Preserving Privacy in the Age of AI, w/ Marta Belcher and Jiahao Sun

How do we protect privacy in an AI-powered world?

As AI systems become increasingly powerful, they’re also becoming increasingly invasive. The stakes are no longer theoretical — they’re immediate and personal. From hospitals and law firms to small construction firms, businesses across industries are facing a pressing dilemma: how can we unlock the benefits of AI without compromising sensitive data?

In this episode of The People’s AI, presented by Gensyn, we explore two leading approaches to privacy-preserving AI. First, we speak with Marta Belcher, President of the Filecoin Foundation and a longtime advocate for civil liberties in technology. She breaks down how centralized AI systems threaten privacy and how decentralized, open-source models — like Filecoin — can provide a better alternative. We also dig into why overzealous regulation could backfire and how the stakes go far beyond crypto and into mainstream business.

Then, we shift to a more technical conversation with Jiahao Sun, CEO of Flock, a startup pioneering federated learning and blockchain-based governance. He walks us through how decentralized training models are already being used in hospitals in the UK and Korea — and what it will take to make private, local, user-controlled AI the norm.

We cover:

• How centralized AI supercharges surveillance risk
• Why federated learning and encryption may hold the key
• The case for decentralized AI in healthcare and beyond
• Why tokenomics, staking, and governance matter for AI trust
• What a privacy-first future of agents and personal models could look like

This isn’t just a crypto or Web3 issue — it’s a business imperative.

Flock:
https://www.flock.io

Filecoin:
https://filecoin.io

About Gensyn:

Gensyn is a protocol for machine learning computation. It provides a standardised way to execute machine learning tasks over any device in the world. This aggregates the world's computing supply into a single network, which can support AI systems at far greater scale than is possible today. It is fully open source and permissionless, meaning anyone can contribute to the network or use it.

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