How Will Blockchain Impact the Future of Data and Information Management?
We speak with Bilal Baloch, Co-Founder and COO of Enquire AI, about the current state of information in the knowledge economy and how blockchain-based tools and platforms can help address information traceability challenges and improve the authenticity and credibility of information.
Why is it more important than ever before to be able to provide accurate information and collaborative platforms?
We need to build back trust within our communities. We know from a range of polls that trust in institutions, from the government to traditional media, is at an all-time low. The scale at which words such as “misinformation” and “fake news” have entered our zeitgeist and dominate our discussions of governance and business is unprecedented.
At the same time, we are in a unique moment in history when it comes to truly democratized platforms that project information and data in nanoseconds. This is a net positive if we can trace accuracy and sourcing, whereas high quality, insightful and authentic information can come from anywhere. Not everyone or every organization has the right motives, incentives or sources to deliver accurate information.
Therefore, we need to identify ways in which we can capitalize on the growth of collaborative platforms that today define our professional and social institutional makeup, while ensuring that we can verify and authenticate the sourcing and traceability of data. This is fundamentally an exercise in reestablishing societal trust.
How does technology, especially AI, help better this process?
Technology, especially AI, can help us keep up with today's unprecedented volume and velocity of data. However, by itself, AI is not all-powerful in delivering on the veracity of data. AI is a system of learning as well as making meaning of data that necessitates human assumptions. This is why there has understandably been some concerns around bias and value-judgment in the models undergirding some AI systems.
Such models can and will overcome this challenge with ethical and meaningful software development, as well as the sheer number of observations that will supersede human bias at scale. Taken together, when it comes to the speed of crunching data and avoiding many of the human errors prone to purely agnostic content production and procurement, AI models are some of our leanest mechanisms to combat misinformation. Simply put, AI is our best bet to overcome the pitfalls of information consumption at scale.
What is the current state of information in the knowledge economy? What does the future of information and its consumption and dissemination look like in an increasingly virtual world?
The current state of information in the knowledge economy can be summed up in one word: wasteful. Based on research from the IDC, organizations sink around 655,000 hours and $35 million per every 1,000 employees annually either searching for information they cannot find or building pre-existing knowledge assets.
With social and professional nodes between workers being stretched further due to increasingly remote and hybrid work, this challenge becomes more salient. Therefore, the future of information consumption and dissemination needs to focus on the speed and accuracy of identifying data sources within organizations, and then helping workers to precisely crunch the data they need through smarter UI/UX that opens up time for more analytical and productive knowledge work.
What are some barriers that stand in the way of organizations/people acquiring more efficient and reliable information?
The technology, especially with the advent of broader use cases for blockchain beyond cryptocurrencies, is available. But our mental models and appetite can be out of sync. Rebuilding trust and establishing user engagement can be as much of a psychological barrier as a technological one. More public education around AI, blockchain, metaverses, decentralized business and governance models is key to hacking this barrier down.
Currently, however, there seems to be a frightening delta between the capacity of traditional mechanisms of public education (the government and legislators specifically) and the evolution and applicability of technology to enhance the reliability of information.
Enquire AI recently bought land in the metaverse – could you give some insights into how this move fits into the company’s mission and the future of work?
We are constantly investing in R&D on the future of work as it pertains to the knowledge economy. Long before COVID-19 came upon us, we were advocating for a digital and decentralized world of work. Our goal with the land purchase in the Sandbox metaverse is to continue our leadership in this space. As workers inevitably grow tired of the isolated nature of a single human interacting with a single screen, we envision a world where borderless digital engagement through Zoom or Teams will graduate to virtual reality engagements.
On the plus side, videoconferencing has flattened the hierarchical nature of meetings and workplace engagement, especially in the knowledge economy. Anyone, at any time, is an equal-shaped box on your screen. But this space remains static. A more interactive engagement can be facilitated through VR/AR in the metaverse where your desk, computer, notepad and in our case, collaboration with colleagues and consultants, can mimic the old office world, making it faster, more diverse, safer and global.
How are you evaluating the metaverse in general? How do you think the rise of blockchain-based tools and platforms will impact information consumption and dissemination?
We are all still very early on this, but I’d say traceability and authenticity of information–and therefore our collective trust in what we consume–has a greater chance of materializing through technologies such as blockchain. We all want to feel comfortable in the fact that someone, persons or entities are accountable for the information and data we digest.
Consider the example of a manual vs. a digital signature of a document. This mechanism doesn’t prove that the original content provider didn’t falsify the original asset. But through the chain of blocks, we can trace back to the original provider to take, for example, legal or administrative action, and hold accountable the entity in question.
And this is the place where, in our current world, with the messiness of corporate and information interests, we need to start. In other words, we can all verify where a specific piece of information is coming from and if it has been authenticated.
What are some of the top headlines and stories you are paying attention to?
I’m closely following the evolution of the DAO model, both in terms of its business applicability, as well as its societal consequences, as well as reading about the cybersecurity sector as it faces up to a new world of geopolitical upheaval with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the New Cold War between the U.S. and China.
This interview originally appeared in our TradeTalks newsletter. Sign up here to access exclusive market analysis by a new industry expert each week. We also spotlight must-see TradeTalks videos from the past week.
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
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