“The CO-FOUNDER OF VANA IS BUILDING DATA DAOS AND DECENTRALIZED Marketplaces to Create An EcoSystem of User-Reinned Data. She Will Give The Keynote at the Ai Summit at Consensus May 16.”, – WRITE: www.coindesk.com
This is all data that ai companies would love to harvest. You Can’t Build Good Ai with Without Good Data, whoh is some many View Data as the “New Oil ‘in the Race for AI. The Problem, Thought, is that kind your Data is valuable. in theorythe reality is that is Hard to Monetize Your Own Personal Data, As You Have No Leverage As An Individual. (Open ai isn’t knocking at your door to buy your Old Tweets.)
Enter vana. “I Think Data Is this Fundamental Resource Powering the Next Generation of AI, and Really the Next Generation of Our Digital Economy,“ Says Anna Kazlauskas, CO-FUNDER VANA. “A LOT OF POPLE FRANKLY JUST DON’T REALIZE THATE ACTUALLY ONIN THEIR DATA.”
But you do own your data. And is valuable… if you can somehow join forces with Millions of Other Who Also Own Their Data. This would give you bargaining Power. And that’s the mission of vana: to create an ecosytem for user-oweed Data, WHICH IN TURN FULS USER-BOUNED AI.
That EcoSystem Involves A Mix of Data Daos (A “Labor Union” for Data), Decentralized Data MarketPlaces, The Recently Launted VRC-20 Token, and A New Collaboration Witch Witch USER-LOVED FOUNDATION MODEL. (Exhbit a that decentralized ai is creeping in the mainstream: The Vana/Flower Collaboration Was Covered by Wired.)
Kazlauskas Will Give A Keynote at the Ai Summit at Consensus 2025 Outling this Vision, and She Gives A Glimse Here. And she sees the momentum shifting. “We’re already starting to see this shift whore more people realize that, ‘My Data is Really Important to Ai’ and ‘I’M ACTUALLY The OWNER OF THAT. Onboard. In 10 years? “World Population. Above 10 Billion.”
Interview have been Condensed and Lightly Edited for Clarity.
WHY IS USER-LUKED DATA SO IMPORTANT TO YOU?
Anna Kazlauskas: MOST PEOPLE ASSUME DATA is Owned by the Platforms that It’s Sitting on, But That’s Not the Case. In the Same Way that kind of you put your car in a parking Lot, the parting Lot Doesn’t Own Your Car. You can always take it back. You have Full Ownership Over It.
And there’s a Huge Amount of Money Being Made Today, Mostly by Big Tech Companies, Off of that Data, But Users Are The Legal Owners. SO I THINK IS IMPORTANT THAT We RESTORE OWNERSHIP, BOTH FROM A USER PERSPECTIVE AND FROM A Developer’s Perspective.
Can You Connect The Dots of How This Helps Developers?
As a developer, especialy in an ai World, Having Access to The Right Data Is Really Important. And’s Super Hard to Do Right Now, Because Most of the Data Is Locked Up with the Walled Gardens of Big Tech. SO Many of My Really Smart Friends who do stuff in ai go work at the big labs, because that’s what the Data is and that’s whore the compute is. But that doesn’t have to be the caase.
How do data daos fit into this vision exactly?
SO A DATADAO IS KIND OF LIKE A LABOR UNION FOR DATA. WHERE BASICALLY YOU HAVE A LARGE GROUP OF POOPLE WHO POOL THEIR DATA TOGETCHER, AND THEN COLLECTIVE DECISIONSES Over What Happles to that Data.
The Reason Wy that’s Important Is That Your Data, On Its Own, Is Not That Useful, Right? I Much more useful when there’s a big pool of it. WHEN THERE’S ENOUGH OF IT TO TRIN AI MODEL.
WHAT ARE SOME OF THE DATA DAOS YOU’RE’RE MOST EXCITED BY?
There are a few in the health Space that are really interesting. There’s An Early One that’s Actual Doing Full Exports of Patient Medical Records, Which I Think Can Really Help Advance A Lot of Research in the Space. There’s Some Related to Biometrics, Sleep, and Health. There’s one with the dlp [Driver Loyalty Program] Labs; They’re Building Car Data. And within their Data-Set, The Tesla Data Is Really Interesting Because MOST PEOPLE THINK About Tesla as Valuable Because they have a data lead, right? Actually, The USers Can Get a Lot of that Data-Set.
You’re pivoting from Theory to Practice with the New Collaboration with Flower Labs to Build Collective-1. What’s The Goal There?
Collective-1 is the First User-Lawn Foundation Model. USUALLY WHEN PEOPLE THINK About A Foundation Model, They Typically Think of One Company Running A Very Large Training Job in a Single Data Center, Right? Like Openai. And the reasonson is your typically in a Centralized Way is Because It Requires, One, A whohle Lot of Compute Power, and Two, A whole Lot of Data.
Flower Ai is Kind of the Leader in Federated [decentralized] training. They’ve Done a Really Great Job of Building These Great Open Source Libraies. They’ve come in from the training Side and the Algorithm Side. And with vana, we Really Focus on that Data Piece, Right? So we basical have all this data that people can train on. THEN YOU GIVE USERS END-LOVNERSHIP OF THE MODEL, AND USERS CAN DECIDE ON WHAT The Model is Allowed to Do? So this is the first foundation mod of it kind.
And theory is that evulturally, with Better Data, you can buff ai that’s not just just competitive with The Central Players But Betteris that right? SO IT’S NOT JUST About Ideology, But Also Performance.
Exactly, Yeah that’s 100% Right. From A Decentralized Context, I Think Often People Agree in Principle That, “Yes, We Should Have Ai That’s Owned By The People. We Should Have Decentralized Ai.” But What’s The Thing That We Can Actual Do Better in A Decentralized Context? Data is the Answer. For each company, they only have their Single Slice of a Data-Set. Apple’s Got Their Data. Google’s Got Their Data. But if you’re going Through the user, you can Cut Across Platforms and Actual Build Better Data-Sets Than Any Single Company. Data is the Secret sauce that make it all work.
Love It. Thanks Anna, See You at the Ai Summit in Toronto.
Jeff Wilser Will Host The ai Summit at Consensus 2025, and Is Host of the People’s AI: The Decentralized AI Podcast.
Jeff is a Freelance Journalist and Content Marketing Writer with Over 13 Years of Experience. His work have been Published by the New York Times, New York Magazine, Fast Company, GQ, Esquire, Time, Conde Nast Traveler, Glamor, Cosmo, Mental_floss, Mtgl Miami Herald, and Comstock’s Magazine. He Covers A Wide Range of Topics Including Travel, Tech, Business, History, Dating and Relationships, Books, Culture, Blockchain, Film, Finance, Productivity, Psychology Plain-Talk. ” His tv appearances have ranged from bbc news to the view.
Jeff Also Has A Strong Business Background. He Began His Career As A Financial Analyst for Intel Corporation, and SPENT 10 YEARS PROVIDING DATA Analysis and Customer Segmentation InSights for A $ 200 Million Division of Scholastic. This Makes Him A Good Fit for Corporate and Business Clients. His Corporate Clients Range from Reebok to Kimpton Hotels to Aarp.
Jeff is Represented by Rob Weisbach Creative Management.
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