Data is the new economy: We’ve moved from industrial → information → knowledge → data-driven. Cleaning, labeling, securing, and storing data is the cost center—and the bottleneck—for ML.
AI training reality: Building ML = expensive loop: collect → clean → label → train → re-label → re-train. Accuracy targets (~90%) require large, validated datasets.
Why blockchain: Not magic storage—an immutable, transparent transaction log. Useful to:

Prove provenance of data/labels.
Tokenize contributions (pay people for high-quality annotations/validation).
Coordinate multi-party ecosystems without a single gatekeeper.
Crowdsourcing model: Reward citizens for validated contributions (e.g., labeling, reporting hazards, providing sensor data). Tokens can be redeemed (utilities, parking, merchant discounts) → aligns incentives.
Human-in-the-loop is essential: Best results = machine proposes, humans validate. Diverse contributors reduce bias (avoid “skinny white dudes” problem).
Smart city use case (Hoboken): Public-private partnership with:

City wallet/app (opt-in messaging + token rewards).
Transparent procurement/bidding on-chain.
Edges: kiosks, sensors, AR signage, artist content.
SDGs & climate projects: Use ML + edge computing to verify carbon capture/restoration; blockchain for transparent measurement & funding flows. Scale from 7 projects → 700 via open, shared infrastructure.
Governance & risk: Tech can be weaponized (e.g., punitive “social credit”). Mitigations:

Transparency by design (auditable hashes/consensus).
Aligned incentives favor good actors.
Collaborative business models > after-the-fact regulation.

In this hour-long conversation, Susan Oh provides a comprehensive look at her professional background, entrepreneurial ventures, and advisory roles across AI, blockchain, and sustainable development. She begins by recounting her early career in journalism and media, and how those experiences shaped her interest in information integrity and the future of trustworthy content.

Susan then highlights her major career milestones, from co-founding startups to her role as Founder of Muckr AI. She explains how the platform applies machine learning to assess the trustworthiness of news and digital content by analyzing behavioral signals from sources, with the goal of combating misinformation.

She also discusses her involvement with BeOmni by Beyond Imagination, one of the world’s most advanced humanoid AI robots, outlining how robotics and AI intersect in real-world applications. Her global impact work features prominently, including her founding Board Member role at the Blockchain Commission for Sustainable Development, which operates with the support of the UN General Assembly Office of Partnerships.

In the latter part of the interview, Susan elaborates on her ambassador and advisory roles with NeoFlow Asset Management and Impulse4Women, emphasizing her commitment to financial inclusion, investment access, and empowering underrepresented entrepreneurs. She ties these initiatives back to her central theme: using AI for automation where it creates efficiency, and blockchain as a trustless system for secure, verifiable transactions.

The conversation concludes with forward-looking insights on how these technologies may reshape global markets, improve access to opportunity, and strengthen the reliability of digital information.

This conversation centers on how blockchain can support and accelerate the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The moderator begins by outlining the first five SDGs, including no poverty, zero hunger, good health, quality education, and gender equality, before asking Susan Oh about the value exchange between blockchain technology and sustainable development.

Susan explains that the SDGs represent a holistic framework for building economies and communities, where climate restoration, poverty alleviation, and meaningful work must be pursued together. Blockchain, she notes, offers transparency, eliminates single points of failure, and introduces trustless systems for social impact initiatives. She illustrates this with examples such as Paybook, which allows nonprofits to transparently publish the use of donated funds.

She then discusses the origins of Blockchain for Impact, which began as a workshop at MIT tackling the question of whether carbon dioxide could be removed from the atmosphere. By convening small, interdisciplinary groups—scientists, activists, funders, and community representatives—the initiative generated actionable solutions and viable commercial pathways.

Susan highlights projects like Pressland, which applies blockchain to journalism supply chains, and Earth Ledger, a marketplace for sustainable products that uses token incentives to crowdsource solutions to global challenges. She emphasizes the opportunities blockchain creates in developing economies, such as digital wallets for the unbanked and digital identities for refugees, leveraging mesh networks and satellite bandwidth to overcome infrastructure gaps.

The conversation also addresses gender diversity in blockchain, where Susan stresses the economic and social benefits of including women and underrepresented groups in leadership and entrepreneurship. She identifies SDG 8—ending modern slavery and advancing financial inclusion—as a personal priority, framing predatory lending and human trafficking as forms of economic exploitation blockchain can help mitigate.

Finally, Susan reflects on the role of governments, arguing that regulation often lags behind innovation. She suggests that governments function best as neutral frameworks that balance citizen needs against corporate interests, while leaving room for decentralized technologies to evolve and scale.

In this concise but powerful presentation, Susan Oh introduces herself as a Korean-born Canadian New Yorker shaped by a life of displacement and resilience. She recalls her family’s flight from South Korea’s dictatorship to Iran just before the revolution, then to London and Canada, where she grew up as both immigrant and refugee. These formative experiences gave her a deep understanding that global challenges are always personal, and that belonging often comes through contribution rather than identity.

Susan describes her early journalism career, which lasted more than two decades, covering industries such as aviation, finance, and technology. Often one of the few women in the room, she developed the ability to translate complex systems into accessible narratives. That skill led her into consulting for startups, and eventually into technology itself, when she joined a Silicon Valley AI startup in 2014.

She recounts how her team approached her to lead Muckr AI, an initiative focused on using machine learning to track source behavior and fight misinformation. Susan explains how this effort introduced her to blockchain, which she initially resisted but later embraced as a tool for transparency and decentralization.

Her talk concludes with reflections on integrating AI and blockchain for social good, her role in co-founding a UN-supported NGO to align technologists and funders, and her current leadership in robotics. Susan emphasizes authenticity, compassion, and human-centered design as essential for harnessing technology to solve global challenges.