The Effect Network
Here's a Blockchain Project with a very interesting proposition and a new approach to creating employment in the crypto space. I've written about Effect.ai previously and you can read my in-depth article here. Defining the Future Relationship between Humanity and AI
Three Phases
Phase 1 - Effect Force
the development and rollout of The Mechanical Turk
Phase 2 - Effect Smart Market
the development of a Smart Market for developers & enterprise to trade AI services
Phase 3 - Effect Power
a decentralised & distributed framework for running deep learning frameworks
This article deals with PHASE 1 - The Effect Force
The upcoming introduction of the Mechanical Turk. The Effect.ai team have been busy working on many tasks ahead of their ambitious project. Upgrading the website, expanding their team, attending international conferences, making partnerships and doing deals at a governmental level. The Mechanical Turk will be launching soon, so for those who wonder what the term means, what is a Mechanical Turk ?
The term MECHANICAL TURK
originates from an ingenious illusion from the 18th Century. It was an autonomous chess playing champion dressed in the garb of an Oriental Sorceror. In effect, the first real robot. It stunned the Courts of the European Monarchs with it's (almost) unbeatable chess prowess and later toured the world, intriguing audiences wherever it traveled, beating some notable opposition along the way. It's secret ? It was actually no more than a clever magicians trick housing a (succession of) real, hidden chess champions who transcribed the moves from inside the machine. So what does this have to do with crypto ?
Humans are (still) better than Computers in Many ways
The Modern Day Mechanical Turk is a crowdsourced and internet based platform where humans (providers) complete micro tasks in exchange for payment by developers and enterprise (requesters) which help train and refine their AI algorithms. Tasks which require human thinking in order to establish order; pattern recognition. Computers may be able to perform super fast mathematical calculations and deduce all kind of problems (humans routinely do this on a subconscious level to catch a ball, jump a rope or a million other routine tasks) but creative tasks like consciously identifying a rose or a mineral sample requires a co-ordinated intelligence and this is where Effect.ai becomes really interesting. Humans provide the training. Amazon have launched a Mechanical Turk platform and anyone can join to complete a number of micro-tasks in return for payment. It is a centralised platform, (Amazon is a classically centralised organisation) and as anyone who knows a thing or two about the blockchain world, decentralisation offers benefits to everyone involved.
Effect.ai has a Few Key Differences.
Effect.ai and it's Mechanical Turk is decentralised. This means it's run on a blockchain network which looks after the administration of it's tasks. It is more secure, more fair and more efficient, payments are instant and because it's crypto based, earning the system's EFX token offers providers a choice to speculate by accumulating and hodling the NEP-5 (NEO) tokens in the hope that it's value will increase in the future, or spending the proceeds immediately on gadgets, rent, food or even investing back into other forms of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin.
Workers can earn and spend entirely within a rapidly growing crypto economy without having to pay high 3rd party fees with services like paypal, etc.
It's geared towards training AI systems, so rather than a random assortment of retail / clerical tasks by requesters, the work providers complete will contribute towards refining the AI systems of the future, which will help run the world, post 2020. Anotated data sets are timely and costly to acquire, but they are hugely important in helping systems recognise patterns, which we find so intuitively easy. Helping AI systems learn how to interpret audio transcription and the labeling of all kinds of data, bug testing for software release and many other novel tasks which require huge amounts of comparitive results to be generated, revealing underlying patterns. There is endless scope for the Mechanical Turk, the applications could range from air traffic control modelling to call centre chatbots, smart search engines (which we desperately need) and auto translators, which to be fair, are still producing massive piles of gobblydook. Let's take a simple example.
The identification of an image. AI is getting better all the time at this complex task, but it needs help and it needs a lot of data in the same way you and I did when we were kids learning the difference between a telephone and a remote control. quickdraw by Google let's you help train an AI system to identify images by doodling them. Have a go yourself. It's incredibly addictive and satisfying and I found it a lot of fun. Of course there's no payment for training this system but if you paid me to do it, I'd probably sit all day doodling rubbish drawings of spectacles, a bicycle, a school bus, fire hydrant, a submarine or a toothbrush. That's the proposition of Effect.ai's Mechanical Turk for a provider. Work anywhere, anytime to suit you. It undoubtedly suits many people already to work to suit their own hours. Like me. I'll be signing up to the Effect Force. I can transcribe audio at the speed of light. As a producer of animated films, It's something I've had a lot of practice at and to transcribe audio perfectly takes concentration and active listening skills. Something any self-respecting AI system will need help with. I'm sorry, I didn't quite catch that.. In your own words, please state the reason for your call today.. "arghhhh, I want to make a complaint"
The Creation of Employment
Effect.ai has the potential to create a vast ocean of paid employment and it's a rare find a project in the crypto field which is based around paid employment. This is a real bonus to the crypto economy and so effect.ai is not only an interesting crypto project, but represents an important part of the crypto ecosystem construction. Many people will be earning and getting paid directly in cryptocurrencies for the very first time for the work they do. It will help transform the global economy as opportunities open up for people all over the planet. Because the requesters can set a budget for a task, competition for the best paid jobs will be high and so the onus will be on providing a fair wage or people will simply choose better paid tasks. That's a really useful benefit to workers.
Many micro-tasks currently available online are very poorly paid so this competition based system will bring the bar higher. It's blockchain so if you've completed a task, you will be paid, immediately. That will be of huge relief to people everywhere who need a bit of fast cash. Many people will be able to earn, save and spend their earnings from work without the centralised banking system being involved. When you consider that over 2 billion people in the world don't even have a bank account, it begins to expand in the readers' mind, what the huge implications of the BlockChain Revolution are ! and effect.ai exemplifies this approach to work, business & the future. Bearing in mind that AI is predicted to generate $15tn to the economy by 2030, this is real transformative technology, as revolutionary as the internet itself.
To Find Out More
Effect.AI Review/Explanation Video
this article is not an endorsement of effect.ai. I recommend all potential investors to conduct their own research and due diligence before making any investments and I would encourage anyone interested in this project to read the whitepaper Remember investments can go up as well as down.
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