this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, yeah. I knew most of that, but I just wanted to keep it short and simple.

I don't really understand how it would work with AI training. If your computers are working on training AI instead of finding blocks, I don't see how you can support transactions. Just sounds like distributed computing with rewards to me, where you might be able to cash out at some central portal or smth, but you can't send other people that money directly (at least not over a blockchain, but would be possible vis that portal maybe, although, again, that wouldn't be a blockchain).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Proof of work need not be useless. E.g. https://primecoin.io/

The tricky bit is finding a problem that is hard to solve but easy to verify. I'm not sure AI tasks fall into that category.

The transaction verification is separate to the work.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The tricky bit is finding a problem that is hard to solve but easy to verify. I'm not sure AI tasks fall into that category.

They actually do. Training an AI involves changing some values in the model in an attempt for it to better fit an optimization function. It takes many tries to find a set of values that perform better, but a single try to confirm it does.

Both sides require much more computing power than for a single hash, but the difficulty imbalance is still there, and verifiers could change "how much better fit" the next model needs to be, just like they do by changing difficulty requirements right now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

True. The next iteration doesn't need to be optimal, just an improvement in the loss function.

Not sure how they would decide when to stop.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Huh, neat. Thanks for the info!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

training AI instead of finding blocks

There is no "finding blocks" in Bitcoin, it isn't Minecraft. Miners work on "finding a better hash", for whatever block they want to propose. The two actions, creating a block, and working on finding a hash, are separate.

In a "proof of training an AI" blockchain, there would still be a hash linking one block to the previous one, just the proof for accepting a new block would no longer be looking for another (useless) hash.