Dear Singularitarians,
As 2020 draws near and the holiday season looms upon us, and we say goodbye to the 2K-teens we are reminded that the future races toward us at an ever-increasing pace. Humanity has always been fascinated by the future, it captures our imagination and sparks creativity giving rise to the inventiveness that puts us on the path toward the ultimate point of technological creation… The Singularity!
Though if we are to have any hope of controlling the direction of the future, it is important to take lessons learned in our past and apply them to future scenarios, after all, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” - George Santayana
In this very special seasonal edition of our newsletter, we’ll look back at our progress over the last couple of months and in doing so we may gain insight into what the future may hold.
If you are a SingularityNET token holder, you share a vision with us. We believe in a world of interoperable AI services operating on a global, open, decentralized, and transparent infrastructure. Together, these services will interact with each other facilitating a benevolent artificial general intelligence that benefits humankind.
The integration of SingularityNET’s decentralized AI marketplace with PayPal represents a significant step in the direction of wide adoption of the platform.
It makes it easier for more AI users to leverage the platform, thus increasing the likelihood that data scientists and developers will feel incentivized to consider SingularityNET a viable alternative pathway to monetize their expertise. This integration represents a large opportunity for SingularityNET and our community.
Read more in this blog
We are delighted to report that we have been awarded for the second year running ‘Best AI Application of year’ at the AI and Blockchain Summit in Malta.
This prestigious award sponsored by Takamaka was received by our very own supervisory council member David Orban. This award highlights the many ways in which AI has already brought about drastic changes to our society over the last 12 months, and projects how we can leverage this revolutionary tech for the betterment of humanity.
We’d like to thank the Malta Ai Blockchain Summit who has secured its place on the global tech calendar as a premier platform for companies to exhibit, network and engage in debate. We’d also like to thank the panel and of course the other nominees.
On the 20th of December 2019, we will apply a price adjustment affecting all available AI services on our marketplace.
Currently, the prices of AI services are set at a uniform per call base rate of 1 Cog. This is just 1 hundred millionth of 1 AGI. This base value was set to reflect the early stages of our Beta release, allowing a test period to be conducted without economic consideration.
However, as we progress toward a fully functional ecosystem including all the elements necessary to allow an operational open market, we need to move this rate toward that which reflects real-world values. In doing so we highlight the true potential of the market for service providers to add and monetise their own algorithms.
A full list of the adjustments can be found here: Market Price Adjustments
Why do some people live healthy and satisfying lives well past 100, whereas others die much younger? Studies of identical twins separated at birth demonstrate that there is a significant but not overwhelming correlation between their lifespans.
This shows that generally speaking, there is a genomic contribution to longevity — and also that the genome is only part of the story. In this blog post, we detail the work being done to analyse the genome of those lucky enough to have broken the centenarian longevity barrier, using AI and machine learning.
Read more about this in this Blog
The decentralized AI paradigm embodied in SingularityNET provides a powerful approach toward this long-term holy-grail goal of “solving medicine” — and in the immediate term provides a valuable platform for creating and connecting AI tools carrying out diverse forms of biological and medical analysis.
SingularityNET, in partnership with Hong Kong bio-AI startup MOZI.AI, has embarked on a project to build an AI framework that will ultimately support complete tricorder-like analytical functionality, based on the developing OpenCog⁴ artificial general intelligence (AGI) system. The development process consists of two tracks — biological and clinical — each a series of functional units developed as SingularityNET services with independent utility. These tools will combine with previously implemented ones to form increasingly complex analytical services and biomedical models.
Read more about this in this Blog
Deep learning is still bearing fruits. However, the standard types of networks are exhausting their possibilities, and researchers seek out such extensions to the basic neural network models, which will weaken their inherent limitations. Some extensions such as self-attention layers have enjoyed great practical success.
An interesting approach to neural-symbolic integration is to use the same computational model to represent both neural and symbolic operations, or, more concretely, to map logic-based knowledge representation and inference into neural networks.
Here, we present a prototype of such a framework that integrates the PyTorch deep learning library with the OpenCog cognitive architecture and discuss its utility on an example of visual reasoning.
Read more about this in this Blog
A key feature that we built and delivered was the Paypal integration on the DApp. This needed several complex platform changes including:
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Signer Service - This service takes responsibility of signing transactions behind the scenes thereby enabling users to seamlessly interact with our blockchain platform
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Channel management - The platform creates a channel for each user. We facilitated this in a seamless manner without managing the user wallet
For free trial, we had released a new version of the registry contract that supported Org level channels. We introduced support for this in our JS and Python SDKs and at the same time we started work on a Java SDK which will release before the end of this year
We published guidelines of using Nginx with the snet Daemon, this now ensures that the popular reverse proxy can be used to direct traffic to and from from the Daemon
We came up with the first version of the guidelines for building custom UI components for the marketplace DApp. This is a key step forward in enabling the Publisher portal as it defines what AI developers need to do to build a UI component for their services. As a part of this initiative, we also published a component library to make it easier for AI developers to build a custom UI for their service.
We enhanced our platform capability to subscribe to our blockchain contract events. Now one can register on our platform and listen to contract events if required.
This month we have two super interesting podcasts covering both vision and tech, first up we have this awesome podcast interview at the BlockShow Asia 2019 with Richard Heart.
Richard Heart and Ben Goertzel talk all things AI, Longevity tech research, medicine, & blockchain.
Then over on the Futuretech Podcast, we have an amazing discussion with one of our senior AI researchers Alexey Potapov, PhD, with discussion points around the limitations of neural networks and how natural symbolic networks can compensate for them, areas of research in AI that are continuing to grow,
You can listen to the full podcast here
We’re glad to report that over the last two months, there has been an explosion of media mentions about SingularityNET, far too numerous to mention them all, however, here are some of the highlights!
- Many publications ran with our PayPal Integration story including Cointelegraph, Cryptodaily, and Cryptoninjas.
- Cryptoninjas also captured the Rejuv launch in this article.
- Singularitynet’s partnership with Toda was reported by Cryptobriefing, Cryptoninjas, and Cointelegraph.
- Our appearance at the Websummit was covered by Cointelegraph and CNBC as well as many youtube channels.
- Coverage of our keynote at the Gitex technology week in Dubai found its way into the Arabian Gazette and Euronews.
- Meanwhile, our attendance at the Blockshow conference in Singapore was covered by Crowdfundinsider
- Singularitynet’s PayPal integration was also mentioned in this Betakit article about Libra.
- Dr Ben Goertzel as a Forbes Councils Member also featured an article on rethinking smart cities as early-stage AGI.
The 2019 AI and Blockchain events season concludes with a flurry of prestigious events such as the Web Summit in Lisbon, Gitex technology week in Dubai, the Blockshow in Singapore and the MAIBC in Malta, among others. The events calendar for 2020 will reopen after the holiday season. Below is a vreak down of the events we attended over the last couple of months.
October 4th - Ben delivered a keynote speech at the RAADfest in Las Vegas.
October 6-9th - Dr Goertzel then delivering a mainstage keynote at the Gitex Technology Week in Dubai.
November 4-7th - Dr Ben Goertzel and Dr David Hanson Delivered a mainstage keynote with Sophia and Philip K. Dick at the Web Summit.
November 8th - Dr Ben Goertzel took part in a round table discussion at AI Journey in Moscow
November 14-15th - Dr Ben Goertzel delivered a Keynote speech and also took part in a panel discussion at the BlockShow in Singapore.
November 20th - Ben Goertzel had a Fireside chat with Lavine Hemlani at Xccelerate in Hong Kong.
Dr David Hanson, Dr Ben Goertzel, Sophia and Philip K. Dick at the Web Summit 19
Ben Goertzel’s Keynote Speech at the BlockShow in Singapore.
Ben Goertzel had a Fireside chat with Lavine Hemlani at Xccelerate in Hong Kong.
That is it for this seasonal newsletter and indeed the next time we return will be 2020! We wish each and every one of you the very best for the future! Be sure to join our Telegram Channel and Community Forum, and follow us on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn!
Thank you for your continued support,
The SingularityNET Team
