The intersection of Web3 and artificial intelligence (AI) has led to various technological innovations, including decentralized compute, zero-knowledge AI, and smaller foundation models. However, the funding challenges facing open-source generative AI pose a significant threat to the success of decentralized AI platforms. The astronomical costs of building large frontier models have created a massive funding crunch, with most university labs relying on grants from large tech incumbents. This has led to a gap between open-source generative AI and centralized AI tech.
The capital formation primitives of crypto could be a viable alternative to address the funding crunch in generative AI. The quadratic funding mechanism pioneered by Gitcoin could be applied to generative AI projects, allowing multiple DAOs and foundations to contribute to a grant that can be matched by grantors. Additionally, a new open-source generative AI license could be established, where commercial applications using funded models contribute part of their revenue back in the form of Web3 tokens. This could be enforced via smart contracts, creating a more efficient funding mechanism. The integration of crypto capital into open-source generative AI could be the bridge that enables the evolution of Web3 and AI.
