
Industry wide upskilling programmes to have the basic mathematical skills of data science to understand AI. Government wide programmes are rolled out to make sure every civil servant understands what AI is, the potential and the limitations of the technology.

Developing innovation
The innovation ecosystem has grown massively in the last five years with the development of innovation hubs everywhere. To support the growth of this ecosystem Abu Dhabi Global Market, Dubai International Financial Centre have eased the process of doing business for startups and have attracted many venture capitals funds. The region is attracting talents externally as well as developing their internal capabilities through education and various innovation programmes.

Enhancing regulations
There is a large effort to understand and regulate the nascent technologies and the regulator in Abu Dhabi and in Dubai are already working closely with the tech and innovation eco system. They have set up sandboxes to support and observe the development of startups. VARA, the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority is a good example with about 50 Web3 companies in their sandbox.

Tell us about the role of artificial intelligence and blockchain in Web3.
Artificial intelligence and especially computer vision is the underlying technology that enables virtual reality and augmented reality. Meanwhile, blockchain is the technology that enables smart contracts and records to be kept and traced immutably and in full transparency. The technology is a big leap in terms of data collection and data quality. Therefore, these blockchain enabled datasets are prime input for AI algorithms. Blockchain also enables fast and scalable transactions, providing reliable real time data.

Artificial intelligence is the only tool able to analyse this data, detects fraud in large number of crypto transactions. As more people and organisations move into the metaverse, AI enabled toolkits will bring value to organisations to better understand their customers, derive value for NFTs and monetise interactions in the virtual world.

Read: Blockchain to disrupt business models, transform the future – report