With the advent of ChatGPT, AI is becoming integrated into our daily lives. On the other hand, blockchain is becoming more mature and its applications are increasing. What can be achieved by combining these two next-generation technologies?
We interviewed Mr. Sebastian, an AI engineer at Microsoft headquarters and a start-up entrepreneur in the blockchain domain, about the challenges and prospects in both areas, and the potential of “AI x blockchain.
Please tell us about your background up to the present.
Sebastian: I studied AI in college and joined the AI team at Microsoft after graduation. Then around 2017, blockchain started to become popular and I became interested in what was going on there, which is how I got to where I am today.
I feel that blockchain has become a very mature field compared to where it used to be and where things stand. There are now papers being written and research being done on cryptography, and it is becoming more mature.
When I was a student, I studied number theory. As an extension of that, I was also interested in the cryptography area, and that is how I gradually entered the blockchain area. As a result, I moved to a blockchain-related company in 2017, and that combination brought me to Japan.
At the time, I was involved in work related to the underlying infrastructure of blockchain. I was reading papers on cutting-edge blockchain technology and actually developing and designing new solutions.
At that time, there were many startups, not only blockchain startups, but also other kinds of startups, but they started up and soon went out of business. So there was a time when I thought that there was no point in joining a startup.
However, when I actually entered the blockchain field, my image changed. Unlike the startups at the time, they were doing solid research and development. Even if they failed, the results could be left as a paper. For this reason, I felt that it was worth participating.
