First the definitions, for the learners (like me). 

Blockchain is a distributed and decentralised database of cryptographically secured data and NLP is Natural Language Processing (not Neuro Linguistic programming) which is a subset in the AI domain that deals with human decipherable languages. Explaining it further, NLP is understood as a program that is capable of summarizing, or providing the (needed) insights from Geopbytes of unstructured data. 

With the technology becoming cheap every passing day, and computing devices becoming smaller, cheaper and more accessible by every passing minute, the size of data being generated is increasing exponentially. It is estimated that by 2025, more that 463 exabytes will be generated every day globally. Now that is a huge amount of data. No wonder, they call it “Data is the New Oil”.  This huge data is a treasure mine for umpteen business use cases and sources of revenue generation. There are many prominent use cases for NLP, as the content creation adds on to the existing data stores. The introduction of the “things” being connected to each other and the “clouds” talking within themselves, along with the advent of lightning fast internet and 5G technology, brings the need to sort the output data and get valuable insights that makes sense, and therefore the need for AI based NLP and NLU naturally arises.

The mechanism of NLP does (some of) the following:

• Based on the Machine Learning and Deep Tech analysis, “converses” with other machines
• Helps to identify the mood, or the tone of the sentences (Sentiment Analysis)
• Leverages the method of LDA, to extract the keywords and other relevant words from huge data sets
• Summarizes those data sets, by cleaning and removing irrelevant literature, to provide valuable and expected insights
• Converts videos and audios to text accurately, irrespective of the accent used.
• Helps to create a speech-input based search engine for the users to easily navigate through the filtered insights
• Speech based assistants like the ones in mobile phones and car navigation systems
• Live language translations

Blockchain & NLP

The combination of blockchain and AI based NLP has already had many successful demonstrations to the global audience. The fault tolerant, intervention free feature combined with the immutability and irreversible and non modifiable characteristics of a  blockchain system, make it an ideal underlying carrier for the sensitive data generated by NLP algorithms and solutions. The distributed and 100% uptime (expected) architecture further strengthens its ability to be an ideal database for the data. There has always been a requirement for data provenance, when it comes to cloud based data storage and data lakes. Blockchain, due to its feature of recording every transaction/change immutability is probably the single most suited technology to solve this need.

Apart from the need for Blockchain for AI based NLP systems, the reverse also holds a lot of place in the ecosystem. For example, a lot of crypto currency trading platforms are leveraging the power of AI and NLP to simplify decision making for their users and subscribers, unless they have to browse thousands of data sources and news feeds and depend on their own analysis, to come up with the right decision during trading. 

Open Thoughts

We can see that the combination of Blockchain and NLP gives a lot of confidence to organisations when the need for trusted and tamper proof usable insights are needed, which unless is an additional task to assure the sanctity of the data.

There are a lot of use cases and research papers being published on the potential uses of AI and Blockchain Combined, and hopefully we will see real problems being solved by machines with minimum human interference soon.

About the Author

Based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Naquib is a certified digital transformation professional, having a rich experience working with tier 1 telco companies and CSPs in Lat-Am, Africa and the Middle East. His work comprises of delivering world class digital customer experience solutions to telco customers.

When not working, Naquib spends most of his time reading and following transformation case studies of organisations and companies and digesting the latest trends driving the Society 5.0