A screenshot from the television series, Westworld
‘Blockchain and AI have disrupted the old-fashioned idea that words need to have meanings. Two of the main things computers are good at are keeping records and executing algorithms. Everything in the former area is apparently “blockchain” and everything in the latter area is “AI”. So if you’re selling software it’s safe to add those words to your marketing copy.’
- Arvind Narayanan
If the above quote is anything to go by, it appears the trajectory of information technology boils down to two of the most hyped technologies today: blockchain and artificial intelligence. With both still relatively in their infancy, I believe their unique synergy when merged together makes them hold so much potential on top of their latent value. Blockchain automates contractual obligations and enables a secure, free, trustless interaction in P2P networks without any central oversight. Since Bitcoin redefined finance, blockchain uses have extended into other fields including health, data, democracy and many more. The marketcap of all cryptocurrencies today stands at $200 billion, just a fifth of Apple and Amazon’s valuation.
On the other hand, AI ushers in the augmentation age through:
✔️making computers smarter and
✔️making sense of data informing business decisions.
Autonomous vehicles, vision, healthcare, robotics, and IoT are some of the fields that are made possible by AI.
‘Artificial intelligence is the new electricity’
✅It is projected that by 2030, AI will add $15 trillion to the global economy and blockchain more than $3 trillion.
How blockchain and AI complement each other
Any AI model is only as effective as the amount of data used. AI models use datasets to ‘learn’ and choose the most optimal function. How to collect, transmit and avail this data for AI training is very crucial. Today, artificial intelligence is a field that is predominantly the reserve of centralized organizations such as Google, and Facebook because they have access to large computational power and large datasets. The monopoly of AI is dangerous because its value is commercialized for corporate advantage leading to asymmetry between value creation and corporate interest. Blockchain technology can make it possible to encrypt, store and share data for AI use without intermediaries. The interaction of AI models with the data store is managed by pre-coded protocols preventing any misuse. In summary, with blockchain AI can be decentralized.
☑️Following historical software trends of software popularity leaning towards open source code from closed source since the 90s era, blockchain technologies, with decentralized communities hold much promise.
Decentralized AI
For decentralized AI to be a reality, we need to chew a few vegetables first:
Can we find third parties who can contribute to training AI models❓
Privacy: training data be obtained without being privacy-intrusive❓
Economic incentives to third-party training parties❓
Can the AI model perform in transparency and trustlessness❓
One of the project which seeks to make decentralized AI a reality is Nebula AI.
NEBULA AI
Nebula AI is a 3rd generation blockchain project for the creation of autonomous decentralized AI. Decentralized AI apps otherwise known as DAI apps can be launched on Nebula AI and be accessible more cheaply by everyone than existing centralized AI projects.
Computational power is very important because it enables more data to be processed. The more data is processed the faster the AI learns. This paradigm however makes it very expensive to compete with tech giants in artificial intelligence model training.
Recent breakthroughs such as cloud computing have reduced this deficit. However, much of the computing power is still in the hands of a select few tech giants. Nebula AI updates traditional GPU mining machines into AI computing devices. This means that AI developers no longer need to worry about setting up complex mining rigs to carry out the computation, they can plug in to the Nebula AI cloud engine at a small fee.
Nebula AI solves one of the most pertinent problems in the AI space, the high computational load to run complex model training, by connecting a network of GPU owners with AI developers.
Mining
The network of GPU owners will act as miners. NBAI mining will occur through anyone contributing their computing power(graphics card) and earn NBAI tokens. Large tasks can be split and processed parallel speeding up the speed.
Mining will initially be POW until 2018 Q3, on the Helix chain but this will be updated to Proof of Group(2019 Q1 onwards) on Orion chain. By offering their computational power to carry out AI algorithms, miners will be able to earn NBAI tokens as a reward.
Economic models
Users can pay NBAI to use DAI apps. Developers can submit AI tasks to NBAI and pay using NBAI tokens.
DAI Apps
To support enterprise usage NBAI, the NBAI main chain will be scalable, flexible and secured. By 2020, more than 500 DAI apps will run on the NBAI mainnet.
Some of the DAI apps already developed on the platform include:
Quant AI – analyzing market movements
AI Sentiment Analysis – attitude expressed in sentiment, like in consumer behavior
Biomed AI – disease diagnosis
By the end of 2018, NBAI will support 10 DAI apps. By the end of 2019, that number will stand at 500.
Mainnet|Miner Recruitment
On September 28, 2018 Nebula AI will launch their mainnet. Currently, the first round of miner recruitment is taking place. Miner requirements are:
📌Graphics threshold are at least GeForce GTX 1060
📌I3, i5, i7 etc
📌Hard drive more than one TB
📌Memory at least 16 GB
📌System Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
📌Network bandwidth 50 Mbps download speed and above
You can register here to be part of the Nebula AI mining community
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfeqIThls7RRFRNEdmvVO2wXOChzfdpeBebAaWo6gcu1DQPng/viewform
For more information on Nebula AI:
Website: https://nbai.io/
Linkedin page: linkedin.com/company/nebula-ai/
Whitepaper: https://www.nebula-ai.com/whitepaper/NBAI_whitepaper_EN.pdf
Bitcointalk ANN: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2928531.0
Telegram: https://t.me/NebulaAICommunity
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nebula_ai
Github: https://github.com/nebulaai
Bitcointalk username: Marahunter
For more information, follow the following links:
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-decentralized-ai-matters-part-iii-technologies-930c3c9d10d
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-decentralized-ai-matters-part-i-economics-and-enablers-5576aeeb43d1
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/why-decentralized-ai-matters-part-ii-technological-enablers-a67e3115312e