  Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to significantly benefit or
harm humanity. At present, a few for-profit companies largely control the
development and use of this technology, and therefore determine its outcomes.
In an effort to diversify and democratize work on AI, various groups are
building open AI systems, investigating their risks, and discussing their
ethics. In this paper, we demonstrate how blockchain technology can facilitate
and formalize these efforts. Concretely, we analyze multiple use-cases for
blockchain in AI research and development, including decentralized governance,
the creation of immutable audit trails, and access to more diverse and
representative datasets. We argue that decentralizing AI can help mitigate AI
risks and ethical concerns, while also introducing new issues that should be
considered in future work.
