Effect.AI – Decentralized network for Artificial Intelligence
Effect.AI – New era of Artificial Intelligence
Have you seen the 2004 movie 'I Robot' where humanoid robots with AI (artificial intelligence) serve humanity in the year 2035? They helped human beings with daily tasks like cleaning, delivering mails, taking dogs for a walk, washing cars and so on. That was a cool movie with some impressive special effects.
AI has come a long way since then with almost 4 billion devices carrying AI-powered voice assistants in 2017. This number is to rise to 7 billion by 2020.
Another study points to the fact that the AI software market will be worth a whopping $59.8 billion globally by 2025. You see, it is growing at a staggering rate. What is Effect.ai doing differently (read as new) in AI market space then?
All these points towards the truth that we cannot deny AI is going to be a part of our everyday life in future and will have a large impact on human development going forward.
According to Chris Dawe (CEO of Effect.AI), we use AI every day without even realizing it. The most common example is searching for a hair trimmer online and then ads relating to health and beauty (trimmer in this case) start appearing all over your social media and mailboxes.
How about self-driving cars? Believe it or not, AI is all around us and we need to accept and embrace it.
The Problem(s)
The problem, however, is that most of the AI research and development is confined to a few big corporations and labs, often behind closed doors. This puts AI at risk of becoming a ‘black box,’ something that is available to only a select few to experiment with and is indirectly or directly beneficial only for them. Given below are few reasons why it is difficult for someone to enter into AI market:
1. Data Processing: Intelligent applications perform tasks (processing unarranged data, finding patterns) that require human feedback. These applications are trained to find such patterns and to process a large number of datasets. This requires a lot of time and money.
2. Diverging Tasks: one major roadblock in AI is the need to contact with the outer world. For instance, a self-driving car will need to learn the road signs in order to ensure a safe ride. This communication between an internal and external domain increases the amount of work required.
3. Computational Costs: Developing and running AI-based algorithms is a computer-intensive task and requires a technical infrastructure capable of processing Terabytes of data in probably milliseconds if not nanoseconds.
The Solution(s)
Effect.AI makes AI more accessible, approachable, scalable and transparent by making the system decentralized for AI development and other services related to AI. Their Effect Network will be operating on smart contracts deployed on the NEO Blockchain which is already more secure, transparent and faster in itself. This will bring both small and large parties together to contribute to the development of AI algorithms while also allowing them to actually benefit from it themselves.
The Effect Network will prove to be a pioneering force in AI thanks to the points mentioned below:
Accessibility: Effect.AI will necessarily be linking supply and demand through their micro-tasking platform. Effect.AI Mechanical Turk (EMT) will allow users who do not have resources to train their algorithm to do so, in a cheaper, easier and faster way.
Accuracy: The Effect.AI Smart Market (ESM) is a decentralized marketplace where AI algorithms can exchange their services. It is more like an exchange where applications can find, collaborate and help and find each other to buy or sell information. Of course, human users are also able to seek out specific algorithms or make theirs available.
Performance: Users can enhance their existing datasets by purchasing services from ESM or they can create micro tasks on the EMT platform to create a new dataset. These datasets can be then used by other users to train their AI algorithm.
Interoperability: By putting all the AI algorithms on the Blockchain, AI becomes decentralized and interconnected. This also allows individual AIs to operate within each other’s environment. Combining different AI algorithms will result in powerful capabilities and emergent intelligence which cannot be achieved when AIs are limited to working individually.
Three Phases of AI decentralization
Because of the large size of the project, the Effect Network will be deployed in 3 different phases. This will allow it to progress at a healthy rate. Keep in mind that the EFX utility token will fuel all three phases. The phases are discussed below:
Phase 1: Effect.AI Mechanical Turk
A global, on-demand workforce that allows anyone in the world to perform or requests tasks related to AI development, making it possible to build AI from anywhere, anytime and from any device. The Effect Mechanical Turk is a marketplace that requires human intelligence and allows users from all over the world to perform tasks related to AI in exchange for a fee.
This gives businesses (small and mid) access to the tools they need to create AI in a way that is fair and transparent. Better quality of work and better rewards will provide a strong incentive to use Effect’s platform over that of competing and centralized services like Amazon Mechanical Turk, Fiverr, and Guru.com.
Phase 2: Effect.AI Smart Market
The Effect Smart Market is a decentralized marketplace where people can buy and sell AI and related services. For instance, an application owner or developer can post about his/her algorithm on the exchange for a fee. The consumer will check the price, transfer the amount using the smart contracts to the owner of the contract and get an authorization token that will allow him to interact with the algorithm.
Two components that make the ESM possible are:
a. Application Registry – It is a database or in simple words a registry of available applications which describes the applications as well as technical details of its inputs and outputs.
b. Endpoints - Application endpoints on the ESM communicate over the HTTP protocol. Data is exchanged in JSON format and should strongly confirm the defined RDF schema.
Phase 3: Effect Power
In the last phase the computation of algorithms will be distributed rather than running on a single node to avoid single point of failure. Essentially, Effect Power is a pool of spare computing power (in the form of clients all over the world) to create a distributed global super computer that provides the capacity needed to run advanced AI algorithms.
The Effect network is based on frameworks like Caffe, MXNet, where network structures are stored as a matrix of real numbers. These matrices can be processed at different compute nodes on the network.
After these phases are implemented, AI will be fully decentralized.
Effect.AI is in lines with Amazon Mechanical Turk, who charges between 20 and 40% on requests that anyone needs to have their work completed. This is a problem according to the AI CEO Chris Dawe, who thinks bringing things over Blockchain will help make the AI market develop even faster than before.
Chris points out that, until now, there was no open market, not even a centralized one, that helps bring together the community of AI developers, enthusiasts, programmers and users together.
Use Case:
To help developers gather large amount of custom data to scan through and to be used with their algorithms. Currently Amazon Mechanical Turk is processing around 450,000 requests daily, generating close to $2.5 to 4 million per day.
With Effect.AI’s marketplace, you will be able to upload your service or algorithm for free or for profit. The algorithm will have a wallet address which will allow anyone to do peer-to-algorithm trading.
All these algorithms, with their own identifiers and wallet addresses, will be able to communicate and collaborate amongst themselves, but based on human feedback as well.
For instance, if a developer is missing a component of a code in his or her algorithm program, he or she can post this on Effect.AI’s marketplace and get in touch with other programmers or developers and collaborate with them to obtain the missing piece of code.
The Effect Mechanical Turk will be similar to Amazon Mechanical Turk, but instead of using an unfriendly interface, Effect.AI will be revamped, more fluid and of course it will be free and allow peer-to-peer trading!
Why Blockchain?
A Blockchain is a decentralized ledger of data that can contain arbitrary logic and can process it without the need for a third party. Since its inception in 2009, the technology had a major influence across various domains like banking, finance, IT, insurance and real-estate.
Other advantages
Sometimes payments from Amazon for completing a project can take up to 21 days. What Amazon does is, it takes money from the requester and then holds this money with them and then after 21 days they pay the worker, withholding, not to forget, the 40% that Amazon charges from the requestor another 4% and 5% that US banks and Indian banks charges respectively for the transfer of the payment. In the end, the worker does not get much of anything.
Blockchain cuts the middlemen, cost, commission and work towards peer-to-peer payment transaction and collaboration. The transaction on The Effect Network will be much faster than what traditional platforms offer.
Closing Thoughts:
As the AI named VIKI in the film I Robot says confidently “My logic is undeniable.” The day is not far off when AI will be a part of our everyday life. With their decentralized approach, I personally think Chris and Co. are heading in the right direction.
By introducing their ecosystem in three different phases they will have enough time to make the necessary preparations and deliver a very competitive platform. I wish them luck on the road ahead!
Website: https://www.effect.ai/
Telegram: https://t.me/effectai
Medium: https://medium.com/@effectai
My Medium: https://medium.com/@namaste.crypto