Bitcoin mining and AI may be on opposite decentralization paths: Researcher

Edge AI computing could help to decentralize AI, reducing reliance on corporate data centers.

Bitcoin mining runs the risk of becoming more centralized as time goes on, while artificial intelligence could be moving in the opposite direction, according to Galaxy Research head Alex Thorn.

Thorn said that while Bitcoin mining began decentralized, with users mining Bitcoin on their personal computers, it has since become far more centralized, requiring ASIC miners or industrial-scale farms. 

“AI may follow the opposite path,” said Galaxy’s research head Alex Thorn on Sunday, explaining that AI started centralized in giant hosted clusters, but as frontier models experience “data scarcity, context limits, and memory bottlenecks, open-source models could close the gap.” 

Read more