Decentralized AI: Filecoin's Role in Transforming AI Data Storage and Integrity

The world of AI is rapidly growing. For AI models, data is fuel. And for AI developers, researchers, and individuals, data is a vital asset.

Currently, most data on the web is gathered, stored, and provided by just a few ultra-powerful companies, posing significant risks such as siloing information, centralizing control, and leaving it vulnerable to single points of failure. And now we’re seeing the same pattern take shape in the AI realm.

The foundation of an AI model’s accuracy and credibility is rooted in the integrity of the data that it’s built on. To promote a safe, transparent, and trustworthy environment for AI to flourish, it is critical to consider where those massive troves of data originate, how and where they are stored, who can access them for the long term, and how AI models leverage this data.

This is where decentralized AI comes into play.

Decentralized AI

Decentralized AI is an approach to advancing artificial intelligence that distributes the core functions of AI systems—including processing, storage, and decision-making—across multiple nodes within a network, rather than a single centralized entity. This distributed architecture enhances accessibility, transparency, and security while addressing concerns related to privacy, equity, and widespread access to AI technologies.

According to a recent Grayscale Research report, “Data storage solutions like Filecoin (FIL) and Arweave (AR) can serve as decentralized and secure network alternatives to storing AI data on centralized AWS servers. These solutions not only provide cost-effective and scalable storage but also enhance data security and integrity by eliminating single points of failure and reducing the risk of data breaches,” notes Grayscale.

The Filecoin ecosystem is building a more open, equitable, and trustworthy AI infrastructure by leveraging the benefits of decentralized data storage and computation. This approach mitigates the risks associated with centralization and promotes innovation and trust in AI technologies, ensuring a future where AI benefits everyone.

How the Filecoin Network Can Transform AI

Filecoin is built to handle the unprecedented scale of AI data growth on a future-proof network. And in a world where the majority is wary about trusting AI, decentralized, provable storage promotes confidence in this transformative tech. And as AI models rely heavily on vast and diverse datasets, the integrity and accessibility of this data are crucial for the accuracy and credibility of AI systems.

Immutability and Proof of Storage: Filecoin creates an auditable and tamper-proof record for AI companies to record their models, datasets, and results. As regulations around AI tighten, AI companies and major organizations using AI services may soon be required to demonstrate the history and integrity of the data source used to populate their models. Filecoin’s Proof-of-Spacetime mechanism constantly verifies that data is stored correctly and securely, providing proof that it has not been tampered with, and helping those building AI models remain compliant and users feel confident in how AI models operate.
Transparency, Provenance, and Authentication: We can only truly understand models and how they generate content by having a record of what data underlies them and how that data is used. When it comes to AI, garbage in is garbage out: If you input faulty data into models, you can expect faulty results. Having an open and robust record of AI data provenance and lineage, and assurance that data has not been tampered with, combats bias and promotes audibility and trust.
Scale: The exponential growth AI data requires a solution that can scale. Filecoin is built to accommodate storage in the petabyte and even exbibyte level.
- Estimates show that self-driving cars produce up to 1.4 terabytes every hour and 5.8 petabytes of data per year.
- ChatGPT3.5 was trained on 570 GB of text datasets, and the data needs of AI grow exponentially as images, videos, and other media are introduced into training sets. Right now, Filecoin’s storage capacity is enough to train ChatGPT3.5 millions of times.
Resilience: Decentralized storage technologies like Filecoin rely on a robust network of storage providers around the globe to store multiple copies of data, rather than large corporations susceptible to single points of failure.
Customization and Flexibility: Organizations have control over how and where their data is stored, which can be tailored to meet specific compliance and performance needs. Filecoin reduces dependency on a single provider, offering flexibility and reducing risks associated with vendor lock-in.
Energy Efficiency: There is an energy dashboard where anyone can verify the amount of energy consumed by individual data centers and the source of each data center’s renewable energy, providing the information for users to choose their storage providers based on energy usage and achieve their ESG goals.

How AI Companies are Using Filecoin

Leading AI companies are integrating Filecoin into their networks and tools.

Theoriq is developing AI agents trained using open data hosted on the Filecoin network.
Nuklai is collaborating with the Filecoin Foundation to archive the world’s data, empowering AI with contextualized data ontology.
SingularityNET is taking an important step toward ethical AI development and decentralized infrastructure, aiming to enhance security data management and set new AI ethical norms.
Bagel Network is enabling AI developers to train and store their models using Filecoin’s compute and storage capabilities, offering unprecedented efficiency and flexibility for decentralized AI development.
EQTY Labs is on a mission to build solutions that accelerate trust and innovation in AI, starting with the creation of ClimateGPT. Built on Filecoin, ClimateGPT is the first open-sourced ensemble of AI models designed to address climate change’s rapid and ever-changing impact.

Filecoin and the Future of Decentralized AI

Decentralized storage offers a way to prevent AI power from becoming too concentrated, allowing diverse participants to responsibly develop and manage their AI data. Filecoin's network is designed to accommodate the massive growth in AI data with a future-ready infrastructure.By ensuring the preservation of AI databases and tools, we aim to drive the evolution of the internet for the benefit of all.