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> I’m curious as to what incentive people would have to provide their data to a public network.

When people talk about combining AI and Blockchain that's very often the exact problem they think Blockchain can tackle: programmatic transfer of value, so as to systematically compensate the data providers, in ways and quantities that'd be inconvenient to deal with otherwise. I won't bother finding a buyer for my car's windshield data if all that brings me is 50 cents a month. But if data from all my various devices can get me 100 bucks a month, and the set up and maintenance for the system is automated and trivial, I'm very likely to take the free money.

The second aspect is that you don't need to provide your data to the whole network, simply to those who compensate you. Not everything needs to be on the blockchain.

Thirdly, efforts are made into developing techniques that allow users to provide data for training, while keeping the identifying aspects, or even the whole data, private, either with simple k-anonymization or techniques that distribute the AI training part (Enigma does this iirc).

Don't get stuck on the "blockchain as a database" part. What people are excited about is a whole field of cryptography and trustless decentralized networks.

I get that, I just think the assumption that people are willing to sell their privacy data for petty cash is flawed. It’s not like traditional advertising haven’t tried similar approaches, and failed, largely because petty cash is a terrible motivator for most people.

I guess you could argue that it’s different with crypto because your data is safer, but facebook has a billion users, and the people who’ve been doing the whole #deletefacebook thing, just signed up for Instagram instead. People really don’t care.

Would you sell your data for $5 a month? Maybe $15? I wouldn’t, especially not if it took time to setup and maintain, and I have a gmail account.

Plus: the people willing to sell their data for $5/month are absolutely worthless as advertising targets.

On the other hand, the intersection of these "people who want to sell for $5" to the general population gives some worthy targets!

I think there are plenty of people who are sufficiently unconcerned about privacy data to sell it for $xx per month. I also think this set of people has literally no overlap with the set of people who care about whether the data broker is centralised or not or whether it's possible to obtain cryptographic proof of which entities have received the data

If I didn't have to worry about security, yes. So a system that sold my data for me while keeping it private, I would use. Same deal with AI assistants or Facebook-like social networks, I would use them if there was a way to check that they don't leak data. I believe cryptography will open these advances to huge untapped demographics.

You can already sell your data though, and almost nobody bothers to do so. I don’t think it’s the privacy bit that’s stopping people, at least not at large, I think it’s time. $5 is a drop in the ocean to me, I’d just never bother giving you my data for that little, even if my data were safe.

The reason I willingly give my data to google by using gmail is that they give me an easy to use cloud mail with decent spamfilters. Or in other words, they are saving me time.

Maybe you could offer me something other than money? Like financial statistics on how I use my money? Sure, but those apps are already here, and people are willingly giving away their data without privacy in those.

So you see, it’s not that I don’t think you can’t convince people to give up their data, I absolutely do think that you can, I just don’t think petty cash and privacy are good motivators.

Maybe you have a bias because of your favorable financial situation (which is normal in here). For most people in the world, a reliable $10/month to cover their Netflix subscription or buy them a meal would be something they'd be very happy about.

Also I think the reason you willingly give data to Google for Gmail is that you don't have a choice. It's take-it-all, the spam filters and the data mining, or leave it and use ProtonMail, no in-between.

For most people in the world, a reliable $10/month to cover their Netflix subscription or buy them a meal would be something they'd be very happy about.

Your personal data has a cash value only because it can be used to influence future purchasing decisions. It's a simple equation, $x worth of personal data has a y% chance of generating sales worth >$x. It therefore stands to reason that the market value of the personal data of a person who doesn't have as much purchasing power will be less, and may not even cover the cost of stealing and then processing it.

You’re right, I’m rich enough that $5 a month is very little to me. Those $5 a month were something I grasped out of thin air though. If you look at Facebook advertising revenue, they are making less than $3 a year per account.

Would you also sell your data for $3 a year?

> untapped demographics

What kind really? Here's the thing many people touting blockchain forget things like cryptographically secured messengers are not the "must-have" of an average Joe. Is it easy to use and can I talk to my friends? These are the only two things matter. Blockchain, for better or worse, has made things even more cumbersome to use. You have people relying on good-old physically secured hard wallets or paper to secure their keys. This is not a sign of progress.

And frankly about selling your data for money. I think people will find it easier to have some utility like free email or apps in exchange than money through blockchain.

Data about the world ("There is a granite formation here") & personal data ("I am interested in chairs") are two fundamentally different ways to look at this.

So far we've built companies off personal data. But it can really only be used for one thing -- ads. Hence the many adtech startups of dubious social good.

If decentralized big data were to take off, I'd bet all my chips it will be because of data about the world, which enables fundamentally different, more interesting, and more productive use cases. And is bounded by utility instead of personal spending.

Currently you have interested parties either self-generating data, or specialized companies compiling targeted data sets (usually on commission). What you don't have is diffuse, global datasets (e.g. geotagged temperature readings from every cell phone on the planet, right now).

That starts to get interesting.

The "hard" technical problem is the driver of homomorphic encryption. In order to truly own data, I can't allow copies to be made. But in order to make that data valuable, I have to allow arbitrary computation to be performed on it.

I simply believe (as someone with an economics and GT background) that you are right on your first statement. The issue with these more 'utopic,' i.e. would be great but hasn't happened for reasons, is that the incentives to contribute to such systems are lacking on both societal and corporate levels. If data isn't just out there, that's because the owners thereof are better off keeping it for themselves. It just takes a lot of goodwill to counterweigh this lack of incentives.

«I think the truth about blockchain is that the fad is over. It’s been 9 years. At one point I could buy coffee with bitcoin, today I can’t even turn my remaining crypto into fiat.»

It's pretty clear that being able to transact and store digital money on your device itself (without any 3rd party having control of it) has huge practical applications. As I like to say, "buying coffee" is probably the least interesting thing you can do with Bitcoin.

PS: today it has never been easier to turn your crypto into fiat; there are hundreds of exchanges around the world. Not sure why you'd say otherwise.

Also, you can buy coffee with bitcoin again paying almost 0 fees using lightning network.

I don't think you understand what's really going on. Read more here - https://medium.com/@FEhrsam/blockchain-based-machine-learnin...

I've rarely, if ever, seen such incredibly high readings from my bullshit-o-meter. But yeah, if you believe that "the best data" and "the best algorithms" merely need to come together (and will do so "through competition") to make useful, competent AI (with an actual "I" in there) a reality, I guess that's pretty cool stuff.

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