The power of AI to streamline processes
Visiting PhD Fellow and OpenInnoTrain project secondee Henrik Axelsen discovers more about managing culture in gaming communities than he expected...
During his time at BIH, PhD Fellow and OpenInnoTrain project secondee Henrik Axelsen reached the final stages of completing his paper on using GPT to explore pseudonymous gaming communities and presented outcomes to a live hybrid audience on the 20 April 2023 - available to watch online.
It was great to have Henrik visit BIH this year to continue his research on decentralised communities with a broader focus to bridge decentralised finance with traditional finance.
We found out quickly that Henrik was passionate about his research and no stranger to financial and legal structures, having been a senior partner of a large financial consulting firm as well as holding a Master Degree in Law from the University of Copenhagen and a MBA from the Copenhagen Business School.
We took the opportunity to ask Henrik not only about his research into online culture but his thoughts on his time here in Australia and our physical culture.
This was your first-time visiting Australia. What did you think?
Overall, it is a big country with friendly people and Melbourne was nice. It was good to come to the RMIT Blockchain Innovation Hub because I had heard a lot about it before hand through the tokenomics community and wanted to meet the team.
My first impression is that it is much more expensive than I thought.
Food wise I enjoyed Australian steak and thought the Moreton Bay bug was an interesting name for a seafood delicacy!!!
Did you get to see much of the country while you were here?
Yes I traveled to a few places and I saw lots of iconic animals such as koalas, kangaroos, wallabies and echidna.
The Red Centre (Northern Territory) was surprisingly interesting, I was expecting a dry dusty desert however it was really beautiful - I was amazed how pretty it was.
I also spent time up north in Queensland (my son and his family live there), and went diving and snorkeling which is something I love to do.
I stayed on Heron Island and saw the Green and Loggerhead seas turtles nesting and hatching and enjoyed the Byron Bay Blues Festival – it had a nice country feel. Everyone was walking around in either rubber boots expecting rain or cowboy boots which may be a fashion trend?
Another surprising thing I noticed in Australia in general, was the amount of people with tattoos. I didn’t realise they were so popular!
Australian culture is unique that’s for sure, but tell us more about your research into online culture?
I have been researching how to understand and manage culture in decentralised communities, specifically how people manage culture in pseudonymous environments like gaming.
DAOs can be ineffective especially when in high growth phases, so I was unpacking this and working out a structure that could manage this using analytics.
I was able to identify behaviours among pseudonymous actors based on their activity in the Discord and what this means in relation to managing culture, strategic focus, meaningful contributions and business model execution.
Any unexpected research outcomes?
Yes!
The combination of AI and blockchain is really powerful. I had been focusing a lot on blockchain and not so much on AI which I started looking into.
The transparency of a blockchain based business model and decentralised community way of operating is interesting when looking at culture especially when DAOs are growing in popularity and quickly.
There are currently 12,000 DAOs compared to 5,000 last year and it can get pretty noisy with a lot of debate and discussion going on in each one.
This is where analytics can be used to sort out what matters in a DAO and I think we are only starting to see this.
Analytics can pave the way for more systematic thinking.
It’s a fascinating line of thought and the use of blockchain and AI can take us to a much higher level.
