Interview with Owen Tao, CEO of Matrix, a Blockchain company that is aiming to take Blockchain and smart contract to non-technical people using AI.
What brought you to launch Matrix?
Owen Tao: I'm a big fan of Blockchain and I have been following this industry for years. But the smart contract can only serve you if you know how to program; otherwise, you can’t use the smart contract. That this is the reason why Matrix uses AI technology - if you only just need to write down what you want or what you need in natural language - it is the machines who will do the coding - that is, to run the smart contract for you.
That's what we want. We want to create a smarter contract as much a Blockchain to serve anyone.
How do you think: this technology and AI together will actually help us? Could it push the boundaries of what we think is possible?
OT: We hope that through Blockchain, the power of the smart contract could be accessible to every person and the inefficiencies at larger scale could be eliminated. These days, the most criticized part of mining is the waste of energy. In the future, more electricity will be wasted on mining the cryptocurrencies. So that’s the power going waste, which can actually be used for other opportunities such as sensitive computing and soft analysis. In a nutshell, we want the mining process generally to have universal values - it is pretty much our dream for the future.
Your background is more in business. Do you think that smart contracts will really change the way that business is done?
OT: In fact, it won’t change the rules one bit. The most important thing for Matrix is that we want to increase the number of people using Blockchain and smart contract. So one day we will have millions using these technologies all around the world and anyone could also use our product. That’s probably billions of users. So maybe we won’t change the business per se, but change the world of business.
And in what industry, do you think, this technology will help the most? Which industry needs smart contracts and Blockchain more than anyone else?
OT: That’s actually a hard question. I’d say virtually any industry would require a service like this. For instance, in the future, maybe you’ll be able to put all the things on the network - you can make the machines do the work for you or you could even schedule the work for particular timings.
Say, you are working till late at the office but you don’t know when you will leave work. You could use the smart contract to leave the company before 7 p.m. This way your phone will call the restaurant and maybe book the seats for you and your girlfriend. If you leave work after 7, then maybe your phone will cover hotels: just put a room for you.
That sounds very interesting! The future is gonna be different. One last question about the conference as a whole. Have you found out about something you didn't know before and that you might want to implement into your business ventures in the future?
OT: Actually, this is my first time attending such a conference since BlockShow is the most attended Blockchain conference in the world. So this one is quite different for me. I really enjoyed the whole conference because of such wonderful speakers and I think I’ve learned a lot by talking to people from different backgrounds. I met people from all over the world.
Our project, Matrix, needs to do something along the same lines -- connect everyone through Blockchain regardless our nationalities and language. We believe that cryptocurrencies will be the digital of the future. So I’m really glad I attended this conference.
(source: cointelegraph)