The Future of AI, Agents, and Creativity: What I Learned at Blockchain Futurist Miami

Welcome back to How I AI. In this solo episode, I’m sharing my full download from the Blockchain Futurist Conference in Miami, where I spent the day surrounded by founders, futurists, and creatives shaping the next wave of AI and Web3 innovation.

From autonomous agents and AI-to-AI payments to digital identity, ownership, and creative collaboration, this episode breaks down the key quotes, takeaways, and insights that stood out most.

This is a fast, honest breakdown of the ideas that matter most and why they’re going to shape how we build in 2025 and 2026.

• The rise of autonomous agents and what “intent” really means
• Why AI search is becoming the new homepage
• How blockchain ties into IP, royalties, and digital ownership
• Why kids and seniors are adopting AI faster than we think
• The new rules of trust, transparency, and verifiability in AI

Resources Mentioned:

• Delphi AI – David Ghiyam’s AI spiritual coaching platform
• Blockchain Futurist Conference Speaker List – View the full lineup of speakers and panels

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• Explore all my resources in one place → https://stan.store/BRXSTUDIO
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"How I AI" is a concept and podcast series created and produced by Brooke Gramer of EmpowerFlow Strategies LLC. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Brooke: 0:00

Last week I attended the blockchain Futurist conference here in Miami, and I found myself in the room with some of the brightest minds in tech. And today I'm gonna unpack all of it for you. Welcome to How I AI the podcast featuring real people, real stories, and real AI in action. Hi, I'm Brooke Gramer, your host and guide on this journey of the real world impact of artificial intelligence. For over 15 years, I've worked in creative marketing events and business strategy, wearing all the hats. I know the struggle of trying to scale and manage all things without burning out, but here's the game changer, AI. This isn't just a podcast. How I AI is a community, a space where curious minds like you come together, share ideas, and I'll also bring you exclusive discounts, and insider resources, because AI isn't just a trend, it's a shift, and the sooner we embrace it, the more freedom, creativity, and opportunities will unlock. Welcome back to How I AI I'm your host, Brooke Gramer. Today I have a very special solo episode. It's been a while since we chatted one-on-one, and I wanted to take you behind the scenes of everything I saw, I heard, and learned at this year's AI Futurist Conference. Before we dive in, I have a few quick housekeeping notes, first off, I've been getting so many messages from friends and members in my community reaching out on how exactly they can pivot, start building, and using AI in their workflow, or build out their technology stack without feeling intimidated. So if you're new here, I've built a free AI Get Started guide, and it's listed inside my Stan store, along with my favorite newsletter resources, helpful links, and terms to know, so that AI feels way less intimidating. You can grab that link in the show notes below. Secondly, I just wanna share a personal update on tech i'm loving. I recently learned about Delphi AI through a spiritual coach, David Ghiyam, and he created the tool David Ai. And for those of you who don't know, Delphi AI helps you create your digital mind. Think about building a digital version of you or a clone of your intellectual property, and then you can use it to scale your expertise and availability. Think about how hard it is to scale one-on-one coaching, but if you have enough data and recorded conversations or previous teaching or seminars, you're able to upload it into a tool like Delphi AI and monetize your knowledge. So I really wanted to share because Ghiyam has found so much success using this tool, and I think it's the future of thought leadership, of coaching. I'll link Delphi AI below so you can look into, maybe other thought leaders and coaches you like are already on there and you can already start using it. I love sharing about these things because I'm always learning and working on self-improvement. Uh, another way that I've been using AI recently is whenever I have webinars I'm attending or, uh, group calls, I am always transcribing it and using it as my own personal note taker, and this way I can upload it into my LLMs and of course keep it private, and use it for my own personal use to then reflect back and almost like create a digital coach that way where I'm able to recall all of our weekly meetings, and use it for myself moving forward, even after the container closes. Last but not least, before we get started into the conference recap, I wanted to share that my podcast is fully booked until the end of January, which I am so grateful for. So that means I'm putting more focus and energy and attention into creative collaborations. I'm thinking of putting on another event here in Miami, and I've been working a lot on my upcoming products that are gonna be dropping soon inside my Stan store. One I created this week was a public library of my favorite custom GPTs ones that are readily free and available. I've also been brainstorming with some AI adoption playbooks and frameworks that can help you with accountability and momentum. You know how AI isn't just about ai how-tos or tutorials, it really is about reimagining your life with AI as your co-pilot. So I can't thank you enough for being a part of this community. Every download or share helps this podcast reach more people, so don't forget to rate and review. Okay. Really quickly, I do wanna tease some upcoming episodes, um, some really cool guests I have coming through between now and the end of the year. I interviewed the CEO of Conductor. You might've seen that running list come out in the last month of the top users of ChatGPT, and they're on there. That conversation was really good. We talked a lot about SEO and the age of AI, search and visibility. I'll also share an episode about the intersection of AI and biohacking as I recently attended a biohacking conference here in Miami, and I also had a really incredible interview with the Chief AI Officer of eMerge Americas, and he's spearheading the Miami AI Summit, which is happening during Art Basel Week here in Miami. I'll also be attending that and doing another recap on those conversations as well. If you haven't noticed, I love attending conferences and listening in on panels and moderating some of my own here in Miami. If you ever want coverage or need someone to help support your panel curation or moderate a talk, don't hesitate to reach out to me. All right, let's get into today's episode. So this year's Blockchain Futurist conference was held at the Hard Rock here in South Florida, and it offered a glimpse into how Web3 AI and human creativity are starting to braid together. The conference is hosted by Blockchain North and it's Canada's longest running Web3 event. It's in its ninth year. I got a chance to meet the production team. They were so sweet. I love Canadians. Shout out to all my Canadian listeners and so they were speaking about everything from autonomous agents and decentralized infrastructure to women in Web3, AI creativity, digital finance, art and IP protection. Also, really big shout out to the VC of the day, Lalla of SheAgentic. She was so sweet and she let me speak to the room for a bit as well, and each of these panels had its own flavor and focal point, but together they painted this really powerful picture of where we're headed as a society and what creators, founders, and small businesses can be doing right now. To stay ahead. I'm gonna run through each of these panels now, starting with the first one, which was called Agentic AI: The Next Leap Toward Autonomous Systems. This featured Shaw Walters, the founder of Eliza Labs. Dylan Dewdney from Kuvi.ai. Janet Adams of Artificial Super Intelligence. Jay Rogers at Infineo and Alice Shikova at Space ID. All of these panelists live deep in the agent world. Think digital assistance, that don't just respond, but actually act on your behalf. They chatted about agents controlling our wallets and how it will impact the financial market. One share was how not long ago it was very scary to put our credit card on the internet to make a payment, and now here we are and we're having agents make purchasing decisions on our behalf. They shared we already have the financial rails. The next frontier is intent. Teaching machines to understand what we want and act on it safely. They followed with a prediction that within 12 months, autonomous agents will be trading and executing successfully on their own. What struck me most about this panel was how they talked about trust. The real bottleneck isn't capability. It's whether we'll let go enough control to get these agents to do their jobs. A key takeaway that they gave was, if you're running a small business or a creative studio, pick one repetitive task like lead follow ups or research and build a mini agent around it. Treat it like an intern, give it boundaries, feedback, and a clear goal. Those who start to learn to manage agents will replace those who don't. We're already seeing this happen in the workforce, and it's one of the biggest skills that you can have moving forward into 2026. The next talk was with Lisa Loud of the Secret Network. I loved her discussion. Her talk was about growing your global impact, and she was really raw and honest. She's been a long time advocate for privacy tech and Web3 inclusion. She discussed the gender disparity in AI adoption and Web3 leadership noting that while men are embracing new AI careers, women are really underrepresented she encourages women to enter Web3, despite the male dominance culture, as it's definitely gonna turbocharge your career. Lisa also touched on how important it is to be resilient in these times. She shared a quote and said, chaos leads to opportunity and emphasized the importance of really leaning into this blue ocean space. And it's something that's really near and dear to my heart because I'm all about empowering and encouraging individuals to pivot during this rapid technological change of chaos, which is in fact breeding incredible opportunity. And as I mentioned, stay on the lookout as I release more offers and products and resources around specifically pivoting and reimagining yourself and your career in the age of ai. We then shifted to a panel called Co-Creating the Future AI and the Power of Human Creativity. This one featured Zachary Nelson of Genizo Media. Warren Calove of Go Arlo and Tony Evans, co-founder of CETI. I love this session because it was all creative philosophy. Warren said, AI should augment imagination, not replace it. They explore the tension between automation and artistry. How tools like Chat GPT or Midjourney can help you brainstorm faster, but real originality still comes from discomfort, from being human. They talked about how human creativity often involves breaking patterns and tapping into new ideas which AI currently can't replace. They touched on how human artists and innovators can adapt to AI technology, suggesting that those who embrace it truly will survive while other artists may fade out. They again, really honed in that fact that human imperfections and contradictions to repetitive creative patterns are really going to be the beautiful, unique artistic elements and outcomes that AI cannot achieve. One interesting point that came up multiple times throughout the day was this thought about data royalties and traceability. This group discussed ethical considerations around ai, generative creative work, and suggested things like royalties could help solve the problem. Someone in the audience also asked about education, the discussion highlighted the importance of teaching students to critically evaluate AI outputs and to understand its limitations. They said, we need to teach kids how to question ai, not just how to use it. This panel was really in depth, but the key takeaway really was if you're building with ai, keep the imperfection in the process. Those quirks and human fingerprints are really where the value lives. After that talk was Elena Sinelnikova. She's the co-founder of Crypto Chicks and Metis. She presented on the Future Payment Hub for AI agents. This talk was surprisingly accessible. She explained how their team is building a new layer for AI to AI payments, basically letting digital agents transact with each other using blockchain infrastructure. If you listen to my episode with Chairman Bowdre not too long ago, you know, I have recently covered this topic. She broke down her platform into four phases, building trust, controlling budgets, connecting systems, and then scaling cross currency. Elena discussed the future of AI and its potential to automate work. Suggesting that AI will play a significant role and shaping the economy through AI to AI payment. She emphasized the importance of integrating AI into the internet to build a sustainable future. She stated, AI will shape the economy through automation and collaboration if we teach systems how to pay each other. In summary, if agents are doing the work, they'll also need wallets. The next panel was on the Smart Money Era, AI and the Evolution of Digital Finance. This was with Reed Baum from Sarson Funds Antonio Brasse from BlockQuake and Keeyan Ravanshid from HODL Markets. This talk focused on compliance and regulation their big message was we're entering an age where financial decisions are made by algorithms, but accountability still belongs to us humans. Transparency is the new alpha, meaning in a world run by code. The edge isn't secrecy anymore, it's clarity. Antonio echoed that he warned that too many FinTech founders hide behind complexity instead of building trust. The key takeaway here is whether you're managing investments or running a small business document your data sources automate transparency first. It's gonna build trust faster than any branding campaign ever will. After that was a really interesting talk called Digital Expression: The Convergence of AI and Art. This one gathered Gianni from Purple Horizon's Lab and Erik LaPaglia from NextTech Ventures, plus a few Miami locals including Jenny DeMurta, a Miami native. She introduced herself as a fan of crypto and emerging technologies and discussed her interest in the convergence of AI and art. On that panel was also Scarlet Arana. She shared her role as the co-founder of Bit Basel, one of the largest Web3 art fairs. They kicked off talking about a project called Intuition, a moon based data center that literally stores art on the moon. Gianna shared AI is disrupting traditional art forms, but it's also giving birth to completely new mediums, we're finally seeing AI as a partner in the creative process, not just a tool. This group also touched on blockchain's role in protecting intellectual property, ensuring artists retain credit and royalties even as content becomes harder to trace. This really emphasizes that decentralized AI with blockchain ensures proof of ownership, preventing misuse of content like profiles, and highlighting the need for creators to understand this conversion point. That blockchain could be the most effective solution for these issues. How I AI is brought to you in partnership with the Collective AI, A space designed to accelerate your learning and AI adoption. I joined the collective and it's completely catapulted my learning, expanded my network, and showed me what's possible with ai. Whether you're just starting out seeking community or want done for you solutions, The Collective gives you the resources to grow your business with AI. I then broke for lunch and came back to a fascinating block of talks about ownership, privacy, and legacy. This is where the conversation really shifted from what AI can do to who controls what it creates. The next talk was called How DEFAI Transforms Inheritance: Presented by Heir.es. The session was led by Logan Golema, the founder of Heir.is. Picture Defi meets estate planning startup. Think trust funds and wills managed by AI agents. Logan asks the audience to imagine something wild but logical. If AI can manage your portfolio while you're alive, why can't it manage your legacy when you're gone? He walked us through how AI agents can track digital assets across chains, file paperwork, and even handle end of life data with transparency. The key takeaway here was to start thinking about your digital inheritance now, your photos, your crypto, business automations, those are all now part of your estate. Make sure someone, whether it's human or ai, knows where they live and how to access them. The next panel was called Unlocking the Billions Democratizing IP Via NFTs AI and crowdfunded patents. This one featured Sam Drissi, co-founder of Artizyou and BIPQuantum. I really love this presentation because it's such a big shift that we are all entering. Sam's mission is to make intellectual property protection accessible for everyone no giant law firm required. He gave a presentation about his platform that enables content creators to license their work across multiple marketplaces. He walked us through a really simplified AI driven process. The platform aims to automate IP protection and licensing, offering features like generating NFTs for multiple marketplaces and providing on chain and off chain proof of ownership. His platform is open sourced in collaboration with the EMX Foundation, and users can create and manage their IP with ease, including their own software, algorithms, and creative works. He said it best. The future assets aren't about money. It's about knowledge in your head. He really did a great job showcasing his platform that mints and patents and copyrights the NFTs so creators can license and monetize their work directly. A big focus was on fractional ownership, letting multiple investors hold pieces of an idea or an invention. So if you create content, art, or code, start documenting your process. The line between inspiration and infringement is about to get very thin, and proof of origin is power. The last panel I attended was called the Infrastructure Behind Intelligence: Scaling AI with Privacy and Trust. This one was more technical. It was led by Rohan Handa from Mysten Labs and George Varghese from 0G Labs. It also included Charlene Wang of Zyphe and Andrew Smith of Formation AI Labs. It was moderated by Anewbiz from the Secret Network. They really dug into the plumbing, the systems that keep AI private, efficient and verifiable They stated that AI is scaling exponentially, but it's too centralized and too leaky. We need infrastructure that treats privacy as a feature, not an afterthought. They talked about cryptographic proofs, decentralized storage, and open audit trails, basically making AI's reasoning visible. They reframed it this way. The moat is trust and verifiability. The key takeaway here was whether you're coding or consulting, transparency builds longevity. People will choose tools and brands they can verify. After the panel breakouts, I also met some incredible people walking the expo floor. I met Dyrique Mendoza of FinTech USA, teaching kids about cryptocurrency and financial literacy. He told me kids already understand digital currency through games like Roblox and Fortnite. They just call digital currency Robux and V-Bucks, and they already know things like Bitcoin at a very young age. It's such a simple idea. Meet them where they're at and play. He's designing programs that bridge gaming, crypto safety, and career readiness in AI. It reminded me that education isn't falling behind. It is evolving in unexpected places, and the next generation is learning faster than we think. Our job is to make sure they're learning ethically and safely. And speaking of people doing incredible work, one of the most inspiring connections I made was with Sanda Adams. She's the co-founder of Onboard60 consulting and counseling services. She's building digital literacy programs for senior citizens, helping older adults navigate tech with confidence from online banking to basic AI tools. Her tagline is, empowerment doesn't have an age limit. I love that so much. I told her on the spot, I want her to be on the podcast next year, so watch for that in 2026, it's happening. In summary, if there was a single theme that threaded throughout the whole conference, it was this: AI isn't coming for us, it's coming from us. It is our design, our data, our values, shaping this next era. So that's my download from the Blockchain Futurist Conference 2025 in Miami. I left feeling inspired by how many people are building responsibly, creatively, and collaboratively. We're not spectators anymore, we're participants. If any of these panels sparked an idea for you or you want to dive deeper into one of the speakers, I'll have the links and names listed in the show notes. All right everyone. That's it for today's solo episode. If this conversation helped you see AI differently, share it with one person who would love it, and make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on what's coming next. See you on the next episode of How I AI. Wow, I hope today's episode opened your mind to what's possible with ai. Do you have a cool use case on how you're using AI and want to share it? DM me. I'd love to hear more and feature you on my next podcast. Until next time, here's to working smarter, not harder. See you on the next episode of How I AI. This episode was made possible in partnership with the Collective AI, a community designed to help entrepreneurs, creators, and professionals seamlessly integrate AI into their workflows. One of the biggest game changers in my own AI journey was joining this space. It's where I learned, connected and truly enhanced my understanding of what's possible with AI. And the best part, they offer multiple membership levels to meet you where you are. Whether you want to DIY, your AI learning or work with a personalized AI consultant for your business, The Collective has you covered. Learn more and sign up using my exclusive link in the show notes.