Over the past year, AI has seen a surge in popularity and adoption, promising unprecedented capabilities across various sectors.

Today, we witness the convergence of AI and crypto in some groundbreaking new features of AO: a decentralized supercomputer with unbounded computation and an unbounded local hard drive, enabling autonomous, language-based intelligence within a trustless system. AO's latest technological advancements now support Large Language Models (LLMs) running within the execution state of smart contracts in a decentralized environment, a significant leap forward in the evolution of trustless intelligence.

Autonomous Language-Based Intelligence Inside AO

AO's decentralized supercomputer is not just a traditional smart contract network but now a robust platform for running sophisticated AI applications within the execution state of the smart contract. By integrating support for LLMs, AO allows the inference of any open-source data model within a decentralized framework. This feature is crucial because it transitions the execution of primitives in DeFi from merely trustless to trustless intelligence.

This paradigm shift is possible due to several innovative technologies that form the backbone of AO's capabilities.

Current Challenges in AI Implementation

There many issues current implementations face that limit its effectiveness and trustworthiness.

• Over-reliance on centralized off-chain oracles: Many blockchain-based AI systems depend on external data sources, known as oracles, to feed information into the network. These oracles are often centralized, creating a single point of failure and introducing trust issues. AO solves this by enabling models to run directly within the execution state of smart contracts which allows for onchain AI processes.

• Lack of transparency: AI models often operate as “black boxes” which make it difficult to understand how they arrive at specific decisions. AO improves transparency by bringing AI operations into a decentralized, on-chain environment.

• Limited Computational Resources: Constraints such as block size, time limitations, and consensus mechanisms cause limited computational capacity. AO leverages WASM64 and parallel processing to tackle this. 

New Tech Enabling AI on AO

AO’s AI capabilities are powered by three key technological innovations. These advancements overcome traditional limitations, providing the necessary infrastructure for running sophisticated AI models in a decentralized, trustless environment: 

1. WASM64 Support: WebAssembly (WASM) 64-bit support is a critical advancement, allowing developers to create applications that utilize more than 4GB of RAM. This breakthrough enables the support of LLMs, offering limitless memory and unbounded computation. At the protocol level, AO has a memory limit of 18 exabytes, ensuring ample storage and processing power for large-scale models like Llama 3.

2. WeaveDrive: WeaveDrive transforms how data is accessed and managed within AO. It allows seamless access to Arweave as if it were a local hard drive in AO, operating at the system level. This feature increases the incentive to upload data to Arweave, providing an unbounded storage solution at minimal cost. By leveraging WeaveDrive, developers can run computations on arbitrarily sized data sets and load data from the network into their processes effortlessly.

3. Hyper Parallel Processing Mechanisms: AO's hyper-parallel processing capabilities enable large-scale computation without affecting neighboring processes. This feature is crucial for running decentralized AI applications, as it ensures efficient and isolated execution of complex tasks.

Trustless Intelligence

The integration of LLMs into AO's decentralized environment represents a massive leap in decentralized finance (DeFi). Traditionally, DeFi has focused on trustless execution of financial primitives such as lending, borrowing, and swapping. With AO, we now move towards trustless intelligence, where autonomous, language-based AI can be integrated into financial applications. This capability allows for advanced use cases like sentiment analysis, portfolio management, and real-time decision-making based on vast amounts of data.

For example, a decentralized hedge fund could leverage AO's capabilities to perform sentiment analysis on news articles, determining optimal times to buy or sell assets. The trustless nature of AO ensures that users do not have to rely on centralized entities, thereby reducing risks and enhancing transparency.

Privacy and security is of utmost importance. AO testnet is using a Proof-of-Authority (PoA) system so that the developer has to set the authorities that they trust for the process at the beginning. Homomorphic encryption running inside AO allows inputs to be encrypted and computation is run on top of the encrypted inputs/data. The outputs are distributed in an encrypted way and the user can decrypt them (local decryption). This provides autonomous, verifiable execution in parallel with any number of threads for private execution.

The Building Blocks for AO's Supercomputer

To achieve this level of functionality, AO incorporates several cutting-edge technologies:

• LLM Inference Engine: This engine supports efficient execution of large models, utilizing techniques like SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) to run models swiftly. By supporting popular models such as Llama.cpp, AO ensures compatibility with a wide range of open-source AI tools.

• Unbounded Compute and Memory: With WASM64 and WeaveDrive, AO provides an execution environment with virtually unlimited computation and storage capabilities. This infrastructure is akin to having a decentralized supercomputer at one's disposal.

• Arweave Integration: Acting as the hard drive for AO, Arweave offers permanent, tamper-proof storage for data. This integration allows developers to store and access large datasets necessary for AI and other intensive applications.

Conclusion

The convergence of AI and blockchain through AO's decentralized supercomputer heralds a new era of technological innovation. By providing unbounded computation and storage, AO enables the execution of autonomous, language-based intelligence within a trustless system. This paradigm shift transforms the execution of primitives in DeFi into trustless intelligence, paving the way for more sophisticated and secure financial applications.

With these advancements, AO not only enhances the capabilities of existing blockchain ecosystems but also sets a new standard for the future of decentralized AI. As developers and users adopt these technologies, we can expect a wave of innovative applications that leverage the power of AO's decentralized supercomputer to create a more secure, transparent, and intelligent web and digital economy.

Want to learn more?

To try out AI on AO for yourself, take time to explore Llama Land. This fun simulation showcases AO’s autonomous and intelligent monetary policy management.  

To learn more about AO check out this quick guide.

Have an idea? Reach out to us via the form on CommunityLabs.com.