• devils_advocate@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Proof of work need not be useless. E.g. https://primecoin.io/

    The tricky bit is finding a problem that is hard to solve but easy to verify. I’m not sure AI tasks fall into that category.

    The transaction verification is separate to the work.

    • jarfil@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      The tricky bit is finding a problem that is hard to solve but easy to verify. I’m not sure AI tasks fall into that category.

      They actually do. Training an AI involves changing some values in the model in an attempt for it to better fit an optimization function. It takes many tries to find a set of values that perform better, but a single try to confirm it does.

      Both sides require much more computing power than for a single hash, but the difficulty imbalance is still there, and verifiers could change “how much better fit” the next model needs to be, just like they do by changing difficulty requirements right now.

      • devils_advocate@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        True. The next iteration doesn’t need to be optimal, just an improvement in the loss function.

        Not sure how they would decide when to stop.