It seems there are intersections with the history of PoW mining (CPU => GPUs => FPGAs => ASICs) since we don't need the full power of GPUs for training or inference. For example, ASICBoost [1][2][3] was/is a technique to improve PoW by ~20%.<p>[1] <a href="https://bitcoinops.org/en/topics/asicboost/" rel="nofollow">https://bitcoinops.org/en/topics/asicboost/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.00575" rel="nofollow">https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.00575</a><p>[3] <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/04/06/bitcoins-new-controversy-the-asicboost-allegations-explained/" rel="nofollow">https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2017/04/06/bitcoins-new-con...</a>