AI + Blockchain

"Because something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mister Jones?" --Bob Dylan, Ballad of a Thin Man This book is a wake-up call to all game changers, alerting them to the impending collision of the two largest foundational technologies for the coming decades: artificial intelligence and blockchain. AI has had a long history with brief interludes of hype and excitement, seeking to do nothing short of expropriating and externalizing the cognitive skills locked away in our skulls. Blockchain is the newer technology that is motivated largely by the social unrest and backlash from authoritarianism, control, and big brother. AI is seeking to displace individuals while blockchain is seeking to displace a controlling team of individuals. AI is disrupting and will continue to disrupt society in many ways, leading to job loss and rendering irrelevant many human cognitive skills. Blockchain too is challenging and will continue to challenge the position of trust of central authorities, whether in the government or in big business. However, both these technologies have enormous potential to confer positive changes in the commercial world as well as for society as a whole. AI, rightly engineered and deployed, has the potential to become humanity's best and most indefatigable servant, freeing up humans from wage slavery. Blockchain, responsibly governed and deployed, has the potential to truly democratize society in spirit and not just in name, by eliminating friction in the world's transactions and eliminating usurious middlemen, and by facilitating a more equitably distributed internet of value. The most efficient and effective ways for this to happen is through a partnership between these two powerful technologies, where blockchain delivers trusted and immutable information for AI, and AI delivers cognition and automation to business processes. None of this will happen automatically, since the law of social entropy is as inexorable as the law of physical entropy, leading to chaos by default. It is up to the game changers to understand, tame, engineer, and deploy these two technologies as an integrated whole for both commercial value and for social benefit.

Review :
Deeply researched, industry specific, easily consumed, this is a balanced and thoughtful review of AI + Blockchain. Not quite for "Dummies" but the general reader can pick any spot and learn something they did not know. - Craig Le Clair, VP and Principal Analyst of Forrester Research This is a story of two technologies with almost independent roots and development, now converging rapidly toward an alliance of synergy. AI has obvious value in many areas, including music, entertainment, AR, and VI. Blockchain can secure the rights of the players and protect the inhabitants of the landscape where these technologies continue to transform and even constructively destroy. Game changers have an opportunity to be part of the flow or risk being tossed about in the maelstrom. - Sanjit Singh Dang, Investment Director, Intel Capital I started skimming but ended up reading it all! A great read for beginners and even leaders in each industry. Be a Day-1 company now and apply AI & Blockchain where they deliver value. Great examples and timely for a couple of key decisions our company is making now and to build solid business cases.- Marvin Nahmias, CIO/CTO and Chief Technology Innovation Officer, Grupo Lala I personally enjoyed Kiran's and Peter's book very much. It provides a comprehensive and sometime breathtaking look at the intersection of two of the most discussed technological advancements - AI and Blockchain. Time well-invested and with looking left and right to related technologies as well as manifold use-cases. It's an energy pill to take further action.- Tom Linckens, EVP & CIO, Bertlesmann Garimella and Fingar have produced a concise, taut work that resists the temptation to paint a rainbow-filled Jetsonian utopia. Rather, they canvass the likely-good along with the likely-bad possibilities of these technologies in a sober and compelling way. Their work goes well beyond geeks and technocrats as an audience--indeed, it is a curious synthesis and distillation that will inform business leaders as well as social leaders. It demystifies and clarifies what we can expect and what we can do. - Dr. Chris Stout, VP, Center for Global Health, University of Illinois We live in the Age of Disruption. Every industry, function, and market is being disrupted by AI, Machine Learning, and Predictive Analytics. No one is immune. Garimella and Fingar provide Business Leaders with fresh insights on how to navigate these emerging technologies, so companies can focus on disrupting themselves--before they are disrupted. - Cate Gutowski, SVP of Global Sales & Service, Panasonic Avionics This is the essential guide for CIOs and other business leaders. This is not a technical tome; this is a well-organized, thoughtful, and most importantly, practical guide. The authors address the potential societal implications as well, in a calm and realistic manner, not fear-mongering as so many journalists are doing today. I highly recommend AI+Blockchain for anyone interested in where our world is going and how to successfully ride the wave.- Tom Murphy, Chief Information Officer, University of Pennsylvania This book is a gentle reminder that there is nothing to unlearn, as the concept of AI, Machine Learning, and Blockchain existed since the very inception of computing and data processing. Despite the challenges, their confluence is a possibility. Their applications are limitless and disruptive. To the list of questions the authors pose, let me add, "If not now, when?"- Sreekumar Govindan, CIO, Illinois Emergency Management Agency