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SingularityNET Moves Forward with Goal of Decentralizing AI Development

March 11, 2019 Ian LeViness Opinion Comments Off

On February 28th, SingularityNET launched its’ long awaited algorithm marketplace, albeit only in a beta version. Just about a week later, they followed this up by launching an updated version of their whitepaper.

In past posts on the company, we mentioned their ultimate goal of “democratizing the relationship between businesses and AI.” The problem is, this characterization was off-base. Yes, they are aiming to do this, but their overall vision goes further.

Imagine a future in which, like we mentioned in our recent post on Fetch.ai, the economy is driven by autonomous agents that transact for us. SingularityNET to take this a step further by working tirelessly to bring about the age in which a collective intelligence exists that all of us can access to better ourselves in different ways.

If that sounds a bit like a Skynet scenario to you, then you’re surely not alone is this respect. SingularityNET, however, is reportedly putting all of its’ resources into making AI more of a benefit and less of a threat to the world. At this point in time, what is perhaps the principal example of this in practice is their algorithm marketplace, which we mentioned above.

What this is, on a basic level, is a place where any individual, can go to view and purchase AI algorithms that pique his or her interest. The idea behind this is that by effectively de-siloing Silicon Valley’s practice of keeping the best AI work in its’ “walled gardens,” the AI space will become more and more decentralized over time. While this is taking place, SingularityNET hopes to incentivize the members of its’ community to help its’ team create a set of ethical principles that can be used as an industry standard for what should and shouldn’t be done.

In other words, SingularityNET is working toward making the AI industry focused on a collaborative form of success, that is also governed by an industry-wide code of ethics.

The problem with such a goal is simple. Who’s to say the Google’s and Microsoft’s of the world won’t fight back against this kind of effort in a major way? Why would AI companies want to work together when the pay-off from working alone appears to be naturally, typically larger, especially when their products are bought out by a larger company?

To understand this as well as where SingularityNET sees their platform over the long-term, it could help to think about the current stages that both the AI and Blockchain industries are in. Both need a reliable infrastructure or set of foundational technologies to underpin every project that is being built, before they experience widespread adoption.

SingularityNET plans to offer the network and protocols to support the both the Internet of Things and the Machine-to-Machine economy as they develop. This may be difficult for the average reader to conceptualize, simply because both of these frameworks are in their early stages at this time and both appear to be very similar. Even so, it should arguably be clear to just about anyone that our economy has to eventually become more automated and less susceptible to human error.

The Blockchain is already transforming the way that we think about and use money. AI and Machine Learning are already transforming the ways that we look at data and make decisions on it. SingularityNET’s algorithm marketplace theoretically pushes this transformation further by making the best AI systems available to anyone. The kicker is: will companies that are able to create this caliber of a project join their ecosystem?

For that to happen, they will have to see a payoff that does not exist in the traditional way of doing things. Merely promising a better future in which Ai is ethical and truly cooperative is not enough. In effect, a new economic system needs to be ushered in, as well.

In our next post on SingularityNET, we’ll delve into what this means as well as how their goals specifically relate to those of companies like Fetch.ai, through the example of the latest version of their whitepaper.