The global artificial intelligence (AI) market is estimated to reach USD 757.58 billion by 2025 and is expected to grow to approximately USD 3,680.47 billion by 2034. The AI sector has gained momentum like never before. However, the AI systems we see now, such as OpenAI, primarily rely on scraped training data from the Internet. While this is a great start, it only scratches the surface of the vast knowledge humanity possesses—data owned by individuals, institutions, governments, and enterprises.
In an exclusive interview with CryptoDaily UK, Shashank Sripada, Co-Founder and COO of GaiaI, said,
“The timing was crucial because AI, as it stands today, is highly centralized. Big corporations are charging rents, and it’s not very decentralized. Therefore, there is a huge opportunity to build an open-source, decentralized solution for generative learning and knowledge systems.”
Shaping the Future of AI Agents with Gaia
While discussing the current AI landscape and his journey, Shashank Sripada explained that Gaia is addressing decentralized AI significantly by making it affordable and efficient for anyone to deploy their own agent. In simple terms, an “agent” is a system that includes a large language model (LLM), the necessary hardware setup, and all the required computations to perform tasks or make decisions on behalf of a user. AI agents can be designed to perform specific tasks, such as personal assistants (e.g., Siri, Alexa), or more complex functions, like helping businesses interact with customers, manage data, or automate processes.
“If you think of us like Stripe for agents, we’re providing the tools and framework to make it easy for developers to build their own AI systems without the headaches of setting up and fine-tuning infrastructure.”
By making it easy and cost-effective to deploy these agents, Gaia aims to enable widespread adoption, something that is currently lacking with large centralized AI players.Gaia’s goal is to decentralize knowledge, make it accessible, and provide a system that allows people to monetize and validate their data on the blockchain securely.
Diving deeper into the viability of the infrastructure they’re building, Sripada emphasized that most adoption will come from developers. Gaia solves a major pain point for developers: the time-consuming process of setting up and fine-tuning an agent. They have seen increased interest from enterprise-level organizations and have conducted pilots with major players like NASA, Qualcomm and leading Web 2.0 companies like TikTok.Gaia has recently partnered with MoonPay, and they are also launching a marketplace for agents, which will open up many opportunities for people to interact with decentralized agents.
AI agents will surpass the human population
Sripada strongly believes that there will be more AI agents than humans in the next few years. He explained that we are at the forefront of this shift and will witness growing interest in agent-powered applications.
While discussing AI’s powerful capabilities and the need for centralized control for safety reasons, Sripada believes that Web3 has already implemented the necessary tools to address these concerns, and it all comes down to community governance.
“If you look at platforms like Wikipedia, you see that even though it’s decentralized, it’s still able to maintain a high level of quality and prevent misuse. This is because there’s an engaged, incentivized community that moderates the platform.”
Gaia is taking a proactive approach to security by building a slashing mechanism into its model so bad actors won’t be able to exploit the system easily. The team is encouraging institutions to work with it to ensure that the network is a force for good. He emphasized that Gaia’s decentralized nature means it’s not controlled by a single entity, providing an additional layer of safety through collective community oversight.
Regarding the future of AI agents, Sripada envisions,
“Just like anyone can create a website today, soon everyone will be able to create and deploy their own agents.”
The AI revolution isn’t just about large companies taking over, it’s about empowering individuals. The barrier to entry for creating your own AI-driven business is lower than ever. As for individual applications of AI agents, he imagines being able to train an AI agent to read finance textbooks, take courses on finance, follow experts like Warren Buffett, and even track the stock market.
Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.