With Over 20 Years of Experience as a Computer Scientist, Dominic Williams, CEO and Chief Scientist of DFINITY, Has Been at the Forefront of Blockchain Innovation

As the founding architect of the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), he leads one of the most academically advanced teams in blockchain

The CEO and Chief Scientist of DFINITY, Dominic Williams, has shared his insights on how the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP) is changing the narrative of blockchain technology.

In an interview with CCN.com, Williams, who boasts over 20 years of experience in computer science, highlighted ICP's unique technical capabilities, which include running AI models on-chain.

''There's a lot of people talking about on-chain AIs, but what they mean is an AI running on Amazon Web Services with a token somewhere on-chain. That's not what we're doing. We're running actual AI models as smart contracts,'' Williams said.

This capability required a rethinking of how blockchains work. While most chains prioritize token transfer or smart contract execution, ICP had to be built to handle the continuous, real-time operation of AI models in a decentralized environment without relying on centralized data centers like AWS.

This makes them verifiable, censorship-resistant, and, most importantly, trustless.

"If you're running AI on AWS, or any centralized cloud provider, you create a gatekeeper who can censor or shut down applications. But on the Internet Computer, there's no single entity in control," Williams explained.

This design also lays the foundation for a new internet architecture where cloud providers don't gatekeep. Running AI on AWS, or any centralized cloud provider, introduces gatekeeping risks by allowing third-party control over infrastructure that should ideally be decentralized and censorship-resistant.

"We're fundamentally shifting the model of how the internet works," Williams asserted.

However, this technical innovation is just one piece of the puzzle. According to Williams, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) is an even more pressing factor that will determine the fate of crypto.

"Crypto has to be changed by force. I think AI is the force that will change crypto," Williams stated.

As the founding architect of the Internet Computer Protocol, which is being developed by a team with the highest number of PhDs working on any network, Williams shared his vision for the future of blockchain technology.

With over 20 years of experience in computer science, Williams is also the CEO of DFINITY, a non-profit foundation focused on building the Internet Computer, a decentralized cloud architecture designed to host open and modular applications.

During the interview, Williams explored a range of subjects, including the 'self-writing' internet, where anyone can build full-stack apps just by chatting with AI.

"Today, if you want to build a social media app, you need to raise millions in venture capital, hire a team of 10 developers over two years to code in Node.js, deploy to AWS Lambda at 500,000 requests per second, and pay $1 million per year to keep the app running with sufficient capacity," explained Williams.

But in the future, according to Williams, users will simply describe what they want to an AI, and the Internet Computer will build and host the app, providing a simple URL like 'mysocial.iota' for users to access it.

This vision is already being demonstrated through Caffeine, an internal DFINITY project that enables users to build applications in real-time through conversation.

Whether it's a private family photo-sharing app or enterprise-grade Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Williams explained that in around a year, users will be able to speak to the AI, and the AI will build the application.

"Retail users today have no chance of creating their own social media. But this is going to be huge. Self-writing makes that possible," Williams said.

He added that entrepreneurs will no longer need to hire consultants, negotiate Software as a Service (SaaS) licenses, or even raise venture capital.

"If you're an entrepreneur, now you don't need funding. You just talk to the AI. You might say, 'I want to make an app to help people visualize their family photos over the past 20 years, starting with an input of a family email alias and an Apple Photos account.' And the AI will build it, providing you with a URL to share with your family members."

However, today's AI systems are typically used to assist developers in a hybrid fashion. They can generate code snippets, answer programming questions, and even debug existing code.

But this assistance is still provided within the framework of a central system, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT or DeepMind's PaLM 2, which are running on centralized cloud providers like AWS or Google Cloud.

This model keeps the core logic of applications, usually written in a programming language like Node.js or Python, and the state of applications, like user data or game assets, separate.

While useful for specific tasks, this approach has limitations, especially when it comes to large-scale, decentralized applications with billions of users and persistent state over long