Digital assets and AI could have a 'symbiotic relationship' in the future, says Majority Whip Emmer

House Majority Whip Tom Emmer said digital assets and artificial intelligence could enter into a "symbiotic relationship" in the future as the technology continues to mature. 

"The nexus between AI and digital assets seems necessary inevitable to me," the Minnesota Republican said. "In fact there could realistically be a future symbiotic relationship between the two." 

Specifically, blockchain technology could be used to improve data used in AI models, Emmer said on Tuesday during a House Financial Services Committee hearing titled "AI Innovation Explored: Insights into AI Applications in Financial Services and Housing." 

"I believe the convergence of blockchain and AI can not only improve the trustworthiness of data, but the decentralization of artificial intelligence data can mitigate single point of failure security issues. Additionally, as AI systems communicate with each other and need to transact with each other to obtain information, digital assets and AI can have that symbiotic relationship," Emmer said. 

Over the past year, crypto leaders including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin have spoken about how crypto and AI may overlap. Crypto's decentralized nature can balance out AI's centralization and bring transparency with it, Buterin said in a blog post in January. Meanwhile, Arthur Hayes, former CEO of Bitmex and entrepreneur, has said that Bitcoin specifically could be the currency for AI. 

Emmer asked Vijay Karunamurthy, chief technology officer at Scale AI,  whether blockchain technology can be used "as a tool to ensure data authenticity in the future."

"It's of increasingly important paramount for us to observe, monitor and to find authoritative sources of information. So whether we're talking about the blockchain or digital identity solutions, those all have an important role to play in ensuring that data is accurate and up to date," Karunamurthy said during the hearing.