In an earlier piece, we introduced you to the promising utility of Numer.ai. Now, we’d like to narrow our focus and share with you what the Numer.ai team is planning for the future. As is the norm with all Blockchain-based projects, Numer.ai has also put out its own version of a road map, which it calls its “master plan.” The Master Plan has been up and active since 2017, and comes straight from the mouth of Richard Craib, Numer.ai’s CEO.
In a general sense, the overall plan boils down to four key drivers of everything that the project does and aims to do. According to Craib, it all starts with monopolizing intelligence and monopolizing data, in order to monopolize money.
What might not be clear to you upon first hearing this is exactly what this monopolization refers to. In essence, if you refer back to our first piece on the Numer.ai platform, the network wants to begin as an AI-driven, massive data repository for data science teams, with the Numer.ai blockchain acting as the “repository,” here. What some could consider a sort of “lofty” goal at this juncture is that Numer.ai wants to use their growing status as such a repository to take in enough data that they can eventually decide that they have “monopolized it.” How this can theoretically be done will depend on how the team responds to queries on the subject.
Suffice it to say for now that in a general business context, this refers back to the idea that data is the new oil. If you have the right data in the right amount, then if prevailing business theories are to be believed, you will succeed in your desired global arena. Given that Numer.ai wants to establish a data monopoly in order to lead the future data market in this way, one could, therefore, conclude that they do not have an easy road ahead. Even the idea of the right data is completely subjective and varies based on the business that the firm in question, is in.
Going back to Craib and the team, however, it could also be said that their goals are at the same time, not lofty given how he expresses them. In a nutshell, the team has no illusions that they definitely will achieve any of their goals at all. In fact, Craib boiled the project’s road down even further than what has been mentioned above and said two years after publishing the master plan that Numer.ai is focusing solely on monopolizing intelligence. As a growing segment of the data science industry continues to fall behind the network, the project’s chances of doing so appear more and more possible.
What do we mean by this? To best understand the current state as well as the desired future state of Numer.ai, we can take the view that it is ideal not only to try to get a balanced view of the project from inside and outside the space but also to begin by truly understanding what they mean by “monopolizing intelligence.” The idea of monopolizing intelligence is by no means a new one. Since the advent of business as it is today, commerce has been built on the idea that whoever knows an industry and therefore, its products and customers the best, succeeds the most. If we look at how Google has built its AI wing with rigorous research and acquisitions, then we can see a key, current example of how the monopolization of a space can be achieved. In short, if a company has enough capital, which includes intellectual capital or having the right talent, then it can corner space as Google has done with AI. If you don’t believe me, just take a look at their history with such projects including their acquisition of DeepMind. For another example of a company that has driven headfirst into the AI space and come out the better for it, look no further than Amazon, as well.
In Numer.ai’s case, due to the relative lack of easily searchable press on their project in the last few months, it has become less clear exactly how they plan to “monopolize intelligence.” One can logically assume that the plan to do so does relate back to convincing data scientists that the Numer.ai platform should be their go-to place for any data set. If this is true, the key question becomes: how will they convince data science teams in this way? It is true that the space is young and therefore, is more of a blue ocean than a red ocean, due to a lack of leaders in terms of market share, but as we have mentioned before, having the right data has never been more important.
In our next piece, look for us to dig deeper into this final question on how Numer.ai plans to convince data scientists that their platform is the ideal place to store, alter and grow their data sets.
References:
https://medium.com/numerai/numerais-master-plan-1a00f133dba9
