As the exponential growth of AI continues to dominate the headlines, businesses everywhere are exploring how to best use this technology. According to Forbes, most business owners view AI as a benefit, with 64% seeing AI as a way to boost productivity and improve customer relationships, and 60% anticipating sales growth due to the burgeoning technology.

However, generalized AI systems most people are familiar with, like ChatGPT, are not tailored to meet specialized needs of any particular industry, and have real limitations when it comes to applying them to specific business uses. AIs and Large Language Models (LLMs) are not scalable, as they've been trained on vast amounts of text in order to be able to understand existing content and generate new content. It would be impossible — and far too costly — to even attempt to have them study all the available content on the web.

The future is specialized AIs

If your business wants to maximize the use of AI technology, what you really need is an AI that's specifically designed to suit your particular business. While your business may benefit from a horizontal AI — a generalized system focusing on processes such as customer service, content generation or accounting, it could require a vertical AI system, tailored to function in a much more specific industry such as banking or healthcare, which requires aggregation of large quantities of data, both public and private.

An AI system trained for very specific tasks costs far less than generalized AI, and is easier to maintain and keep up to date. But for optimal training and function, AIs need to be wrapped with an application programming interface (API) to allow them to communicate with other AIs for all the resources and information they need.

And that interface comes at a cost. For this system of communication to work efficiently, AIs need the autonomy to pay each other in real time for these resources. This will enable AIs to scale, and data to flow more rapidly, in a more accurate way.

How payments work for AI training and communication

In some cases, the interactions between AIs can involve very small costs, which become more expensive when credit cards have to be used to pay for each one of these small exchanges.

On the other hand, AI and LLM models are trained and built on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), which has caused the price of GPUs to soar. Payment for GPUs via credit card only increases this expense for both platform providers and users — as well as opening up vulnerabilities to costly chargeback fees and fraud.

The need for credit cards for all these interactions between AIs can also inhibit access for many potential users worldwide — closing off avenues for creativity, education and business growth for billions of people.

The solution: Pay per use via Bitcoin

Allowing AIs to pay each other using the currency of the internet — Bitcoin — solves many of these issues, making AIs and LLMs much more accessible to everyone. To make this happen, AI engineers will need to use Lightning Network Daemon (LND) created by Lightning Labs. The Lightning Network builds on the L402 protocol, implemented through Aperture and using LangChain, which creates AI agents that perform tasks such as interacting with Bitcoin.

If all that sounds complicated, it doesn't need to be. You can get your business set up on the Lightning Network in minutes at Voltage.cloud. Their easy-to-use API and dashboard can get you access to the Bitcoin development platform and the L402 protocol.

"Eighty-three percent of the internet actions are API calls, and this number is rising," said Bobby Shell, Vice President of Marketing, Voltage. "By giving AI agents and APIs the capability to pay per use, many new business models and opportunities are made available to businesses and entrepreneurs."

How to get started

Especially if you run a small or midsize business (SMB), you may think your options are limited regarding affording training and hosting specialized AI. But with Voltage, you can get fast setup on the Lightning Network, and they'll handle the networking and updates, saving you time. Voltage also uses encryption to ensure security and safety.

"There's a multitrillion-dollar cash flow, chargeback and fraud problem. Nearly all SMBs struggle with cash flow problems, and as enterprises scale, they deal with chargeback and fraud issues," said Shell. "Lightning Network gives businesses of any size automation capabilities to reduce fraud, increase cash flow and improve working capital conditions."

Ready to make specialized AI work for your business? Start building and integrating L402 into your product.