Ilia Polosukhin explains NEAR's new token utility, where staking NEAR grants free AI inference on the NEAR AI Cloud, creating a 'Universal Basic AI'. The discussion covers NEAR's vertically integrated stack of blockchain, confidential computing, and AI inference, emphasizing verifiability and confidentiality. The episode also explores the vision for autonomous businesses and a decentralized compute marketplace.
Summarized by Podsumo
NEAR's new token utility allows holders to stake NEAR to receive free AI inference on the NEAR AI Cloud, creating a 'Universal Basic AI'.
The NEAR AI Cloud provides confidentiality and verifiability, distinguishing it from centralized AI providers.
NEAR is building a decentralized compute marketplace using its Intents infrastructure to bring transparency and liquidity to the GPU market.
The vision includes autonomous businesses powered by AI agents that run 24/7, holding NEAR to always have access to inference.
Partners like Venice, Brave, and the government of Bermuda are integrating NEAR's AI cloud for privacy-sensitive use cases.
"_"The overall is this is *AI money*. The AI money needs to have the sovereign security, which is what blockchain is."_ — Illia Polosukhin"
"_"If you want to manipulate a billion people, the easiest way is to get a job in OpenAI and modify the system prompt."_ — Illia Polosukhin"
"_"We are effectively the provider that gives you *verifiability* that you ran on this specific model, the hash of the model, the prompt that you put in... you get the attestation signed with a chain of provenance."_ — Illia Polosukhin"