Illia Polosukhin has a strong history in the AI sector, predating his co-founding of the NEAR blockchain. Previously, he held a position at Google where he contributed to significant AI research, notably co-authoring the influential ["Attention is All You Need"](https://openreview.net/forum?id=H1ZGYPb_ZS&referrer=%5Bthe%20profile%20of%20Illia%20Polosukhin%5D(/profile?id=~Illia_Polosukhin1) paper in 2017, which laid the groundwork for the transformer technology now central to numerous large language model applications such as ChatGPT.

"AI is a really powerful force," Polosukhin remarked in 2023, "but what we don't want is it to be controlled and biased by a single company."
In this pursuit, he is working to integrate AI into NEAR's decentralized ethos, aspiring to build a holistic ecosystem that encompasses everything from computing resources to training frameworks and agent systems.

At a recent NEAR conference in Bangkok, the commitment to AI was evident through prominent signage proclaiming, "AI is NEAR."

This feature is part of CoinDesk's Influence 2024 series. To view all nominees, click here.