You’re swimming in knowledge. You’re creating new knowledge every single day. In case your well being app counts your steps? That’s new knowledge. The Oura ring that’s monitoring your bio-metrics? Helpful knowledge. Your social media posts, even the silly jokes that acquired zero likes? Extra knowledge.

That is all knowledge that AI corporations would love to reap. You may’t construct good AI with out good knowledge, which is why many view knowledge because the “new oil’ within the race for AI. The issue, although, is that whereas your knowledge is efficacious in principle, the fact is that it’s arduous to monetize your personal private knowledge, as you don’t have any leverage as a person. (Open AI isn’t knocking at your door to purchase your outdated tweets.)

Enter Vana. “I believe knowledge is that this basic useful resource powering the subsequent technology of AI, and actually the subsequent technology of our digital economic system,” says Anna Kazlauskas, co-founder of Vana and CEO of Open Information Labs. “Lots of people frankly simply do not understand that they really personal their knowledge.”

However you do personal your knowledge. And it’s priceless… in the event you can one way or the other be a part of forces with tens of millions of others who additionally personal their knowledge. This is able to provide you with bargaining energy. And that’s the mission of Vana: To create an ecosystem for user-owned knowledge, which in flip fuels user-owned AI.

That ecosystem includes a mixture of Information DAOs (a “labor union” for knowledge), decentralized knowledge marketplaces, the lately launched VRC-20 token, and a brand new collaboration with Flower Labs to construct the world’s first user-owned foundational mannequin. (Exhibit A that Decentralized AI is creeping into the mainstream: The Vana/Flower collaboration was lined by WIRED.)

Kazlauskas will give a keynote on the AI Summit at Consensus 2025 outlining this imaginative and prescient, and he or she provides a glimpse right here. And she or he sees the momentum shifting. “We’re already beginning to see this shift the place extra folks understand that, ‘My knowledge is basically necessary to AI’ and ‘I’m truly the proprietor of that.’” She predicts that in just a few years, over 100 million customers can be onboard. In 10 years? “World inhabitants. Above 10 billion.”

Interview has been condensed and flippantly edited for readability.

Why is user-owned knowledge so necessary to you?

Anna Kazlauskas: Most individuals assume knowledge is owned by the platforms that it is sitting on, however that is not the case. In the identical approach that whenever you put your automotive in a car parking zone, the car parking zone does not personal your automotive. You may all the time take it again. You could have full possession over it.

And there is a enormous amount of cash being made as we speak, principally by large tech corporations, off of that knowledge, however customers are the authorized homeowners. So I believe it is necessary that we restore that possession, each from a consumer perspective and from a developer’s perspective.

Are you able to join the dots of how this helps builders?

As a developer, particularly in an AI world, getting access to the best knowledge is basically necessary. And it is tremendous arduous to do proper now, as a result of a lot of the knowledge is locked up throughout the walled gardens of huge tech. So lots of my actually good mates who do stuff in AI go work on the large labs, as a result of that is the place the info is and that’s the place the compute is. However that does not should be the case.

How do Information DAOs match into this imaginative and prescient precisely?

So a DataDAO is form of like a labor union for knowledge. The place mainly you’ve gotten a big group of people that pool their knowledge collectively, after which could make collective selections over what occurs to that knowledge.

The explanation why that is necessary is that your knowledge, by itself, just isn’t that helpful, proper? It is far more helpful when there is a large pool of it. When there’s sufficient of it to coach an AI mannequin.

What are among the Information DAOs you’re most excited by?

There are just a few within the well being area which might be actually attention-grabbing. There’s an early one which’s truly doing full exports of affected person medical data, which I believe can actually assist advance numerous analysis within the area. There’s some associated to biometrics, sleep, and well being. There’s one with the DLP [Driver Loyalty Program] Labs; they’re constructing automotive knowledge. And inside their data-set, the Tesla knowledge is basically attention-grabbing as a result of most individuals take into consideration Tesla as priceless as a result of they’ve an information lead, proper? Really, the customers can get numerous that data-set.

You’re pivoting from principle to apply with the brand new collaboration with Flower Labs to construct COLLECTIVE-1. What’s the objective there?

COLLECTIVE-1 is the primary user-owned basis mannequin. Normally when folks take into consideration a basis mannequin, they usually consider one firm operating a really giant coaching job in a single knowledge heart, proper? Like OpenAI. And the explanation why it is usually performed in a centralized approach is as a result of it requires, one, a complete lot of compute energy, and two, a complete lot of knowledge.

Flower AI is form of the chief in federated [decentralized] coaching. They’ve performed a very nice job of constructing these nice open supply libraries. They’ve are available from the coaching facet and the algorithm facet. And with Vana, we actually concentrate on that knowledge piece, proper? So we mainly have all this knowledge that individuals can prepare on. Then you definitely give customers end-ownership of the mannequin, and customers can resolve on what the mannequin is allowed to do? So that is the primary basis mannequin of its variety.

And the speculation is that ultimately, with higher knowledge, you possibly can construct AI that’s not simply aggressive with the central gamers however higher, is that proper? So it’s not nearly ideology, but additionally efficiency.

Precisely, yeah that’s 100% proper. From a decentralized context, I believe usually folks agree in precept that, “Sure, we must always have AI that is owned by the folks. We should always have decentralized AI.” However what’s the factor that we are able to truly do higher in a decentralized context? Information is the reply. For every firm, they solely have their single slice of a data-set. Apple’s acquired their knowledge. Google’s acquired their knowledge. However in the event you’re going by way of the consumer, you possibly can reduce throughout platforms and truly construct higher data-sets than any single firm. Information is the key sauce that makes all of it work.

Adore it. Thanks Anna, see you on the AI Summit in Toronto.

Jeff Wilser will host the AI Summit at Consensus 2025, and is host of The Individuals’s AI: The Decentralized AI Podcast.