“AI in Web3, where do I start?” — transcription

*Disclaimer: This article has been edited to make it readable and shorter while keeping the most important discussion that we had in the live session. To listen to the full, unedited version please go here: https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1mrGmkempqkxy?s=20

Introductions

Gaby: Hello everybody, this is Gaby here, thank you so much for being here. And this is our second episode on a series of AI-related Twitter spaces. Today. I’m thrilled to welcome our guests to this panel: Sasha Wallinger, Daniela Merlano, and our co-founder and CEO Jesse Eisses.

We will be discussing AI in Web3. We thought this would be a very interesting discussion given the fact that there are so many people building or thinking about building an AI tool in web3 and well, we’re all here to share our journeys, right?

So without further ado, how about we move on to presentations?

Daniela: Sure. Thank you and thank you for having me here and inviting me today. I’m Daniela Merlano, founder of ThrAIve, which is meant to be an app for emotional training that is merging generative AI with emotions and positive psychology. I’ve been around emerging technology since April last year and ThrAIve is very recent. This is since December so we’re going yeah, that’s a bit of me. Happy to be here. Thank you.

Jesse: Hello everyone. I’m Jesse, I’m the cofounder of Effect Network. We are a web 3 project that’s doing a lot of AI related data annotations. We started around six years ago, so we’ve been around a while. We’ve built a product where people can do data annotations to develop AI algorithms. And I myself, have a background in AI and I have quite a technical background as well. So I’ve done computer science and artificial intelligence.

I’m really interested in building artificial intelligence, algorithms and the technology behind it is really intriguing to me, so I’d love to talk about it. Very excited to be here for the second Twitter spaces.

Sasha: Hi, just in the nick of time. Thank you for welcoming me. So, I’m in the United States, Bay Area in California and have had Blockchain Style Lab as an organization for a number of years. Started in right around 2015, 2014 when I understood the impact that blockchain was going to have across the the variety of spaces that we now call web3 and especially in the luxury premium and fashion ecosystem. So excited to join this panel.

How and when did your interest in AI started?

Daniela: Since September last year and actually it’s a very nice story. So I’ve been a therapist for over 5 years and I’d already known about generative images because of a patient of mine who’s an architect and was using them. He told me that he likes using those tools because he felt very meditative, and I remembered my journey with meditation and active imagination. So, I walked him through active imagination and through creating his own piece, like his own 1st art piece focused on emotions and on what we were working together during the therapy sessions. So it was very nice because it worked for him so well and he started bringing that into our zoom calls and opening up a little bit more because of the emotional state that was already kind of predetermined by the image and the memory of the image.

I started to do them and and taking more clients into this experience because I wanted to prove the theory that I’ve always had that we have more power within ourselves in our own well-being and healing journey, but we don’t know it and we’ve not been trained to understand our emotions that way in in a proactive way. So having those images could be a lot of help for them when I’m not there to still keep it up with their well-being and remember how that feels.

So that’s how I started doing it and after I got over like 20 experiences with people that were and were not in therapy, I thought about what else can technology do that can help me build. Something that would be like the images and emotional training hub that could help self-awareness as well given the purpose of giving back people power on their own well-being. And that is when I started wanting to understand a little bit more about AI systems and how they can work.

Jesse: So my history is quite a bit different on how I got into AI. I actually started after high school, I was very interested in mathematics and in really technical subjects which I was just really good at. But I was fascinated by math and more of the philosophical like how real and deep that world goes. So I started studying mathematics for a year after high school but it was way too abstract and sort of you couldn’t really apply it to anything directly. So I started looking for something more applied because I really wanted to build stuff.

I’m a builder by nature I would say. So I ended up switching my studies to artificial intelligence, which back then was quite a way different industry than it is now. It’s a completely different space, but that’s how I got into it and I’ve really seen the AI industry develop really radically. I’m very excited.

Sasha: I think we’re talking about so many important topics with regards to the mathematics and the data and then certainly the mental health and wellness space, which is part of the fiber of our day-to-day. These systems that we’re looking at are fundamental to me because I speak the language of fashion.

The elemental system is the health and well-being and also the confidence and the joy that comes from having clothing or fashion apparel. My career started out very early on in this intersection between fashion and sustainability and that’s how I embarked upon the application of AI, but also within blockchain just from a sense of traceability within the business of fashion, understanding, foresighting, trend forecasting, having a sense of personalization too, custom collabs and doing shorter drops and such. And so that integration of data with the psychology of the consumer, both married to the brand sentiment as well as the designer’s passion is how I became aware of what we now call AI. — -

AI use in the luxury industry.

Sasha: I think it’s a work in progress and I think that there is still a lot of reservation in fashion towards AI. What can it be utilized for, I think that there’s a lot to be said for the supply chain management and having this understanding of inventory levels and understanding what’s selling so from a marketing standpoint right around this business of fashion. What I’d like to understand more and be really enthusiastic about is experimentation with the digital fashion creators that I have the pleasure of working with. I was just looking at a I think it was the Dior show that was just a Paris Fashion Week and you can see this just infrastructure of beauty and kind of you know just two things that are coming together.

How can AI help in the mental health space when it’s such a personal and human area.

Daniela: Actually, I recently wrote an article about that. It’s about the use cases of AI in the mental health industry and where it has had the most impact is inefficiencies in the system. So there’s a lot of AI powered providers. Companies like Moodfit, for example, use artificial intelligence to analyze patients’ data, symptoms, moods, and behaviors, so they can then bring insights and recommendations to the patients in a better way. Also security wise, for example, here in the UK there’s a bunch of things going on around the NHS with inefficiencies on keeping records right for mental health patients. So AI can help a lot with making all of that way more efficient.

There’s also a lot happening in virtual reality therapy and like we are using VR for therapy for phobias or for trauma.

What have been some of your biggest challenges in this AI journey, and how have you faced them so far?

Daniela: I think that one of my biggest challenges so far has been, unfortunately, finding someone that has the mixture of knowing and enjoying AI as a technology and also understands the purpose of the platform that I want to build for mental health. Also, aligning with the ethical matters of AI, not just popping features and popping stuff for people without caring about the type of data that we’re gathering and how to handle them. Patience has been my best friend.

Yeah. I think that’s one of the challenges. And the second one would be me thinking and being aware of the impact of AI systems for the environment. I want to find ways of still helping people with the technology in the best, most efficient way because I care about the environment as well. I’ve not solved it yet. It’s just a challenge.

So what would you say to anyone thinking or already building an AI tool in the Web 3 space?

Daniela: I would say: Good AI takes time. And I think Jesse will agree as well. Of course, he’s been here for seven years.

What made you believe back then that this day would come in regards to AI adoption?

I guess back then when I started doing it, I didn’t believe this day would come. I must say I was a bit more pessimistic and I was very much surprised with ChatGPT when it came out the day it came out. It was a big shock. I think for a lot of people, especially back then, if you were in the academic space, in AI, there’s this tendency of all these really smart people to be a bit pessimistic, because we’re seeing all the limitations. So back then a lot of people never thought we’d be able to deal with general language processing, which is basically a machine having a normal conversation with a human and sort of understanding what’s going on in a wider context. People thought it was impossible because there was so much ambiguity happening in the conversation. Words have multiple meanings and that was one thing that NLP, natural language processing in artificial intelligence, would never deal with. So for me, I didn’t think this would come this quick. I did believe, because history has so many examples of AI and innovation winning over what experts say is impossible, that it would happen at some point. I think it’s amazing it has created loads of possibilities.

How do you see AI in the luxury sector and how is it responding to the hype?

Sasha: An example of people getting into AI because of the hype is in fashion and it’s about collaboration. I mean we are actually collaborating in a very intimate way with a technological device when we’re implementing AI, and so, well the terrain is certain if you know there’s a hype.

There’s a lot of fun and creativity to be had around that collaboration journey. And I think that that can hopefully help both to educate and empower people who are just kind of like blasting into AI because it’s the new hot search term, you know or like hot buzzword to do in this space to really see the value over time and see the potential.

I’m thinking about some examples: Valentino, I think the essentials menswear collection was shot entirely in AI, and that’s pretty groundbreaking for fashion you know, that’s a really big deal. And then also, I’m gonna ruin his name, but Malik AFA Guba, who was the Nigerian AI artist who created a fashion show for elderly people utilizing AI. So imagine what this could look like, and again, these are just specific to fashion moments, but you’re thinking of another tool in the toolbox for the creative designer to be able to collaborate with, and I think that that has value across all of the modalities we’re talking about and certainly brings about this interplay between being poised, but also what we can bring to the AI space for potential to collaborate as well.

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Thank you for taking the time to read our transcription. We’re always looking for new guest speakers for our AI and Blockchain Twitter Spaces Series! Please refer your suggestions to @gabyponceg via Telegram.