SingularityNET Monthly Updates #9

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Dear Singularitarians,

On the 1st of May, at the Ai Everything Summit in UAE, Dr. Ben Goertzel announced SingularityNET’s strategic partnership with Domino’s Pizza (Malaysia and Singapore).

The partnership will broaden Domino’s access to scalable AI algorithms, which will help it solve supply chain and logistics challenges and enhance its operational capabilities. Domino’s decision to utilize SingularityNET is in line with our mission to attract enterprise buyers of AI services and kickstart the network effects envisioned below:

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Our partnership with Domino’s is a significant step towards the fulfilment of our vision of democratizing AI. With nation states considering export controls on AI and nearly every enterprise competing to attract scarce AI talent, we believe the only way to democratize AI is to decentralize it.

The power of decentralized AI lies in its ability to let anyone source the genius and creativity of AI developers from all over the world - without permission, fees, and risk of censorship.

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On the 5th of April, Dr. Ben Goertzel delivered a keynote speech on the power of decentralized AI at the AI Expo 2019 event in Tokyo.

The democratization of AI means that everyone gets to utilize the opportunities and benefits associated with the technology. As the world’s first decentralized AI platform, SingularityNET is in an ideal position to bring the benefits of AI to enterprises and individuals all over the globe.

Let’s take a look at how we increased our platform’s adoption in April and what our plans are for the future.

Technical Updates

The SingularityNET team is working around the clock to develop new features and AI services that will further advance the capabilities of the SingularityNET platform.

As of now, the total commits in the Github repositories of SingularityNET equal 123,886. You can track the progress of our development here.

Odyssey Hackathon

From the 11th to 15th of April, six members from the SingularityNET team participated in the Nature 2.0 track of the world’s largest blockchain and AI hackathon: Odyssey.

The hackathon served as an excellent opportunity to emphasize the role that SingularityNET can play in the blockchain industry. Due to our workshops and meetups, several teams participating in the hackathon were aware of what our platform had to offer and decided to incorporate SingularityNET into their solutions.

While SingularityNET is open to everyone, its decentralized nature and values make it extremely appealing to those looking to create AI enhanced Decentralized Applications (DApps).

One of the teams that decided to build an AI-enhanced DApp using SingularityNET was Habari, whose solution was chosen as the winner for the Nature 2.0 track.

ThoughtWorks Arts Residency

SingularityNET’s mission to democratize AI is getting noticed! We are excited to report to our community that the ThoughtWorks Arts Residency program (citing SingularityNET’s vision of democratizing access to and ownership of artificial intelligence) has published an open call for artists to investigate the monopolization and centralization of artificial intelligence by a small number of corporate giants and state actors.

The ThoughtWorks Arts Residency supports artists exploring new lines of inquiry intersecting technology and society. ThoughtWorks Arts is looking for artists to deeply investigate alternative routes to monopolistic AI practices that effectively lock out and disempower others. The residency spans sixteen weeks, with time for a break over the holidays, and comes with a stipend of $11,000. To apply for the residency, click here.

AI Research Lab

Our AI Researchers are actively involved with cutting-edge AI that adds to the uniqueness and competitiveness of our platform. In April, our AI Research lab published:

  • Are Generative Models Good Enough? By Dr. Alexey Potapov, which analyzes via a case study on class modelling whether generative models are good enough in terms of approximating density distributions of patterns.

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Events, Workshops, and Meetups

In April, seeking to educate and inform those who are interested in utilizing our platform, members of our team represented SingularityNET at the following events:

4th and 5th of April, SingularityNET held developer workshops in Tokyo, Japan. The workshops featured a panel discussion with Dr. Ben Goertzel and analyzed monetization of AI services via the SingularityNET platform.

5th of April, at the AI Expo 2019 event in Tokyo, Dr. Ben Goertzel delivered a keynote speech on the power of decentralization for fostering beneficial AGI.

6th of April, at Japan’s largest blockchain event: The Teamz Blockchain Summit, Dr. Ben Goertzel delivered a keynote speech on decentralized AI.

10th of April, Dr. Ben Goertzel participated in a LinkedIn AMA organized by ConnecTechAsia - Asia’s leading technology show and conference.

11th to 15th of April, six members of the SingularityNET team participated in the world’s largest blockchain and AI hackathon: Odyssey.

19th of April, Dr. Ben Goertzel discussed SingularityNET in an interview with Stephen Ibaraki, the host of ACM Podcast.

1st of May, Dr. Ben Goertzel represented SingularityNET at the Ai Everything Summit in Dubai, UAE, where he delivered a keynote speech on how AI will augment humans.

1st of May, Cassio Pennachin, our Chief AI Officer, held an introductory developer workshop that demonstrated some of the AI services on our platform and articulated the need for a decentralized AI platform during the Ai Everything Summit in Dubai, UAE.

Dr. Ben Goertzel on CNBC - How SingularityNET Will Solve Domino’s Operational Challenges

Media Updates

As we represent SingularityNET across various events and create awareness about its capabilities and vision, the world is starting to notice us. Notable media mentions of SingularityNET for the month of April include:

Upcoming Events

13th - 15th May - WEB.IT FESTIVAL Europe 2019, in Sofia, Bulgaria, considered to be one of the largest digital technology events in Europe! At the event, Dr. Ben Goertzel will deliver a keynote address and represent SingularityNET in a panel discussion on AI.

16th May - Rise of AI Conference, in Berlin. In the AI Future Stage program of the conference, Dr. Ben Goertzel will deliver a keynote address on decentralized AI.

23rd - 24th May - Malta AI & Blockchain Summit 2019. During the summit, SingularityNET will host a developer workshop, and Dr. Ben Goertzel will participate in panel discussions on AGI and the technological singularity.

30th - 31st May - Brain Bar, in Budapest, Hungary. Considered to be the biggest European festival on the future, Brain Bar will feature Dr. Ben Goertzel as a keynote speaker on AI and Robotics.

31st May - 2nd June - CryptoChicks Toronto - During the event, Dr. Ben Goertzel will deliver a keynote speech on AI powered by blockchain and give a demo presentation of Sophia the robot’s AI.

The AGI Podcast

In the latest episode of the AGI Podcast, we talked with Jan-Peter Doomernik, Nature 2.0’s Lead Architect and a Senior Business Developer working in one of Holland’s leading distribution service operators (DSO) Enexis Netbeheer. To listen to the podcast, click here.

That is it for this newsletter! 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

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Alright bookmarking this, will have read further before comment.

In general, I’m looking forward to it: that’s one less job I’ll have to worry about parents pestering me to do.

To me it kind of says a lot, when on one hand you have (1. governments and institutions lobbying for the control and censorship of robotics, (2. and on the other you have–the one I happen to agree most with–people trying to make the field decentralized while keeping it reputable.

One question I have though: is there a place for interested developers to start? In looking at the github, there are six different repositories one has to keep up with. I’ve noticed a similar thing about OpenCog.

When I develop AI myself, I don’t actually go for human-like intelligence, but rather something that’s just below human-level intelligence: smart enough to do most human tasks, but dumb enough to have a good stop button. More specifically, a stop process is built into the “main loop”.

(I build all my AIs on a timer, so they don’t run for to long.)

I ask because a lot of us haven’t had any formal programming education in high school, so we’ve had to learn most of what we know on our own, leading to various mistakes that could have been avoided provided there was formal instruction.

Other concerns: while I like how it’s trying to decentralize a “cloud” service, it seems like in the long term a cloud service isn’t such a great idea, unless there is some way to back up that data in case of a massive power outage. There are systems like OwnCloud and NextCloud that might be of interest.

Additionally: Subjective fields like creativity I’m not sure will ever be replaced. Even in some largely speculative scenario like–some magical thinking scenario where AI can cover all the subtle nuances of human taste, I doubt considerably that most people that enjoy “writing for its own sake”–memoirists, autobiographers, and literary fiction ( hello, local writer here ), would give it up.

If writing is such a chore you’d gladly give it up for robots… well maybe you shouldn’t be writing anyway, maybe take on a field that’s more rewarding.