We've been watching most of the monthly Q&As and team updates since 2019 and recently we've been getting strong vibes from the team (especially this month's Q&A) that the testnet is really around the corner now: Q1 2024. Hopefully it really is. They've been working on the project since 2015. We'll go over the July Q&As that caught our attention (video above for the full Q&A):-
Question: Could you help us picture out visualize the efficiency of Tau and its products? Could you suggest a picture to better visualize its greatness?
Answer: We can compare it to chatGPT. Imagine using chatGPT, but in the language that it understands you completely, is never wrong, and it's always accurate. Moreover, you can also give it commands to execute. So it's not only an informational robot, it's also a robot that's serving you. That's because Tau is also a software specification language. On top of that, it's connected to everyone, so everyone speaks with Tau this way and it's all combined into one large database and everything can be accounted together.
Question: Why is Tau the only hope you see for humanity. Could you explore more?
Answer: Two big problems that humanity is facing is social coordination and stupidity. Those two things: Tau can help out.
Question: Open AI's new project "Superalignment" is telling the world that they can solve the AI alignment problem within 4 years. They have huge funds to hire many very smart and talented people on different parts of the globe to speed up and reach its goals. It's possible that other projects are secretly doing this as well, to create the super AI. Is Tau testnet a multi-year project? I hope Tau mainnet can be launched sooner than 4 years so we can actually have a real working product that can be used?
Answer: Yes, it'll be at least much much sooner than 4 years. About OpenAI and other projects - we have some very unique technologies that are very necessary in order to solve for example the AI alignment problem, we are in the process of patenting those technologies. We will be a unique player in this world.
Question: What is the impact of people using Tau and being able to scale discussions and reach consensus? Why is it needed and important for everyone?
Answer: One way to look at it is the ability to combine brainpower. So if you have 2 experts, 3 experts, it's usually better than 1 expert. So what about 1,000,000 experts? Right now they can't combine brainpower, but with Tau, they can.
Question: Ohad, what are your short-term goals for Tau to achieve after 3-5 years? 2028? I hope Tau patent and mainnet is launched and people are already using it by that year.
Answer: As I said before, it's not 3-5 years until we get a patent granted, it's by no means like that and it's by no means 3-5 years, it's much much less than that. Karim gave an estimation of Q1 2024 for testnet but it's possible to be even a little bit more optimistic and of course anything can happen but as you heard in my previous updates and also in this update from Andrei and David working on it. There is really no problem. It's coming, and it's coming fast.
Question: What is your burning motivation that keeps you doing this multi-year (since 2015) even though the Tau project is super difficult and too complex?
Answer: Well I can speak for myself, I'm only interested in things that can radically change the world and I don't know anything that is near Tau in this regard.
Question: Hi Ohad, what is Tau's philosophy? Can you name one or does it create a new philosophy? If so, can you please share your personal thoughts on it?
Answer: To try to summarize it in one concept, it is about bringing the world where computers can understand us. Imagine a world where computers can understand us - this will be a very different world. Tau gives a way for computers to understand us. So we (the people) will need to speak in languages that are a little bit closer to computer languages, but as a benefit we will get all these utopian reality where computers can understand us.
Got questions for the team? Ask it here and they'll answer in the monthly Q&A:
http://bit.ly/TauchainQuestionForm
More info & join the waitlist @ https://tau.net