How will the convergence of Blockchain, AI, and IoT impact global businesses?

Contrary to Blockchain, AI, and IoT being the future technologies, they have now become the present. As a result, more and more industries are integrating these technologies into their work today. While each of these brings in its benefits to ‘enable’ inventions in various fields, together they are most potent. 

E.g., AI opens up the possibility of predicting the likelihood of companies defaulting on a loan or facial recognition payments like ‘pay with a smile’. Likewise, IoT enables connecting vehicles and people on the road. On the other hand, Blockchain’s immutability and traceability make information secure and transparent.

Devices can be much more useful with some intelligence. Take your chair, for example. Its design affects your posture and health. Research has revealed all about good sitting posture and companies have developed greatly adjustable chairs. But how about a program that makes chairs adjust themselves for the well-being of people who sit in them?

“AI alone could work here but it would require a lot of data gathered from millions of chairs sensing how people sit in them. Chairs endowed with convergent technologies, however, could go into the field without any programming and learn how to adjust over time, through usage patterns, and also from the 'experience' of other chairs. The learning can be done by AI and data exchange can be facilitated by IoT and blockchain.

Imagine purchasing your latte from a coffee machine simply by giving a voice command to Siri. No cards required. No PINs to be entered. No worries about data security!

The transaction data will be completely secured by creating each IoT device with a unique, Blockchain-based, self-sovereign identity associated with customer identity. Wouldn’t that be something?

In 2021, JP Morgan Chase & Co. tested Blockchain payments between satellites orbiting the earth. The results showed that IoT devices could use Blockchain technology for making transactions. Such as your car buying more petrol, or your fridge ordering milk. 

JCB, a Japanese card provider, and Keychain, a Blockchain startup, developed an infrastructure to enable secure credit-based payments between IoT devices using Blockchain.

Talking about the finance industry, Blockchain and AI in banking are helping identify financial fraud based on confidential data, or for blockchain currency payments using AI-enabled facial recognition. KPMG and IntellectEU, a digital finance technology company, have come together to introduce a Blockchain app to fight insurance fraud. 

Manual documentation review processes can take 4–6 weeks to complete and have very little protection against double-entry fraud and human error. AI can help automate the document reviewing process. TradeSun’s patent-pending deep learning algorithm drives the automation, digitally capturing trade documents, and intelligently examining them from a compliance and Letter of Credit perspective. This takes productivity and accuracy to another level.

Many office buildings install sensors to save energy and thus money. For example, the sensors can adjust the temperature and lighting levels when someone enters the room. In addition, sensors and smart cameras can also assist with office security. Smart cameras can identify employees based on real-time data and pictures, allowing only authorized people to enter the building.

“All of these technologies approach data from different angles. And so it is certain that we would want to use these technologies together. So that a system gathers data autonomously, analyzes it intelligently, and stores it securely” added Syal

The convergence of these enabling technologies is inevitable. It’s already here, changing how businesses operate, making them more efficient, transparent, and savvy.

The article has been written by Deepak Syal, Director and Co-founder, GreyB