The $500 Billion Data Heist: How OpenLedger Pays You Back

While tech giants are making billions from AI models trained on your tweets, Facebook posts, and YouTube videos, you're getting paid exactly zero dollars for your contribution.

Ram Kumar, core contributor at OpenLedger, has a radical proposition: flip the switch on the $500 billion data economy. His AI blockchain platform is building a system where ordinary people can contribute their specialized knowledge—from cooking techniques to surgical expertise—and get paid when AI models use that data to generate revenue.

In this interview, Ram reveals why the era of generalized AI models is ending, how specialized agents will create unprecedented demand for human knowledge, and his battle plan to prevent AI from becoming another winner-takes-all economy dominated by big tech.

Ram: I'm Ram. I'm one of the core contributors at Open Ledger. Open Ledger is an AI blockchain where people have the data sets. AI systems need these data sets. So as an application, you can use Open Ledger to go ahead and contribute a data set that you own.

We have a lot of data contributors that initially came on board. We have close to about 10 ecosystem projects building AI models on us. We have close to about a million users who are contributing data sets for that.

I've been in this industry close to a decade right now. The idea was to build an R&D company around blockchain and machine learning. We saw there is a need for enterprises to bring in fairness and transparency within their ecosystem, within their organization. We had an opportunity to work with enterprises like Walmart, Sony, GSK, and many more.

Ram: A company called Scale AI, which is known for being a data referent company, they've got so much data from across the globe. People sorting, labeling, and sifting reams of data to train and improve AI for companies like Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. Meta is paying nearly $15 billion for a Scale AI stake. This just shows you how much there is a need for data.

We all contribute data to AI. Your tweet, the posts that you do on Facebook, the videos that we upload on YouTube are the ones AI models are trained on, but us as users, we don't get paid for it.

The data economy today is valued at about $11 trillion. This is the data that's across the globe from enterprises, organizations and individual people on the internet, and let's assume about 5% of that is contributed by individuals. That's close to about $500 billion. $500 billion worth of data is taken away from you and you're not getting paid for it. We want to change that.

Ram: We all have this epiphany at one point in time where you have conversations with your friend about a product that you want to buy and you see that ad on Instagram. You know that your data is being used. I've had multiple epiphanies of that, and we've worked with firms where that is visible. People's information was used to make their product better.

Sure, it gave convenience, but it also took privacy. That's going to happen with AI as well. AI is going to make money. All these large organizations are going to make money out of it, but you're not going to be part of that.

It's like how nations went ahead and fought for oil. Now larger organizations are going to fight for data. Data is the new oil, and people have to realize that they own that oil. They own that data, but it's time to fight back and earn a piece of that.

Ram: What if we can flip the switch here and have people have the ownership to that? We want to build a system where you can contribute your data and you get paid for it. It's not just for AI researchers or developers. The common man who owns a lot of data.

As we evolve, as models evolve, models will become specialized where they need data sets from people. And in that case, we need to make sure that we can own our data and we get paid for it. And that's what OpenLedger is trying to solve.

It's a platform where users can come and contribute data sets, which could be knowledge that they have about trading or about a particular subject. Let's say I know how to cook well. I can go ahead and contribute with that, and then models can use this data. And if they use that data and they build an AI out of that and this AI makes revenue or creates an impact, you should be part of that. You should get a piece of that revenue.

Ram: Data is also very relevant with enterprises. Data you find on the internet is very generalized, but the data that you would find in a firm, in an enterprise is very specialized. And all of this knowledge did not come on the internet. People don't write blogs about it.

A surgeon doesn't write about his experience in actually doing the surgery. An artist doesn't write about how he actually painted a picture. So it all comes down to the individual person's knowledge that they own.

This knowledge would be needed for AI to truly get into all parts of our lives, more than just a chatbot. It needs to know knowledge about the entire world. It needs to know about very intricate details. In that case, people would reach out to individual users to get their knowledge.

A lot of people say that AI is gonna make people lose jobs. I don't think so. It might be a temporary thing, but it's gonna create a lot of jobs. Data contribution itself could be a great gig economy.

Ram: A good example that's being built on OpenLedger is a bunch of doctors are building a sleep model. The model is trained on sleep data sets, high quality sleep data sets across the globe. They want to get access to the sleep data from various parts of the world, so they can cover various races.

This particular data set is very unique because they're going to correlate that with their health vitals, and then once the model is ready, you can just upload your sleep data and it's going to tell you what your body vital looks like.

So like this, we have very interesting players who are building models on us, very niche, innovative ideas where you need data which is quite unique. We are quite excited about them.

Ram: The internet was supposed to be decentralized, but because of convenience, we let larger organizations take that. So making sure that it does not go back to a bunch of centralized larger firms is very important.

We don't have money to fight for it. All we have is our own power, people coming together and building something against the larger organizations. In order for that to happen, you need to make people come together, and community building is very important to us.

Part of that is building a very strong culture, building a very strong community, having the same goal, building systems that are open, verifiable, and rewarding is what makes people come together.

Let's take an example of Ethereum itself. Ethereum is a very community-driven blockchain, and that is why it's so strong today, even though it has its ups and downs. Ethereum as an ecosystem is very strong. That's why I think community is very important in what we're building.

Ram: To explain proof of attribution in a very simple manner, what if there's a tracking mechanism where you can see who actually contributed for all of this, and you can also see on chain that everyone who contributed are getting paid for it.

So it's a tamperproof record of your data's ownership. It's a record of how your data was used, and it's also a record of how much you're going to get paid if your data was used as well.

The reason why we have the proof of attribution is because we need to have a trustless system where they don't have to believe Ram. They can believe the system. They can believe the code. I think that's very important.

As a data contributor, you can go ahead and choose the model that needs the data, and you can start contributing data sets to that. It's a cyclic ecosystem you want to build. All the data that is contributed is recorded on the blockchain so that we can track this and we can pay users. I know that I can prove my ownership by having it on chain.

Ram: A lot of people ask me why this has to use blockchain. It could be a traditional AI company, but I don't think so. If you take a look at generalized models, the era of that will slowly fade away.

Agents will become much more specialized. There'll be an agent for healthcare. There'll be an agent for legal, there'll be agents for every other sector out there. You need to have a specialized model that powers it. And the data set is among actually people.

These datasets can eventually become models, specialized AI models, which then can be consumed by apps and agents that are going to be built on top of that. So I think every aspect of our life will change, how we take a ride home, our doctor visits, and what we learn from all of that will change.

Ram: I learned the world through the internet. I think for my daughter, they will learn the world through AI. AI will create a huge impact.

AI has to be responsible. So building a responsible AI system is upon us. If we encourage larger ecosystems to go ahead and consume our data and not reward us, then that's what is going to happen.

I think now it's time to change it. If we can realize how important our data is, probably that's the best output that we can see out of AI.