Author: Matt Wright, Co-founder and CEO of Gaia
In the mid-15th century, Gutenberg's printing press broke the elite's monopoly on written knowledge. The resulting increase in literacy and systemic change allowed the public to access previously blocked ideas and knowledge for the first time.
Today, decentralized AI is bringing about a similar revolution—broadening access to intelligent resources and redefining who can participate in the construction of artificial intelligence.
Current AI largely operates within closed systems. Model weights are not public, data flows are proprietary, and decision-making processes are limited to what lies behind APIs. This has allowed a few companies to control the direction and usage of AI evolution, limiting industry innovation and inclusivity.
DeAI effectively breaks this dependency, fundamentally changing the generation, governance, and distribution of intelligence.
The closed nature of centralized AI systems leads to restricted access, creating development bottlenecks and narrow perspectives. In reality, centralized technologies have led to decision biases, lack of transparency in outcomes, and even wrongful arrests, all stemming from inputs, designs, and data being solely controlled by centralized entities.
Even the goals of mainstream AI companies can shift under external pressure. In 2025, OpenAI abandoned its purely profit-driven plan, restructuring its commercial division into a public benefit organization controlled by a nonprofit parent company. This move indicates the company's commitment to public interest but also exposes the vulnerabilities when commitments are tied to corporate governance.
DeAI fundamentally ends the reliance on a single center, allowing public interest to be realized spontaneously through system architecture.
DeAI developers can run models locally, fine-tuning them with local data for targeted adaptation. These tools do not require high bandwidth, commercial licenses, or corporate approvals, enabling them to function in environments where centralized tools struggle to reach.
Farmers in India use voice assistants that support local dialects to plan their agricultural cycles; in Sierra Leone, teachers utilize AI chatbots in low-data messaging apps to receive real-time, accurate, and cost-effective lesson support, surpassing traditional web search methods; in rural Guatemala, midwives use AI-driven mobile applications to monitor fetal health during home visits, even in offline environments, significantly improving maternal and infant care in low-resource areas.
These innovations stem from the users themselves—often those most easily overlooked by the global tech wave.
Today, building AI agents has become exceptionally convenient. No-code tutorials allow anyone to create practical intelligent agents, while users with technical backgrounds can access programming and visual development tools, significantly lowering the development threshold.
Businesses are also actively adopting DeAI: retailers train small models using their own transaction data to optimize logistics; large enterprises customize open models to serve internal operations. According to DappRadar data, the market share of decentralized AI applications is rapidly climbing, poised to rival the DeFi and gaming sectors in the Web3 space.
DeAI is profoundly changing how people work, learn, and solve problems within communities. Each practical application makes intelligence more concrete, practical, and aligned with local needs.
The most common criticism of DeAI (decentralized artificial intelligence) is that decentralization may lead to inconsistent or misleading information. In fact, this concern is not new. As early as the birth of Gutenberg's printing technology, skeptics warned that unverified texts could lead to social chaos. However, in the long run, printing technology propelled scientific advancement, increased literacy rates, and fostered broader public communication.
Open and transparent systems are conducive to regulation. Open-source models facilitate review and assessment. Community norms can guide localized applications, achieving diverse governance. Ethical mechanisms can also evolve collaboratively in an open environment, rather than being dominated by a single company's values.
This divergence reflects deeper ideological trends in the field of artificial intelligence. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei advocates for a centralized path focused on safety in his article "Machines of Loving Grace," arguing that to achieve responsible artificial general intelligence (AGI), highly centralized and strictly controlled development processes must be implemented.
In contrast, SingularityNET founder Ben Goertzel warns that centralized AGI development may solidify developers' narrow worldviews. In a recent interview, he advocated for nurturing and developing intelligence through global collaboration and local adaptation.
These ideas influence incentive mechanisms, risk models, and global accessibility. Centralized systems emphasize consistency and controllability; decentralized systems promote the spontaneous evolution of intelligence across diverse cultures, industries, and real-world scenarios. This resilience is giving rise to new markets and new types of organizations.
The next phase of artificial intelligence will be shaped by who participates. The more intelligence is in the hands of the public, the more resilient, adaptable, and representative it becomes. Developers are gradually moving away from closed APIs, public institutions are investing in self-controlled infrastructure, and community-led models are gradually taking root in areas where Big Tech has limited coverage. Intelligence is no longer just "created for the world," but is "co-created by the world."
We are still in the early stages of this transformation, and the future depends on our current investments and constructions. This means increasing investment in the foundational technologies of decentralization, funding local innovation projects, and, more importantly, creating intelligent generative tools that everyone can use, as ubiquitous as reading and writing tools.
The first Renaissance made reading a possibility for the masses, and this time, it will popularize the right for everyone globally to think, calculate, and create—ubiquitously.
Related: Former U.S. President Trump: Bitcoin (BTC) alleviates pressure on the dollar
Original article: “Decentralized AI: Leading a New Wave of Intelligent Renaissance”
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