#427 Universal Income in the AI Economy: Perspectives from Barbara Biro and Paul Dowding

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the CTO show with Mehmet. Today I'm very pleased to do something It's been a while. I didn't do having two guests on the show So I have with me Barbara Biro and I have Paul Dowding So Barbara and Paul the way [00:01:00] I like to do it is I keep it to my guests to introduce themselves Barbara I would start with you But just I'm gonna give a kind of a teaser to the audience the topic we're gonna discuss today is really Something i'm passionate about so we're gonna talk about ai we're gonna talk about blockchain So barbara, I will start with you a little bit about you your background and then we'll pass it to paul.

Barbara: Sure Uh, thank you machmat Welcome everybody Uh, my name is as you said barbara Biro and I have been living and working here in dubai in the middle east uh for Nearly two decades, and, uh, I was working with, uh, global banks, local banks, uh, as a head of digital. Um, and I have economist background and, uh, masters in data science and I.

Barbara: T as well. So, pretty much, uh, most of the components of the successful [00:02:00] modern technology driven economy. And I also won a Global Finance Award a few years ago. But, uh, over to you, Paul. It's more or less, this is about me.

Paul: Thank you, Barbara. Thank you for, um, inviting us to this. Um, I'm Paul Dowding. I've had a long term career in financial, uh, institutional financial operations and infrastructure, uh, dealing with transactions around the world for international, um, investments.

Paul: I've worked in banks and brokers. And, um, and then, you know, I've been trying to make the industry more efficient and transparent and saw the advent of blockchain technology. As a means to actually do that and and I've been involved with a startup where we developed a differentiating blockchain protocol To really help the industry solve its problems and looking forward to the [00:03:00] conversation.

Mehmet: That's great And thank you both for being with me on the show today. So as I was saying, you know, we're we're living in a You know, different era now and we, everyone is talking about it. Um, but I want to hear your opinion on one topic. So we're talking about the AI age, right? And let's, you know, start discussing why, you know, the current systems are failing in the age of AI.

Mehmet: So Barbara, uh, You know, from your perspective, and you work in the with the financial institutions, and you know, you you manage also a lot of systems. So what do you think is is broken? Why? Why? Why? We are still failing?

Barbara: Well, so there are several reasons behind this. And since Historically, history is the back basis of macroeconomics.

Barbara: So every single empire and [00:04:00] era could last so far, not so much longer than a hundred years. So we are kind of breaching the hundred years era of our current empire, which is reigned by the United States, where Paul is from. Uh, not originally, sorry, but, um, so, uh, first of all, um, the financial, the monetary systems are kind of, uh, failing to fulfill The requirements of the crowd of the public of the people or the needs of the people.

Barbara: However, we have never been richer than today before. But behind that, there is a huge, uh, accumulated debt, what the government's, uh, uh, collected. And, uh, huge forces are kind of preparing another inflation and debasement [00:05:00] of currencies. So and besides all these economic problems, then there are other million other problems which are just kind of blowing this bubble even bigger, the geopolitical uncertainty, uh, pandemics and different other kind of food, um, insecurity, for example, and, uh, and many other, uh, other, uh, pieces of all this puzzle, but what can accelerate a kind of upcoming, uh, so called crisis.

Barbara: I don't want to act like an owl here, but, uh, but really, so, so we are at the end of a, of a kind of historical timeframe. Where when empires could hold up in this current economy and monetary systems and centralized systems, and on the other hand, especially because [00:06:00] of the faults of the monetary systems and economies and centralized systems, uh, is that the trust has been broken.

Barbara: in the banks and in the centralized, uh, other systems. So people started to notice that, uh, the money, what is really behind the money is, uh, more or less, not much. And, uh, uh, cannot even cover the assets or the deposits or the cash, uh, uh, value, what the people are holding. So, uh, this trust is significantly broken because, uh, fintechs.

Barbara: started to enable other type of solutions, uh, not just, uh, in lending and payments, but, uh, other, uh, many other services, uh, uh, came up, which are giving much better, much faster, much cheaper, much more convenient, [00:07:00] more user friendly. Uh, solutions than the traditional legacy organizations could. So, uh, this is, this is, uh, kind of a very complex problem here what we are facing.

Barbara: So, therefore, uh, the decentralized, um, marketplaces or communities and platforms became very, very popular. And now today, even after the re election of Donald Trump, We can see that even, uh, the American government is trying to invest or, or, uh, manage, uh, some assets, very, very serious amount of assets, uh, in the decentralized market.

Barbara: I'm not sure if that's not the nightmare of Satoshi Nakamoto at this point of time, but, but they are kind of, they are kind of preparing to step or set foot, trying to set foot in that [00:08:00] area, because, uh Governments don't really know how CBDCs could work. They're actually released and live CBDCs, which are the crypto version of the government money.

Barbara: Uh, is the failing. So the adoption rates are really, really low. Uh, in, in Nigeria, the e Naira, it was a complete failure in, um, in the Bahamas, the 10 also was a complete failure. In China, still it's there, but because it's a communist country, so the government can force people to whatever, but still the adoption rate is around 1%.

Barbara: So when you want to go against human nature totally, then, uh, some, somewhere, somehow the people start resisting. So still, we have the decentralized markets, the crypto markets and the other blockchain communities, where really the freedom, the independence, uh, let's look [00:09:00] at it in a good way because many people are completely scared about crypto and blockchain and considering it as a hush hush, uh, uh, black market, terrorist and, uh, I don't know, anti and money laundry, uh, place.

Barbara: Thank you. Because of certain blockchains, uh, still supporting anonymity. But it's, uh, more like, uh, Paul's area. However, I'm also quite passionate and certified about the, the problem. But I think that if we talk about it more, uh, how, uh, blockchain can support and solve the today problem, because there are many speculations, a little bit, I ran ahead, but, uh, because, uh, we are all, I'm already talking about the blockchain, but the, why we certainly need blockchain besides all these problems, what we have in the economy.

Barbara: First of all, we have a huge amount of cybercrime growing nearly 100 percent year on year. [00:10:00] Legacy systems with all these overgrown and complex and over layered legacy infrastructure, wherever there is a friction and the data goes out from one system to another, it's already vulnerable. Governments and organizations are not proactively trying to stop these opportunities where cyber criminals can get in.

Barbara: They are reactively trying to run behind them. And because now we have a I. AI is a kind of so powerful tool that is not just able to take away our jobs and it's taking away our jobs. Um, and besides it's creating some new, but not in that pace, it's creating new jobs. How much it's taking away the same with the same pace is taking away jobs.

Barbara: So it's kind of, uh, uh, we have to be able to ensure that, uh, people are able to still stay alive, survive, [00:11:00] generate universal, if not universal income, at least some kind of income, but definitely not having some kind of income which is even in the best performing economy. Uh, getting, uh, uh, devalued, inflated, uh, minimum seven to 11% every year.

Barbara: So the current fiat money is, is not the solution in the age of AI when we need to kind of ensure our, uh, still wellbeing and lifestyle and survival. And, uh, and income that these geopolitical uncertainties, economical failures, uh, changes of empires and eras, Europe is in trouble, the dollar is shaking, million other Middle Eastern, uh, uh, tension is, is there.

Barbara: So in this [00:12:00] uncertain, uh, age, we need some kind of certainty if possible. And, uh, and how can we do, how can we solve that? So we are not here today to speculate about the AI and the potential outcome of the future in two, three, five, 10, 20 years. Uh, others can do that a lot, uh, uh, in these, uh, medias, but we are here today to fix the present.

Barbara: So what kind of infrastructural foundation this future potential needs to create. a fix, a certain, a stable, thriving. And potentially scalable future proof economy. And that's what, uh, uh, kind of Paul, um, created, uh, and Paul and, and Paul's, uh, colleagues and team, uh, has, uh, already created, which, uh, we kind of put together with my, uh, other, uh, [00:13:00] concepts to make it a working model for a parallel or a stable, uh, new economy.

Mehmet: Well, you know, like, uh, A lot of thought provoking points that I think we're going to talk about but but before

Mehmet: But with that before we dive in like I want to hear from paul from you know, maybe technical point of view Like why? technologies, uh, you know, fell short in, in, in addressing the challenges. Um, some of them, like I know Barbara highlighted on, and, you know, and she was stressing on, on the need of this decentralization and of course the blockchain achieve this.

Mehmet: So, but what, what's your technical point of view, I would say, Paul.

Paul: Well, I mean, it's interesting. And Barbara was sort of. Going through some history. If you look at the history of, um, you know, the implementation of I. T. information technology in the seventies and eighties. What happened was is obviously if you [00:14:00] look at all the different markets, all the different products, they all had their own infrastructures because they had their own expertise.

Paul: You were, you were an equities guy. You're a fixed income guy. You're a derivative. Um, and, uh, so the technology tended to be customized to each of the silos so that, that worked great for each of the silos. But when you come to do, um, interoperability between these infrastructures or trying to record data or extract data from or you're dealing with all these different infrastructures and really, um, outside of its decentralized process for the blockchain, it's really a consistent format to record transactions.

Paul: So it's like a Rosetta stone. It can talk, it's sort of asset and life cycle agnostic, which suddenly allows these technologies to talk to each other. And then the analogy I like to make is. If you think about the internet prior to the internet, we were always going through a centralized phone company and you [00:15:00] know, uh, you to communicate, you had to go one to one.

Paul: Any email system was customized and proprietary. So you could send an email inside your company, but it couldn't go outside and do anything. The internet made a consistent protocol to communicate. And suddenly it's just a matter of where's the start point end point. Can I communicate? The real potential of the blockchain decentralized is to commoditize that transaction linkages.

Paul: And, and I do believe in a transformation, um, which is interesting. And the thing I say is if you'd have gone to those phone companies in the mid nineties and said in 20 years time, 25 years time, your competition's going to be that nascent online bookseller called Amazon and that DVD delivery service That is said, my competition, how well communication became commoditized and suddenly content became king.

Paul: And so you've now got this street. What is your content? And so Amazon going into [00:16:00] content generation, Netflix going into streaming, they became the cable cut, the telephone companies bought the cable companies and they bought streaming services that became a new market. And I think what's going to happen with the financial services is we're going to commoditize transactions.

Paul: And companies with natural networks, which are, you know, um, social media or Google and search engines, but also the big retail Walmarts, the big phone companies like, um, uh, have natural networks and with a banking and brokerage licenses, they now have the potential in the future to provide all these services.

Paul: So I think there's going to be a big translation. It's interesting. But like, like you said, the question really is, is we've got siloed infrastructure. Um, and the point of AI is to aggregate data structure and then interrogate it. Well, to get it from multiple sources is tough, but once it's in a consistent format, it makes it much easier.

Barbara: Just one thing. It's good that you said Paul, uh, about Netflix and [00:17:00] Amazon and internet and all this, uh, since, um, now everybody's, uh, betting on Bitcoin, obviously, and with many, because of a lot of good reasons, but, um, uh, the thing is that, uh, same, just like the internet when it was invented in 1972, nothing is perfect at first.

Mehmet: Yeah, yeah.

Barbara: So Bitcoin was the very first blockchain, uh, infrastructure network and, uh, system. Uh, however, it's undergone, uh, a lot of new, uh, improvements and developments and now it's faster and, uh, using less energy and, um, and many other level two solutions are built on it. But still. It's not perfect. And, uh, and, uh, since it's, uh, already, uh, not new technology per [00:18:00] se, because it's been out there since when?

Barbara: 2008? So it's, uh, it's kind of, uh, we had enough time to study it, understand it. And make it better, just like Paul and we did. And what else is wrong with the blockchain as we know it today? That we cannot buy bread and butter with it, right? I mean, on a blockchain. So the ecosystem is missing. Right. There is no nothing.

Barbara: There is no ecosystem involved. If there was even Donald Trump said that, Oh, one day I'm going to buy hamburger with Bitcoin. Yeah, I bet. But, uh, maybe probably maybe it's not going to be Bitcoin or maybe it's going to be Bitcoin on another network, which is capable of catering to all this.

Paul: Yep. Yep.

Mehmet: So, so the theme, [00:19:00] you know, like from, from what Paul just mentioned and what you were just saying, Barbara.

Mehmet: So it seems it's, it's kind of philosophical and I'm kind of a philosophical here because humans by nature, they don't like change. Right. So, and. You know, they are skeptical about any new technology and this is i've seen it like many times, you know, and people Say, okay how you can prove it? I'm sure like paul have seen it more than me But I mean to me it's it's like this kind of dilemma and this way i'm now, you know rereading again, the you know the innovators dilemma because people they They don't figure out, oh, why this happened.

Mehmet: So now, you know, you're talking about blockchain and if you really think about it. So we're kind of as humans, we go into this loop and people, maybe [00:20:00] they don't remember that. Actually computing when it started it, it was kind of a centralized and then it became decentralized and now later on with the cloud.

Mehmet: So trying to put everything again and we're just using our browsers as terminals the same way when we were doing this before. And I think it's a just a normal, uh, I would say cycle that we need to pass by, but it's, the ones who are the early adopters, I think they are the winners all the time. But I want to bring, I want to bring, uh, maybe with Paul first, and then I'm going to come back to, uh, Barbara, uh, about the misconception and you touch base Barbara a little bit.

Mehmet: So the misconception is, um, and I discussed with a lot of these folks who are in, in blockchain for a long time and in web three and all this, of course, everyone explained to me different way, but, um, I think and I need here some help from you both So when we say blockchain, of course The first thing that comes to mind is crypto and I am you [00:21:00] know Repeating again and again guys crypto is different is one use case of blockchain, right?

Mehmet: so Why why do you think still people, you know have this misconception? I would start with you paul and then barbara. I would hand over to you

Paul: Sorry, obviously. Um, yeah a lot of the initial publicity Okay Um, blockchain came with the ledger that this underline, um, uh, Bitcoin and, um, and the crypto and defy worlds have been successful in terms of launching various different coins or different use cases and, and people are making money.

Paul: The exchanges are making money, uh, the protocols, um, however, they, although they've got a lot of headlines and they're making money, they are. Really tiny. And although I hate to say it, but you know, they measure their total value in billions, whereas the, the financial markets measure this [00:22:00] size in hundreds of trillions, you know, and you know, the FX markets today are five to 10 trillion a day.

Paul: So while the defies crypto was shown the innovation, it's really still small scale. Um, um, uh, but the, um, The, the, the, the thing is, is the blockchain is really the idea of a decentralized ledger and the concept again, similar to the internet with the phone companies is that transactions are usually managed through a central authority, you know, even the bank.

Paul: So then you go to an intermediary, your bank, the bank will go through a clearing house or, or a central bank to, to, to move money between the banks. You know, in a, in a securities market, you have a clearinghouse or depository to move it. Now, the idea of what Bitcoin showed revolutionized. Is that you could each have a copy of the ledger.

Paul: So you're checking your copy, your trusted copy of the ledger to validate that the other party has the assets to transfer, or [00:23:00] you can transact. So it's really, that's the potential. There's other issues in terms of how that's done at an enterprise scale, but I, you know, I can get into that later, but really the key thing is it's a decentralized ledger that allows peer to peer or B2B business to business.

Paul: transactions without that central intermediary. So there's a great efficiency there. You're just talking to who you want to transact. The thing of the internet, I communicate with who I want to communicate. There's no, it's a network of natural. There's, I go through an intermediary, an internet service provider, but there's no central authority connecting us.

Paul: So imagine you can get on and transact with who you want to without that central authority That's the concept of of a blockchain or distributed ledger,

Mehmet: right? Barbara, like you you mentioned couple of use cases why you know people's The first thing comes to their mind is also like, um, I remember, I think it was 2016, 17, 18, that era also when [00:24:00] the ICOs, the initial coin offerings were like, you know, and a lot of scams happened.

Mehmet: So I think, so I think this stayed with people, but, um, What other like misconception have you seen, you know, about blockchain in financial system, especially for banks? Because, because I, you know, I want you to highlight this because you worked at, you know, in that sector. So all the big bankers around the world, they were saying this will not, you know, happen.

Mehmet: No, they were saying all the, the bad things I would say. And funny enough, later on, like we start to see, for example, a an ETF for, for, for blockchain, which is like the, the block, the, uh, Bitcoin ETFs and Ethereum ETFs and so on. So what happened before and why they changed later?

Barbara: So it's happening. And it will happen.

Barbara: So the banks should not feel very [00:25:00] much safe and secure and trust that it's gonna go away because it won't. So the misconceptions and the negative ones. Uh, news and, uh, and, uh, experiences around the blockchain and crypto and, uh, Bitcoin and every other is because at the beginning, since not no system is perfect at first, as we said, uh, at the beginning, when blockchain, uh, was released in 2008 and the Bitcoin came, uh, uh, to the public, uh, sector to be available, it came from a game.

Barbara: Okay. So for those who don't know, uh, this, uh, Bitcoin, uh, concept was created for a, for an online game where the gamers were able to purchase stuff for their avatar. I don't know. I never played that game, but, uh, it was a game currency and because it [00:26:00] worked really well, the algorithm was quite, uh, a new revolution in the world in this sense.

Barbara: Uh, they, so they released it, uh, with certain, uh, changes and it was what it was. So, uh, and, and it had certain, uh, gaps which enabled. Indecent activities at the same time, because since it was coming from a game, what do you need to identify yourself in a game? You have an avatar name. You don't need KYC, like banks need KYC, uh, at that particular way, because, uh, you just, you had some login credentials, and you had your avatar name, and you had some digital, uh, footprints to identify yourself with, and that's it.

Barbara: And that was enough, that worked well for a certain community, the gamer community. As it is, it's not working really well for the real world, because If I log in [00:27:00] with an avatar name, I can be a criminal, I can be a money launderer, I can be a human trafficker or whoever, nobody's gonna find out, right? So that, that's where the misconceptions are coming from at one point.

Barbara: So, but the technology as such, it's such a perfectly Plan design technology that the block itself What includes the details of the transaction can be programmed? However, I want it to be programmed. So if I want KYC to be in it I program KYC in it and guess what any if I have a blockchain infrastructure And I have KYC programmed in the block.

Barbara: I don't need any more of this bullshit onboarding process what the bank's currency are using. Let's scan your ID or I verify I connected with an API to a authority which is verifying the [00:28:00] ID or Or not. Just scan your ID, fill the questionnaire. I don't know. I don't know a million thing. At least there are 50, 60, 70 points of checklist what you have to comply with if you want to onboard a new customer for a bank.

Barbara: But if you have a blockchain, everything is in the block. So if I have already money anywhere in this infrastructure, which is recorded in a block, the KYC becomes Send me one Dirham. I have your KYC. I don't need you to scan your ID and blink and turn your head Give me your fingerprint. Give me your friend's name, friend's address, nothing.

Barbara: Salary, sir Everything is there in the block. So I saved cost, I saved time I didn't annoy the customer and at the same time, I'm not just able to onboard this [00:29:00] customer I'm able to tell them everything Immediately. Oh, you are eligible for this much personal loan. Do you want it? You are eligible for up to this much mortgage, auto loan, blah, blah, blah.

Barbara: So I can do everything in a second. In a very safe, very secure infrastructure. The data is not hackable. Nobody can steal my identity through this system while I'm interacting because the blockchain can provide all this safety. What the legacy infrastructures cannot. So that's, that's, uh, and, and, uh, what you mentioned, the ICO related.

Barbara: So that was this, uh, which, uh, coin was it? FFX something. I forgot the name of the coin. What was the last big scandal when a coin was released and then a big hype and sales happened and then sometime later, the [00:30:00] creator of the infrastructure just

Paul: ran away with money. You were saying, I think it's FTX. It wasn't a coin.

Paul: It was an exchange. But yeah. Yeah. But the

Barbara: thing is relying in the programming. So that's the key so you can program this system in a way that you can steal the money but today already You can audit so you cannot Go live with an infrastructure without legal review and auditing and audit review,

Mehmet: right?

Barbara: Yeah,

Mehmet: I have I have I have a point of view here barbara on this so so there are two things that I believe You know, it's complicating The whole, the whole thing. And I'm not, I'm not an economist. I'm not a, uh, you know, someone who studied finance, but I believe, you know, from technology perspective, the way I see it, and I understand business.

Mehmet: So the main issue here is we want to decentralize because we want to give, you know, [00:31:00] the ability to two people to interact, send money without an intermediary, which is fine. But at the same time, we need to make sure that it's, Kind of um compliant and it's regulated right at the same time, which is here the funniest thing ever So when the blockchain, I mean the bitcoin started the main reason was as to your point So me I can send to barbara or paul right and I don't need anyone The thing is we needed to put this price tag on, on, on this asset, right?

Mehmet: And funny enough, this price tag is nothing else than the USD dollar. And guess what? Like we invented something called the Tether Ledger, which is the USDT or something, the other one, the USDC. And then all the time we measured the Bitcoin, the Ethereums and everything by the US dollar and. People come in and go out again using the U.

Mehmet: S. dollar. And guess what? The U. S. dollar is centralized by the government of the U. S. So I think until we manage [00:32:00] to, I'm not saying like deattach the value of Bitcoin, but any cryptocurrency, if we, and I think this is what we're going to discuss later. If, if we don't manage to. Attach a value other than the fiat currencies.

Mehmet: I think we have an issue here because And and you just mentioned something barbara before and maybe I gotta ask paul this question So why as you said like donald trump said he buying a burger with bitcoin Of course, like there are maybe some places that they accept but why? Is it like because not scalable is it because we don't have the capacity?

Mehmet: So what's stopping us today from you know, leveraging the blockchain full scale?

Paul: Yeah, it's interesting because that's actually, um, uh, when I was, uh, I'm the Alpha Escort company was spun out of a boutique consultancy in the financial services. And we were looking at blockchain in 2015, which was an auspicious year because Ethereum, digital assets, [00:33:00] hyperledger, R3 quarter, they all, they all started their enterprise systems trying to leverage what was, um, blockchain technology.

Paul: The real, the problem with the decentralized distributed ledger, and this, you know, this is the problem with really the Bitcoin solve was, okay, I'm going to trust my copy of the ledger, but I can show, I can say, I'm going to say, Spend the money with you and I can show you I've got an asset, but simultaneously I could show it to Barbara.

Paul: And the problem is, is if there's a latency between me showing you I've got it and the actual settlement, and that's what's known as the double spend. And what Bitcoin did was to say, no, we have a competition to validate the next update to the ledger such that it would reject a double spend. The problem is, is it does solve the double spend problem because it doesn't allow it to occur.

Paul: The problem is it allows both. It still allows me to present my Bitcoin to two people and then it will sort it out later [00:34:00] arbitrarily. All right, the problem is, is so that's what happens in in Bitcoin. There's this mathematical competition to win the next block in most what was popular for a while was what was called consensus algorithms where people would vote to agree the next block.

Paul: And now there's independent validators. Unfortunately, Those solutions either get slower with scale or they have a finite capacity. I won't go into the technicalities, but Bitcoin can only process one and a half to three transactions per second, any more than that. And it starts to have a backlog.

Paul: Ethereum can do 15 to 30 transactions per second. In the financial services, you're talking tens of thousands per second, so you've got that capacity constraint. The problem with the voting or the validation is it doesn't scale. And if you create what they call shards or clusters, you're just adding capacity in different channels.

Paul: It's not really scaling the capacity. And this is what people have run into. Uh, in terms of just the performance, the other big thing that's [00:35:00] missing and Barbara brought up FTX FTX was not a failure of crypto and it wasn't a failure of blockchain. It was a failure of accounting. They ran their accounting as a single entry accounting on a spreadsheet, and they had no clue what they were doing with their money.

Paul: All right, problem with current blockchains is their single entry ledgers as well. They're really not financial ledgers. They don't have accounting and believe it or not, there's a technology of the future. What they don't have is a view of the future. Think about if you're a company, you're looking at your income statement and balance sheet.

Paul: Yes. There's the assets that you hold long, you know, money on hand, inventory, materials, machines, but a lot of your balance sheet is all your future dated payables and receivables. Who owes you money? What money do you other people? There's no way on the current blockchain designs to record. A future data power will receive will correctly in accounting journals.

Paul: And that's what we recognize. We saw the huge potential of blockchain, [00:36:00] but then said, hold on a second. While it's great to have this peer to peer and much more efficient service and putting, they haven't pulled the controls to the edge. So we found a way to synchronize. Uh, the ledger without those validators based on transaction data alone at the edge.

Paul: And that allowed us to be linearly scalable in high capacity. But as a ledger, we also wanted to record proper accounting journals. You're ultimately going to be a sub ledger. So that functionality. And then, believe it or not, we have transaction data. Allow us to record future data, payable receivables. So that's why in 10 years, nearly 10 years, these enterprise block planes haven't really gone beyond very limited use cases or pilots or proof of concept.

Paul: And I was saying earlier, you've got all the innovation and money being made in deep buy and crypto, but they're jealously looking at the hundreds of trillions of assets that they think they can command in the real financial services. And the financial services is looking at the technology, but [00:37:00] struggling how to really implement it.

Paul: And that's, you know, those are the limitations that we see. And we tried rather than force fitting a protocol to a use case, we said, what are the requirements of that use case and how do we design a protocol to meet them?

Mehmet: Okay, Barbara, what would happen if we don't address these challenges because you were talking about that, you know, the 100 year system that is failing us.

Mehmet: So what would be the consequences? Now

Barbara: we are ready to address all these challenges. So what Paul just said that The technology now, what, uh, they created is so advanced and that it can cover and it can solve all these kind of technical administration, accounting, and performance related challenges.

Barbara: However, what, uh, you said that, uh, why, uh, uh, we are still, uh, measuring the cryptocurrencies to the dollar. Um, however, so, uh. Let me tell you one [00:38:00] thing that the dollar pegged cryptocurrencies are failing. Because those are pegged to the dollar and the dollar is kind of not providing that kind of stable growth of assets or even keeping the value of the our assets than the other cryptocurrencies can or could.

Barbara: Like, for example, today there is no any, any kind of asset and investment Which, in general, publicly accessible. which can outperform crypto and technology. These two are unbeatable investment opportunities today. If anyone can access and the crypto currencies are those which are which the public can access.

Barbara: There are many fantastic news and posts and the media, uh, Uh, about how these rich countries in the world are [00:39:00] announcing that all they are now in accessing and investing trillions or billions of dollars, at least. In AI or, or, uh, cloud technology, this technology, that technology, great, but then how will the public benefit out of it?

Barbara: Nobody thought this through from those who are investing in this technology because they want to invest it in, in it now and take the money tomorrow. And then, uh, it's the loser's market after all. Right. So, uh, then, then. All this AI, what we are bringing here, who are we going to sell it to? Okay, everybody, let's say, will buy AI technology sooner or later, and they already started to buy it.

Barbara: But then, then what will happen with the, with the people? Who are going to be dismissed and obsolete because of all these AI technology, because let's say in these [00:40:00] Middle Eastern countries, the expat population can stay in the country as long as they are going to have, they are having a job. So if they are dismissed and we have all this AI and everything is automated and all the expat population who lost their job left.

Barbara: Who's going to stay here to, you know, eat and, um, make the economy work and spend money and consume because we are a consumer, uh, world. So we are built on consumption. That's why there are hyper hyper production to sell more and more food and more and more things what we don't really need. Who's going to do that?

Barbara: It's not really thought through from the entire macroeconomic perspective and scalability and future world idea is not there at all. We just reached the idea that we have to invest in AI and technology. Wow. Okay, great. But then what next? So, uh, so [00:41:00] for these things, because as long as we don't have another economy, full economy, not a financial infrastructure alone, meaning that we have a financial infrastructure, an administrative infrastructure, and an ecosystem where everybody can buy whatever they need for that particular money, what the infrastructure accepts.

Barbara: Right. So let's say this. Let's say it is Bitcoin. So it's not possibly not going to be Bitcoin because of these, uh, these, uh, performance and accounting and other details which Paul just described. But let's say we are going to have an infrastructure, which is which is Uh, which we already have. So, uh, we have this infrastructure, uh, what could manage an entire new economy in a way that the money is not going to lose its [00:42:00] value.

Barbara: No, but and what you said, just a thing that you said that we want to decentralize this, uh, infrastructure and our, uh, our financial. Um, systems because we don't want intermediaries in between to make it expensive and slow, right? That's not just the reason. We don't want a central authority to figure out what we can spend our money on and, uh, how much our money worth.

Barbara: So these are the two major trust issues in the central government that, okay, today I'm fine, I earn X amount of money monthly. And today it's enough for me to live on, but maybe tomorrow it won't. Right. And it's not up to me and it's not up to the economy ever since the Bretton Woods system in 1971 by Nixon [00:43:00] was demolished and the fiat currency system came alive, uh, at that time in the 70s, the entire dollar amount, which was out, uh, in the world was about 48, um, trillion dollars or something like that.

Barbara: Today we have 6, 000 trillion, um, amount of currency out and nothing is behind it. Nothing really so

Mehmet: yeah

Barbara: we cannot even say anymore that the crypto is is a hoax because There is no value behind it And and it's just uh moving because how the how the mood of the investors are moving So today I want to buy crypto because I believe in it tomorrow.

Barbara: I don't believe [00:44:00] in it I'm not going to buy crypto and that's some somewhat the truth You But this is all the same about the fiat currency with the bitterish twist that it's not just based on the mood of the market,

Mehmet: it's

Barbara: some kind of background political speculation and conspiracy, uh, what's, what's not completely out of our hands.

Barbara: Right, so that's why we need to establish the future, a better future, based on a properly working, legitimate and monitored and controlled code. Decentralized systems where we do have a say on what's going to happen and we need to involve the ecosystem around it to be able to cut the fiat currency off, cut the dollar sign off the crypto currencies because [00:45:00] I don't care anymore because I know the value of my crypto currency.

Barbara: Based on based on what I can buy for it,

Mehmet: right? So Paul, um, you know many many points that barbara mentioned, but I want to come back to the ai and if you can like just Tell me about you know, why you think AI plus blockchain is the ultimate one and maybe kind of a call to action And then Barbara I gonna come to you and then you know, we would wrap it up

Paul: , I Often say rather than artificial intelligence, I say algorithmic inference, which is really the key of what you're creating data And the key thing to learning in AI is structuring the data, uh, and then you're interpreting it. So, uh, blockchain has a means, and I'll talk about this consistent protocol or transaction, it has a consistent way to structure data.

Paul: So therefore, and, and, and how, what you want to add to it in terms of, you know, variables [00:46:00] or other information. Um, you're already giving the AI a headstart. You've also got control over what is actually being recorded. The other thing that a blockchain can do is actually track what the AI bot is learning.

Paul: So you've got like an auditable history. So therefore you can prove provably make sure that it doesn't have bias. It doesn't have false information. You've seen a lot of these AI bots wander down rabbit holes when they've learned the wrong things. Uh, so you want to be able to control it, but you also want to be able to, you know, prove that what it's available to.

Paul: But it becomes a self proclaimed Um, sort of perpetuating loop. If you think about it, you've created transactions and you've created data in a consistent format that now the I can interpret for compliance for risk for credit for strategy and then feedback into the transactions. And again, that's where we've got a lot of people.

Paul: Um, the, [00:47:00] uh, you know, involved in investment strategies and other things. This could become a lot simpler. And again, the, the tools and, and what people want to use become the choice of the consumer. And they're, they're obviously a lot cheaper and, and, uh, uh, an easier to use. And that's. That's that's the sort of combining of the two technologies,

Mehmet: right?

Mehmet: Uh, Barbara, you want to add something on this point?

Barbara: . So since the daily size of data, what we produce is now over to three to terabyte per day. It's impossible to oversee and manage this kind of these kind of systems without AI. Okay. And, uh, and also enhancing the operation and enhancing the experience of these systems which work with these huge, uh, uh, data, uh, sizes is, is, uh, impossible.

Barbara: So, and, and definitely, uh, Controller or [00:48:00] an AI monitoring system is also kind of, uh, uh, if we, uh, launch it on a legitimate way and, uh, after auditing and everything, it's not biased anymore. So it's a kind of independent. Uh, party who's who's managing all this. So we definitely need a I and in the age as well in this at the same time, the decentralized blockchain environment is the only possible place where people can create for themselves and manage for themselves.

Barbara: Independent income, universal income and, and generate, uh, assets for the future.

Mehmet: Is it coming, Barbara? Sorry, I need to ask you this before. I don't want to miss this question. Is universal income something that's going to happen?

Barbara: It has to happen. Otherwise in the AI age, if it doesn't happen, uh, either the population [00:49:00] of, of the earth is going to reduce to, uh, those, uh, 20, 30 people who's going to work with the AI.

Barbara: Or, or we have to find a way to generate income, uh, other than from, uh, everyday salaries, right? Yeah. I

Paul: have a different opinion, but that's okay. I

Mehmet: would love to hear it. I would love to hear it, Paul.

Paul: Yeah, I just, I think, um, I mean, the famous guy Ludd who didn't want to deal with automation of weaving looms, and that's why you call anybody who's not interested in technology a Luddite.

Paul: The point was, is that yes, it did make weavers out of business, but it created a better way to make clothes, which made them cheaper, so therefore there was more purchases. You then got more distribution of clothes. You've got more shops to sell the clothes. So your barber, you're right. The technology is definitely going to make roles redundant.

Paul: And it's very hard to speculate. Like, can you imagine trying to explain a modern day [00:50:00] supply chain to Mr. Ludd and saying, don't worry about the future, you know? So, uh, but I think so as much as the technology eliminates. It's going to create different kinds of roles, and that's where the economy can still generate generate the, uh,

Mehmet: I will, I will, I would be in the middle between you both because what

Barbara: kind of in the middle of between myself and Paul.

Mehmet: Yeah, no, no. So, so, so my point of view to Paul's point. Um, so technology again, the nicest thing about humanity is that we were able to record. So before like because it was written people were doubting it But once we started to have the audio recordings and video recordings, so we have a proof So what what we have seen is technology always disrupt it eliminates Uh jobs 100 percent, but it creates a new jobs So this is also 100 yet to your point barbara what i've seen with the ai Is that we don't have necessarily to work the same way we [00:51:00] think about the world work today.

Mehmet: The job as going to office, sitting behind a laptop and doing repetitive tasks, this is gonna go. You know, I feel very sorry for population that still think like, okay, I'm talking about the Gen Z's, that we're gonna go to an office now and we're gonna have this corporate job and, you know, we're gonna like, I said, guys, you know, you need to be thinking about the job of the future now because AI is, is, is changing the whole thing today.

Mehmet: So I would be in the middle between, uh, between you and, and Paul of this. Now, as we are approaching to the end, so Barbara and Paul, like what are like final, Call to actions. I would say you want to share. So Paul, I'll start with you and then I will, I will, I will move to Barbara.

Paul: Um, I, I think what I'd say is that the, the, the technology's there to be transformed, but it has to be designed to meet the requirements of the use cases.

Paul: You can't just take off the shelf technology and try and make it work. And that's the [00:52:00] mistake. Um, and, um, as much as I, I do believe Barbara's right, there'll be a massive transformation. Uh, since the Renaissance, legally you're required to reflect everything in accounting terminology and you, it's very hard to avoid.

Paul: It's going to be a long time before we find another way of bookkeeping and accounting is the language of transactions. And that's the key to the solution. Barbara.

Barbara: Yeah, I would say that we must let go the old, uh, we must let go because the new is already here. So we still don't know, uh, how much, how many new jobs AI is going to create or take away since, uh, we reached singularity.

Barbara: At this point, and we are just speculating. So I'm quite flexible at that part. So I would love to believe that we are still going to find many ways of work and jobs. But the point, the thing is that [00:53:00] nothing is going to work very soon. It's already not working in the old ways. The banking systems are not, uh, Survive, the infrastructures are not suitable.

Barbara: I mean from the basic economic Foundational systems i'm talking about here. So I'm, not an expert at uh at electric cars and other stuff. So let's say that the the basic foundations of our economy today is is broken and it's broken because it was built this way and we already built The new one. So let's start thinking about how to use that because I teach a I teach digitized digital transformation.

Barbara: I teach defy to banks and financial institutions currently, uh, sometime and, uh, This is what you said, ma'am. It's just about the same that people still think that they still need to sit in the office and [00:54:00] work on something which is creating some reports or data or some repetitive manual task. And when, uh, when I take away from them that part of the task.

Barbara: And I asked them then. Okay, so this is your data dashboard. What are you going to generate insights about?

Mehmet: Yeah.

Barbara: Okay, so think. We have to start thinking creatively and try to build something else because we are never going to get out of this vicious cycle of hundred years of empires dying one after another.

Barbara: Okay. If we are not fixing the problems of today, right?

Mehmet: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Uh, Barbara and Paul, like, really, you know, I think, I think what should we do? We should do a part two, because this is, this is a [00:55:00] very, you know, and I like such discussions where, you know, everyone comes with their own thoughts and, you know, their perspective of viewing, you know, different perspectives.

Mehmet: I would say effects off of, you know, these emerging technologies, especially which are like I was on a podcast today myself and they asked me what are the two main technologies you think like they are on the rise. I mean, they're going to continue. I said, you know, AI is, of course, first and blockchain second.

Mehmet: And this, you know, marriage between the both. So I want to thank you both for this discussion. And, uh, you know, I would encourage people to get in touch and, you know, Barbara, I know you are active also on LinkedIn and they're going to put your bio and the website, Paul, same for you as well. So people to get in touch with you.

Mehmet: And I promise the audience that, you know, we're going to have another discussion. And for now, I would love to thank the audience for tuning in today. And I, Please advise you to subscribe and share With your friends and colleagues and also like if you have any [00:56:00] comments or suggestion, please send them to me Thank you very much for tuning in and we'll meet again very soon.