Effect.AI — Artificial Intelligence Should Not Become a Monopoly

Effect. AI project (http://effect.ai/), which is about to issue its own token for crypto payments, is a self-proclaimed “Decentralized Network for Artificial Intelligence”. This name, even if it sounds like a successful spin-off of a sci-fi Netflix series, should not delude one into thinking of fiction.

AI is entering our everyday lives at a fast pace, and it is only a matter of years if not months that we will all be governed by a couple of Boston Dynamics dogs. Jokes aside, AI development is already helping in deciphering the human genome, in facial recognition and in creation of tailored virtual universe, in real-life medical trials (analyzing big data patterns) and in decoding of all proteins on the planet. However, AI development is an expensive and knowledge-intensive business, in other words, artificial intelligence is demanding lots of ‘natural’ intelligence and high-skilled human resources. Due to high costs and its extreme knowledge-intensive nature, AI development became a delicious piece of cake for those IT giants who are trying to make it their own secretive monopoly. It does and will sell good; however, does the humankind really need Facebook’s and Amazon’s monopoly on such lucrative and all-encompassing sphere as artificial intelligence?

Effect.AI project, with their three-stage proposal for developing a free platform for the exchange of AI-related projects, is destined to undermine this monopoly. Let’s look at the stages (‘phases’, in their own terms) they are proposing. The first phase of their ‘Effect Network’ will be an “interactive marketplace for tasks that require human intelligence”. They are effectively creating a “decentralized Mechanical Turk (M-Turk).”

The platform aims to meet the businesses in need of certain AI-related tasks, with the plethora of independent developers who will trade their decisions for the network-issued token (NEP-5).

Phase two of the project will introduce the wider and more encompassing market of all things AI (EFFECT Smart Market). It will further develop the first phase, concentrating, however, not on pre-tasked coding decisions, but on “offering AI Algorithms as a service”. The marketplace will be an “exchange where AI developers with a functional Algorithms can sell, rent or give out its service for a simple and easy payment with the Effect token.” The platform is also supposed to make possible the collaboration of several or groups of Algorithms: “Algorithms have the ability to communicate and collaborate with other algorithms and and purchase services from each other.”

The third phase called “EFFECT Power” is the most ambitious and promising of all. It may well serve as a basis for distributed effects of the humanity at the development of an intellect that will work along with human intellect on the most complex problems of our science. According to EFFECT.AI idea, “the last phase provides a decentralized, distributed computational platform that will run popular deep learning frameworks.” The Effect users will put the AI algorithms into the distributed network, thus securing collaboration, access, openness and safety of the mighty computational power of the AI for a much wider public.

Effect. AI, in fact, is seeking to undermine a potentially dangerous monopoly of the big IT giants in AI development, putting the developers and the AI creations on the open market and distributed network, thus opening new horizons for the continuous thrive of the humankind for knowledge.