SingularityNET - Creating Decentralized Marketplace for AI Agents to Interact & to Create the World's AGI

Preface to the Present State of Technology & Innovation

According to Wikipedia,

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the intelligence of a machine that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can.

The singularity is the hypothesis that the invention of artificial superintelligence (ASI) will abruptly trigger runaway technological growth, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization. According to this hypothesis, an upgradable intelligent agent (such as a computer running software-based artificial general intelligence (AGI)) would enter a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, with each new and more intelligent generation appearing more and more rapidly, causing an intelligence explosion and resulting in a powerful superintelligence that would, qualitatively, far surpass all human intelligence.

How Prevalent is AI Today?

As you can see by the graph below, the growth of computing has been increasing and the development of an AGI falls in line with when a computer will be able to compute like One single human brain, which according to Ray Kurzweil (the source of the graph) will occur between 2020-2040 & the development of an ASI falls in line with when a computer will have the ability to compute like All human brains combined estimated between 2040-2060 by which point the Singularity will have occurred and there will be an intelligence explosion. Ray Kurzweil is notable for his accuracy of bold predictions as a respected futurist, technologist & Senior Executive at Google.

I'm sure by now, the majority of people around the world who live in advanced nations understand that technology is progressing at an accelerating pace. Concepts that may have appeared like science-fiction just years ago are now entering into the domain of reality. Just to give a brief overview on how much capability, dependency, demand & usage of AI we have today, I will give you examples of the US:

1. Department of Defence - DARPA is seeking to innovate Unmanned Systems, Autonomous Lethal Weapons, Robotic Vehicles
2. Silicon Valley - Big Data Mining & Analytics, Targeted Advertising, Self-Driving Cars, Facial Recognition, Natural Language Processing, Virtual Assistants
3. Wall Street - Quantitative Research & Analysis, High-Frequency Algorithmic Trading, Robo-Advisory Services
4. Biotech - Gene Editing (CRISPR), Drug Discovery, Bioinformatics, Molecular Diagnostics, Targeted Therapeutics

Where are we Heading?

According to Transparency Market Research, the global artificial intelligence market is projected to grow from $233.8 billion in 2017 to $3.1 trillion in 2025. It is hard to predict the future in a fast changing world but I will say with clarity that I no longer see humanity on a linear path of growth, but on an exponential path of growth. I believe that we are figuring out how to open Pandora's Box and with each passing year, we are getting closer and closer to achieving, the possibility of an AGI and with that, the possibility for a Singularity to occur in the next few (2-3) decades.

A major trend we are currently witnessing is the development of ANI (Artificial Narrow Intelligence). ANI is an AI algorithm that can automate a particular function or role of a worker particularly well. I also believe that we are not only in the process of automating our blue collar workers (such as retail cashiers or truck/taxi drivers), but we are also in the process of automating our white collar workers (Stock Market Traders, Investment Advisors, Accountants, Lawyers & Surgeons).

I also believe we are in a loop with technological acceleration that we can not escape. Most companies want to integrate the latest advancements in AI if it results in a higher ROI, lower payroll costs & bottom line. Even if there were a minority who wanted to keep as many employees around as possible, they would find it increasingly difficult and costly to not adopt AI technologies and lose a competitive edge to their rivals in business. And these AI technologies are what I defined earlier as ANI. They can execute with near-perfect precision, without breaks & without pay (save investment & maintenance costs of ANI Capital) as compared to their human counterparts.

We are designing a more automated workforce and automated infrastructure as we try to repurpose our homes, cities, airports & vehicles, etc. to become as automated and efficient as possible. The difference between the Industrial Revolution and the AI Revolution is that the former achieved the automation of alot of factory and goods production work while the latter will also automate the services sectors. With the AI Revolution, we are now able to automate human faculties and skills, and we are in the early stages of automating almost ALL of the economic labor or services which the human workforce has been providing. If you are more interested in my views on workforce disruption in the coming decade, you can read about it in my earlier post on automation in the 2020s.

SingularityNET

The Limitations of ANI & The Development of AGI

It is very interesting to introduce to you SingularityNET after my lengthy preface - to show how we are mostly limited to ANIs and how we are still at the very early stages of technological innovation.

However, the vision of AI today as I paint it and as I believe most readers will agree with is rather bleak and a result of capitalistic greed as well as technological innovation and the accelerating pace at which it is occurring. Such is the limited scope of ANIs. SingularityNET fits into this picture because it is trying to create an AGI and drive us into our next era in the Post-Singularity as I defined earlier. SingularityNET seeks to accelerate the ability for AI agents to learn from each other and leverage external datasets and capabilities.

Now, this may seem even scarier and threatening than the ANIs we have today and there's alot of questions to whether or not it can be built and even if it is built, what it would mean for humanity. I believe that this sort of project is among the most purposeful blockchain project I have come across. What inspires me more about the project is not just the potential for massive gains down the line in terms of the crypto price but also the sheer vision and depth of this project in terms of its purpose of driving AI development in a positive and powerful direction and what it would mean for humanity itself.

AGI Token Utility

SingularityNET will run on the Ethereum Blockchain & AGI is their ERC-20 Utility Token. As of this writing, AGI is worth around $0.17 (17 cents) per token with a Market Cap of around $90.9 Million as per coinmarketcap.

The purpose of this utility token has three primary functions:

1. Transaction Mechanism: AGI tokens let anyone buy and sell AI processing
   power from around the world. Whenever someone wants an Agent to perform services, a smart contract is signed for that specific job and AGI tokens are paid out for services.
2. Incentive and Reward: AGI tokens are distributed as rewards for contributing utility to the network (by building a great reputation or by curating AI Agents).
3. Indirect Governance Tool: AGI tokens are one component in deciding how the network is governed in a decentralized way.

High Level Platform Development & Overview (in Pictures)

Proprietary Technology Overview:

AI Nodes in the SingularityNET can spawn new AI nodes - (network is self-growing & self-pruning):

Collective AI Mind Cloud:

SingularityNET wants to coordinate AI at scale:

If you are interested in looking at some of their code repositories for more technical details, check out SingularityNET's GitHub!

Vertical Market Areas

1. Social and emotional robotics:
   • Tools enabling SingularityNET to be used generically for affective robots in the
   home, office, school, nursing home and hospital etc.
   • Leverage the close relationship of SingularityNET with Hanson Robotics, and
   reach out to a variety of other robotics firms.
   • Creating a decentralized “AI mind cloud” from which numerous robots can draw
   intelligence, to which they can contribute knowledge, and which they can use to communicate.
2. Biomedical analytics:
   • Focus on enabling the easy application of diverse AI tools to a massive number
   of interrelated datasets stored on the cloud.
   • Homomorphic encryption will be valuable here for ensuring confidentiality of
   aspects of datasets when needed. Numerous clinical and biological research
   applications have need of massive cross-dataset AI analysis
3. Cybersecurity:
   • An area in which SingularityNET itself will have acute needs, as will other
   blockchain-based projects which will be natural customers for SingularityNET.
   • Machine learning can be used to identify patterns in prior attacks so as to better
   predict and identify new ones in the world of cyberattacks.

Critical Goals

SingularityNET has three long term goals as specified by their whitepaper aimed at ultimately achieving a positive technological singularity in which AGI is distributed and accessible to all (resulting in the benefit of mankind on a whole vs. a few groups of people) on a higher level:

1. Creating the world’s best marketplace for AI services – aimed at every vertical market including software, robotics and IoT and other hardware – via leveraging decentralized and open mechanisms to support contributions from the broadest possible variety of contributors, and support utilization by the broadest possible variety of users
2. Creating a breeding-ground for the evolution and emergence of AGI – that is, a framework in which various AI Agents, carrying out operations at varying levels of general intelligence, can network and combine
   together to create increasing levels of synergetic general intelligence
3. Working toward the common good for all humans and other sentiences, via fostering an open and inclusive economy and culture, and via dedicating a percentage of resources in the network toward the application of AI for beneficial tasks that promote general human well-being and the emergence of compassionate and helpful AI

Notable Team Members & Advisors

1. Dr. Ben Goertzel - As the CEO of SingularityNET, he oversees network development, project staff, and organizational partnerships. Known globally for his achievements and thought leadership in the AI field, Dr. Goertzel has published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on artificial general intelligence. Dr. Goertzel is also the leader of the OpenCog AGI project, organizer of the prestigious annual AGI conference series, Chief Scientist of Aidyia Holdings, Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics, and Chairman of Novamente. He has developed AI-powered trading and sentiment analysis for Webmind, Clarium Capital, StockMood, Cerrid Capital, and Chaikin Trading.

2. Dr. David Hanson - leads robotics development at SingularityNET, as well as providing general vision and oversight. His latest creation - AI Humanoid Sophia as been lauded as the world’s most expressive robot. Sophia has been taking time out of her busy schedule to serve as the humanoid spokesperson for SingularityNET. He currently serves as founder and CEO of Hanson Robotics.

3. Simone leads the blockchain team which has decades of combined experience building, testing, and launching crypto projects for both the private and public sectors. Simone brings extensive knowledge of data-driven design, decentralized organizations, and crypto technologies. Previous projects include Swytch, Heavycoin, Eurocoin, and dozens of other blockchain systems and tokens.

4. Mitchell Loureiro is leading SingularityNET’s marketing and business development.  Mitchell has a proven track record in building business strategies and exposure for next generation technologies. He has created open source communities with millions of contributors, raised funds for multiple noteworthy blockchain projects, and created over $250 million in market value for decentralized technologies.

Current Partnerships

SingularityNET has alot of great partnerships and is continuing to roll out high quality and purposeful partnerships at a fast pace. If you are interested in learning more and keeping updated on SingularityNET's partnerships and other updates, please visit SingularityNET's Medium Blog - from where I have sourced my information regarding partnerships.

SGInnovate — Partnership with the government-owned, private company charged with driving technology innovation in Singapore will facilitate the recruitment of organizations and talent in Singapore with AI tech suitable for integration into SingularityNET.
NR Capital — Collaboration to develop revolutionary AI-driven solutions for global trade & commodity finance.
Ocean Protocol — Exclusive collaboration with Ocean Protocol will provide SingularityNET users access to decentralized data exchanges to train agents for any AI or ML application. This partnership represents a huge leap forward in meeting the growing demand for full-stack, decentralized AI services.
Nexus - With the world’s first 3D Chain, Nexus solves the current challenges of speed and scalability in the cryptocurrency industry. Nexus is one of the most secure blockchains and provides world class quantum security through its many innovations. This partnership would strengthen SingularityNET's mission of creating a highly scalable, censorship-resistant blockchain infrastructure.
FundRequest - Singularity network is entirely open-source, and using FundRequest’s platform, it will be able to coordinate their large community of AI-developers. They will also be exploring the use of FundRequest to fund bounties and development initiatives for that purpose.
OpenCog - The OpenCog language learning pipeline implements a continuous self-reinforced loop where knowledge learned at earlier iterations may be used to seed later iterations and get adjusted incrementally. Once they develop the Language Learning framework to be capable of dealing with existing languages, it can be used to power the Language Learning Nodes of SingularityNET.
BitSpace - Partnership represents inroads into the Public awareness campaign & Community Expansion as SingularityNET along with BitSpace will be Co-hosting community events across Europe targeting developers and entrepreneurs.
Aigents - Recent integration with Aigents, a social computing platform, will make it possible for every non-professional user to create, educate, train, and launch their own personal AI agent on SingularityNET.
Hacken - SingularityNET will be working with Hacken to develop AI-integrated, decentralized cyber-security systems to protect network data.

Concluding Thoughts

From the partners and brainpower involved in this project to the astounding number of high quality partnerships and the vision of creating an AGI bringing us closer to an unknown Singularity, this project is awesome. And it could not have come at a better time. The time is ripe for investment and development in AI as we are heading into a more automated economy and society with high-tech and fast paced change. I love how the leaders of this project want to decentralize AI because that not only makes it more powerful but also makes it safer and gives control to everyone rather than just a few powerful governments, corporations or people. I think this project is very undervalued with its current market cap and I want to leave you with a quote when thinking about the potential and upside of such a project that seeks to accelerate AI development -

"“If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts.” - Bill Gates