Blockchain and the new decentralized innovation stack

Introducing ROADI: Real-time Operational Autonomous Distributed Intelligence

By Randall S. Newton

[Photo credit: Alessio Ferretti on Unsplash]

There is a new set of software services coming together that are now driving and will continue to drive incredible innovation — new products, new services, and entire new industries. This set of services is bringing together elements of robotics, artificial intelligence, data analytics, real-time graphics, wireless telecommunications, cloud computing, and blockchain.

This has happened more than once in the modern history of computer use. The World Wide Web took off as a global technology when four separate IT services became the foundation for web development. The four technologies became known as the LAMP stack, for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP (or Python or Perl).The “stack” concept comes from software development, where a “stack” of aligned resources (operating system, database, programming language, etc.) are required to write applications.

Nobody sets out to create a stack, they are identified when they are already in use. The LAMP stack led to more than two decades of web development and continues to be an engine of innovation today. For the last ten years or so another stack called CAMS (Cloud, Analytics, Mobility, Social) has been the basis of smartphones, social media, cloud-based enterprise productivity software, the Internet of Things, industrial robots, and more. salesforce.com and the iPhone were among the first breakthrough products of the CAMS era. The current total digitalization of industry, AKA Industry 4.0, would be impossible without CAMS as its stack.

A new technology stack is now evolving as the next engine of innovation. It is ROADI: Real-time Operational Autonomous Distributed Intelligence. ROADI will turn products and services into autonomous discreet agents. The CAMS-based innovations live in a human-centric world; ROADI makes autonomous agents out of manufactured goods.

Real-time Operational

If you play computer games online with others, you are familiar with real-time operations. Previous generations of computer games were “baked” in advance; each possible scene was designed and rendered in advance, then displayed as a player moves through the game. Leading online games today render scenes live (in real-time) and they look as good as the scenes that only a couple of years ago had to be created in advance. The change is due to faster Internet connections, faster computers, and much faster graphics processing.

The ability to process graphics has outpaced general-purpose computing in recent years, thanks to GPUs — Graphics Processing Units — that are beating Moore’s Law and becoming used for general purpose computing. Six years ago when GPU maker Nvidia organized a conference for general-compute uses of its GPU hardware, most of the use cases were directly related to graphics (weather forecasting, gaming, oil/gas exploration, engineering simulation). Now this same conference — held in several cities around the globe annually — features tracks on artificial intelligence, deep learning, supercomputing, and autonomous transport (driverless autos).

Autonomous, Distributed, and Intelligent

What the iPhone was to the CAMS stack, self-driving cars are to the ROADI stack. Self-driving cars must possess intelligent and autonomous behavior. They must always respond in real-time to the environment. Their actions are based on a refined notion of trusted behavior. The necessary computation and connectivity can’t be centralized in a server or even a cloud, it must take place in each vehicle and in every other object on or near the road.

Assembling the ROADI Stack

There are several innovations behind the emerging ROADI Stack:
Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) have gone far beyond their original purpose and are now more responsible for computational innovation than CPUs. Better known as GP-GPUs (General Purpose GPUs), they give autonomous cars their vision and their “knowledge” of the world, processing millions of bits of information every second to provide real-world interactive capabilities, faster than CPUs alone can accomplish.

The Internet of Things and the Industrial IoT (IIoT) are abstractions that describe a variety of interconnected technologies, including distributed computation applications known as Edge Computing, Fog Computing, the more established Cloud Computing, as well as such emerging technologies as microscopic CPUs. As the tools mature, IoT/IIOT devices will exhibit autonomous and decentralized behavior, interacting with each other without the need for centralized control.

Deep Learning has changed how we use so-called Big Data. It allows the emergence of behavior we describe as intelligent, providing millions of autonomous devices with the logic they need to operate in the real world in real time.

Blockchain technology will provide new elements crucial to autonomous distributed intelligence, the disintermediation of trust and an open ledger of transactions. An autonomous distributed technology needs the ability to be trusted without the intervention of an intermediary service or human. Blockchain tech uses a cryptographic ledger to bring immutable proof and automated smart contracts into the stack. For example: if a self-driving car is in an accident, a blockchain-based smart contract could be automatically triggered, relationally binding it to any other smart objects involved in the accident and the physical jurisdiction. The complete recent record of the car’s behavior will become part of the public record on the blockchain ledger, making it easier to assign responsibility for an accident.

Immersive and interactive display technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, machine vision, and heads-up displays will provide a conduit to human interaction with ROADI technologies. They will also provide the multi-dimensional sensory input ROADI devices will need: machine vision, Lidar, Sonar, Radar, and other forms of environmental data gathering.

Ethical, social, and legal considerations

Innovation often requires social adaptation. Sometimes (as in the current debates over fake news and social media) the adaption is difficult. Eleven years after the launch of the iPhone, we are still trying to understand smartphone influences on behavior. When smart connected products become ROADI products, there are new considerations. Can a robot file a crime report? Can a smart factory change the Bill of Materials without human intervention? Will immutable records stand up in court? At its best, engineering takes legal, ethical, and moral parameters into consideration. How industry responds to these social meta-specifications will likely prove to be the biggest hurdle or the biggest asset in the development of ROADI products and services.

Randall S. Newton is Managing Director of Consilia Vektor, a technology analysis and marketing advisory service specializing in product development, construction technology, and distributed ledger (cryptocurrency) applications for industry. Randall will discuss the ethical implications of the ROADI Stack at the World Ethical Data Forum in Barcelona, September 19-20, 2018.