What is Effect.AI

Effect.AI is a decentralized network for Artificial Intelligence.

What does this really mean?

This project is going to create a platform where humans can train A.I., purchase A.I. algorithms and rent computing power to run A.I. Essentially it is a marketplace for the development and deployment of artificial intelligence algorithms (or bots) by 3rd party developers.

The projects ecosystem, also known as the Effect Network, is composed of a utility token, EFX, and three main features than will be rolled out in phases:

*Effect Mechanical Turk
*Effect Smart Market
*Effect Power

Let’s breakdown the ecosystem even more.

Effect Mechanical Turk

Mechanical turk is a platform meant to coordinate the use of human intelligence to perform tasks that computers are currently unable to do. M-Turk as it is more commonly known has been popularized by the Amazon service which allows a business to hire people to do things such as veryfing linkedIn profiles, taking surveys or transcribing audio from a video.

Effect Mechanical Turk will be similar in that it is a marketplace for human work but it will be completely decentralized and the reasons for the work are different. Effect M-Turk work will focus on training A.I. algorithms. In return the workers would receive a reward in the form of EFX..

Some tasks that humans can still complete more effectively than computers are image classification, transcribing audio and data labeling.

Case use: An example of using M-Turk to train an A.I. can be extrapolated from the recent news of Elon Musk’s OpenAI bot playing DOTA2. In order for the OpenAI bot to compete against the best players in the world it had to “play” or watch hundreds of hours in order to develop strategies.

A.I. can learn from hundreds of games simultaneously so the limiting factor is the number of players willing to allow the bot to participate. By rewarding the players (workers) with tokens they would essentially become an M-Turk workforce.

Effect Smart Market

The AI Smart Market is a decentralized platform where people can offer and buy AI services. It will be the hub for the exchange of AI algorithms.

Case use: Let’s continue with the DOTA2 bot example. After training the DOTA2 A.I., using hundreds of hours of gameplay from Effect M-Turk, the AI developer is ready to release their bot. Gamers that would like to play against the best competition in the world can rent the bot to play against it in order to develop their own gaming skills.

The team also plans to implement a system where different algorithms can cooperate and even purchase services from each other.

Effect Power

This component is where users can rent decentralized computing power. The team mentions partnering with a project like Golem in the future. They also state it’s a possibility that they develop their own framework if needed.

What’s the problem with Amazon M-Turk?

Amazon is a corporation and corporations need to make profit. To make profit from M-Turk Amazon collects 20-40% of the fees that requestors pay to the workers.

This results in workers averaging slightly over $3.00 and hour (See study here) and requestors paying for an intermediary that they do not need. Amazon M-Turk is also limited to countries where they operate and they deliver payments to workers after a holding period of 9-21 days.

How will Effect.AI change this?

By using a P2P system with no intermediary where payments are tracked and handled on the blockchain.

Effect.AI essentially becomes a completely decentralized, trustless M-Turk marketplace that collects no commission. This increases the earning capacity of workers while simultaneously improving the cost efficiency of the service requestors. Effect.AI predicts that it’s M-Turk workers will earn approximately $9.40 per hour.

How are rewards handled?

The reward system is fairly unique and attempts to tackle the problem of liquidity for users. The reward ecosystem has a few key components.

• Native Tokens – NEP-5, NEO, GAS, BTC, LTC
• Clean EFX – Tokens that can be exchanged for Native Tokens
• Tainted EFX – Tokens that can only be spent for services
• Galaxy Pool – A reserve pool that stores a mixture of NEP-5 tokens, Clean EFX and tainted EFX tokens.
  

The reward pool works as follows:

1. Requestors trade native tokens for tainted EFX from the Galaxy Pool.
2. Requestors create jobs and reward workers with EFX that is cleaned by travelling through the work completion smart contract.
3. Workers receive Clean EFX tokens.
4. Workers trade EFX tokens into the Galaxy Pool for native tokens.

As you can see the tainted tokens can only be clean by using them to pay for a service or a product. This prevents individuals from holding large sums of tokens and driving the price up to inflated levels and unrealistic levels.

What is the role of EFX token?

The utility of the EFX token is:

• Rewards – For workers, developers, computing power dealers.
• Payment – By requestors, AI buyers or computational power buyers.
• Manipulation Protection – By using Clean and Tainted EFX.

What about the team?

The team has been the subject of much debate in ICO circles due to their superficial lack of experience. When digging deeper you will see that most of the team has worked together over the last 9 years at Itsavirus.

Much of the debate is whether the team can pull this project off technically but in reality this project is a specialized marketplace and not an A.I. project. The teams work at Itsavirus is actually tailored to fit the model and design of this project as UI and interaction will play very important roles. If the team members are able to create secure and functional smart contracts this project could succeed.

The team should be capable of completing the first two phases of the roadmap with little help. They have stated that the third phase, Effect Power, may be completed as a partnership. As Phase 3 is the toughest technical portion of the roadmap, being open to partnerships is a smart move.

Links to core team members and advisors are below:

Chris Dawe – Co-Founder/CEO

Jessy Eisses – Blockchain Lead

Laurens Verspeek – Development Lead

Nick Vogel – Design and Interactive Lead

Jeffrey Hamer – Developer

Nick Curylo – Developer

What’s up with the ICO?

The ICO includes no private or public presale. The crowdsale will begin in March with a hardcap of $18.2 million.

A total of 40% of the total EFX tokens will be sold to the public during the initial token sale. An additional 20% of the tokens will be sold at a later date. Unsold tokens will be burnedThe token distribution and fund allocation is as follows:

Effect.AI ICO

The base price per token at ICO is $.07 and the tokensale will accept only NEO or GAS. There is a bonus of 10% for the first 5.2 million tokens sold.

Team member tokens will have a 2 year lockup and strategic partners will have 50% of their tokens locked for 1 year.

Marketcap & Token Supply

The project at hardcap would have a marketcap of approximately $18.2 million (260 million EFX) if no additional tokens are released at the time. In the current ICO environment the calculated marketcap is on the lowerside, but not quite a microcap.

The total token supply is 650,000,000 EFX.

We have no idea what marketcap or price EFX will achieve but do like to compare it to other similar tokens for analytical pleasure.

Social and Hype

The Effect.AI Telegram group has 15,000+ members. The Telegram is active and team members including CEO Chris Dawe do appear to answer questions.

The team is has not been active on Medium, however, the CEO promises to write an article exposing the current ICO problems after the crowdsale is completed.

This crowdsale is receiving medium level hype scores from various ICO ratings outlets and the observable hype is within the same range. The ICO is over a month away so it is likely that hype will build. The recent trend on NEO based ICOs is for them to sale out very quickly. The ICO landscape is rapidly changing so this trend may or may not hold true.

Overall

This project is entering a market with real world competition (Amazon) and blockchain competition (Gems, SingularityNet, DeepBrainChain) but it does more than the competition. If successful it will be the only service that offers M-Turk, an A.I. market and distributed A.I. (computer power for rent).

As mentioned earlier, the question marks on the team are not to be ignored but the actual project is not as complicated as it sounds. In the end Effect.AI is a marketplace for A.I. products and not an A.I. product itself. This difference is key when doing analysis on the team.

As with any investment do your own research, we do not rate ICOs or projects we just provide unbiased analytics and overviews for all to use.

For further information visit: Effect.AI Website ||Whitepaper || Telegram

Bitcointalk Profile: MCDForm44

*This information does not contain investment advice.