AI Is The Future Of Computing, And SingularityNET Is The Future Of AI

What happens when you create an open AI marketplace that can learn from itself.

Remember Sophia, the humanoid robot who was granted citizenship by Saudi Arabia? From the general media hubbub to the discussion surrounding the Saudi government's treatment of women's rights, the landmark event caused quite a stir across the web.

But behind all that buzz, SingularityNET, whose artificial intelligence technology powers the robot built by Hanson Robotics, has been working to completely revolutionize web as we understand it.

What is SingularityNET?

In some sense, the premise behind SingularityNET is fairly simple.

"SingularityNET is a decentralized open market for AI," SingularityNET CEO Ben Goertzel said in an interview with the author. "It’s a product aimed at becoming a bridge between AI developers and business users."

Thinking of it this way helps keep your head somewhat attached to your body when you start trying to imagine a decentralized, interconnected network of AIs that can not only be purchased and shared via blockchain technology—they can actually learn from each other.

AI is an umbrella category that houses four broad types, encapsulating a wide field of study that includes subsets you may have heard more of recently (ie. machine learning, neural networks, natural language processing). AI is already a $233 billion industry, and some estimates predict it will reach $3 trillion by 2025. We encounter AI every day, though much of what emerges from the field isn't immediately obvious to the user—the point is to seamlessly optimize existing systems. This is also why we're starting to see a "hockey stick" curve of AI acquisitions over the past few years—congregating these systems in a handful of major corporations, who then packages them and sell them on to us.

Even though AI changes our lives by the day, it's a fragmented field. Many aren't able to see or learn from the work others are doing, unless they happen to be working in a company like Google, Facebook, or Salesforce (and even then), and there's no discoverability for AI inventors.

SingularityNET addresses this visibility issue, enabling everyday users—from small-business owners to brand managers and beyond—to connect with AIs and AI developers who might have already developed the perfect solution.

"Say someone has a computer system doing something, and they would like AI to do it better," Goertzel said. "Unless you’re Google or Tencent, you’re probably not going to build your own AI—you’re going to be making your software grab AI from some software package or API. Those are the customers."

But it can be difficult for small teams to be sure they're picking the right AI—and if they're running on a lean budget, this can end up being a costly choice. SingularityNET helps matchmake these customers with the developers who might have been working on AIs with niche purposes.

A lot of niche markets will be served by a decentralized network in the same way eBay serves a lot of weird niche markets for buying stuff that Walmart doesn’t serve, because in a decentralized market the overhead cost is very low," Goertzel said. "Someone who makes AI to serve some niche purpose can reach the customers who want something meeting that niche purpose.
AI is already integrating into many existing industries, so the potential impact of a barrier-free global AI marketplace extends far beyond applications in tech companies.

It could be shoe store that wants machine learning to predict what shoes people are going to buy next year, it could be an accounting company that wants AI to spot errors in their line items," Goertzel said. "Or it could be something sexier like a robotics company that wants AI to help their robot navigate. It could be a hospital that wants AI to help a conversation system to keep chronically ill people company or a diagnostics system to figure out why some medicines work for some and not others.