Technological automation could result in a utopia, or it could send inequality skyrocketing and leave most people "miserably poor." The trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.

Stephen Hawking

In his last correspondence on reddit, the late great Professor Steven Hawkin left this ominous message to the world. It was concerning the proliferation of AI. And no, it is not about the rise of some post-apocalyptic sci-fi world where the AI take over and enslave humanity. It is about the simple yet pressing problem of joblessness. From self-driven cars, to infrastructure that can repair themselves, to kitchens that come with a built-in cook and are able to flip burgers to smart roads that are able to remove snow and repair potholes; AI is upending our entire way of life.

Very few would dispute that we are at the tail end of the industrial age where machines will be doing most of the jobs we now take for granted. In fact, over half of all jobs will be done by machines. Add that to the billions who won’t be able to earn a living, then we understand the gravity of Hawkin’s warning.

At the heart of the problem is the concentration of power and influence. Presently, only a handful of businesses and corporations control the AI industry, which means most of us will not have a share of the USD 15.7 trillion pie, which, according to PwC, is what the industry might be worth in 2030. It would be somewhat of a banality to delve into the downsides of what will happen if most people are denied a share of the AI bounty. Instead, it would be great to look at solutions, in particular, the one Effect.AI has come up with.

Video Summary

What is Effect. AI?

“It is a decentralized network that provides virtually all of the services required for a healthy and accessible Artificial Intelligence market. This project is called The Effect Network. This network will replace several existing services in the current AI market and it requires no commissions, has a low barrier to entry and provides fast growth to its users. It is designed to provide an alternative to services like Amazon Mechanical Turk, Fiverr, OneSpace and Guru.com. The difference between Effect.AI and the aforementioned platforms is that it will operate fully on smart contracts deployed on the NEO blockchain, and in so doing directly connect supply and demand without the need for an intermediary party.”

How will it do this?

Solve the Data Processing Issue
Working with AI is very expensive and time-consuming. This is the reason only a handful of large corporations, among them Google, Facebook, YouTube etc., are dominating the sector. The fact is that unless you have a lot of your resources at your disposal, you won’t be able to cash in. The Effect.AI response is to develop what is called the Mechanical Turk, to have humans performing micro-tasks. This is the first phase of the Effect.AI initiative and it will give “businesses and aspiring AI developers access to a large workforce of human intelligence and access to large datasets or networks to train their AI algorithm.” The genius of this approach is that it brings everything together on one platform which means interested parties will not have to search hard to find like-minded people to execute a task.

Diverging Tasks
Developing a complex algorithm is made even more so when it has to communicate with the world outside of its locale. Therefore a self-driving car made in Detroit is going to use particular algorithms. What is they want to export some of these cars to El Salvador? What is the procedure? By delegating tasks to various people with certain expertise, then it will ensure that that car can, for example, read the road signs in San Salvador.

Cost of Computation
This is way too expensive for the average Joe. Developing and training an AI of a substantial size is a barrier to entry to anyone sitting behind a computer with only limited processing power. But with access to a decentralized ecosystem, the user will have access to large data sets which normally they would not have. This is minus the cost because Effect.AI makes it cheaper and easier to train AIs.

Use Case

Keisha has been Turking for several years now for a large corporation. She is getting USD 2 per hour for her work. She, however, realizes that she is operating below her potential and has started working on developing a protocol for cars to recognize signs in several languages.

After two years of hard work, Keisha is positive that it is ready for testing. The problem is that she cannot afford the large volume of data she needs to test and eventually optimize her creation. To compound the situation, she does not have the requisite human resources to assist her in communicating her project. Therefore, simple things like writing e-mails, making calls, and other everyday tasks that are needed to keep any business going.

Effect.AI Phase One
By utilizing Effect.AI’s Mechanical Turk system, she sends out requests over the globe asking users to assist in translating and interpreting to assist in training her AI in the different languages she is seeking to teach it. Using this system, Keisha has gotten rid of the the middlemen and is now making over four times what she was working for the big decentralized market player who will remain unnamed.

But not only that, she will save money and take advantage of the large pool of human intelligence Effect.AI has brought together. This will assist her in testing her product and by extension make improvements.

Effect.AI Phase Two
It takes another year of backbreaking testing to bring the project up to standard and she has decided to put it on the market. Recently, a huge automobile maker has purchased Keisha’s AI system, which is much cheaper than buying from the larger centralized players.

Effect.AI Phase Three
Being such a huge success, others, many of them, smaller players, are utilizing her product. But she does not have the computational power to keep up with the demand. This is where she turns to Effect Power, where she gets enough power to run her AI and store the data her customers have collated.

The Big Aim

The above use case shows how Effect.AI will completely decentralize the network. So, not only Keisha, but anyone who use it “will be able to take advantage of AI technology, develop it, buy it and sell it.” Again, there is no third party here cashing in on Keisha’s hard work.

By building their product on the NEO platform, one of the safest and most secure ecosystems, Effect.AI has created something much better than the centralized systems we have now, seeing that it is, faster, cheaper and more effective.

The team of sagacious individuals is not only making this product available for users. They are offering anyone who is interested in investing 650 million tokens. The ICO which starts on March 24th will go on for 18 days with a 10% bonus.

In conclusion, not only is Effect.AI making sure Professor Hawking’s dire predictions do not come true. They are making sure even those with little or no expertise as far as AI is concerned, they can still participate in Effect.AI’s revolution.

Additional Information

Effect.AI Website
Effect.AI Whitepaper
Effect.AI LightPaper
Effect.AI YouTube
Effect.AI Medium
Effect.AI Facebook
Effect.AI Twitter
Effect.AI Telegram
Effect.AI Review/Explanation Video

Written by: @nicholas83

Date: 3/19/18

For the @originalworks writing contest

effect.ai2018