Quite randomly, I ran across the Brisbane Women in Blockchain meetup announcement. So I tagged along since the topic of the discussion was AI. It was an interesting discussion coming from the panel consisting of Katrina Donaghy of Civic Ledger and Tracy Kay of Axalon. I was especially intrigued by the idea that AI-powered tasks that did something, like decode images, would be harnessed to write blocks.

Right now, writing new blocks on a blockchain is mostly a “make work” function. Algorithms solve a computational puzzle, and the fastest to solve is the one given the right to add a block to the blockchain. The idea is that the “proof of work”, instead of being something a make-work task like solving a puzzle, can be something useful like analysing a medical image. At least that’s how I understood the concept.

Overall, the discussion was too high level. I was hoping for a more a more of a deep dive into the topic of AI. But the discussion was kept at a higher concept level. But I think that was more because I happen to pick a meetup that was doubling as new member recruitment and a retrospective.

Indeed, I gathered this is a close-knit meetup with a fair few women being regular attendees. Given my terrible track record for Women Who Code, I am not sure if I’ll be able to become one of the regulars. But this meetup did intrigue me and reminded me that I wanted to explore blockchain and their application more. So maybe I should spend some time developing a blockchain powered idea and get around building it!