{"id":10670,"date":"2020-01-04T16:02:42","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T16:02:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/?p=10670"},"modified":"2020-01-04T16:09:28","modified_gmt":"2020-01-04T16:09:28","slug":"the-future-of-ai-is-on-blockchain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/?p=10670","title":{"rendered":"The future of AI is on blockchain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>At the beginning of my professional career, I used to work as a Data Scientist, and one of my early projects was the analysis of raw human genome data from patients with Alzheimer\u2019s Disease. Many things were painful back then; we had to recruit participants 1-by-1 to enroll in our study, sequencing the genomes to get the data cost us &gt;1m from a research grant, we had to set up a costly compute cluster ourselves, and even simple regression analyses took days to finish (per iteration). I especially remember working for weeks on engineering our data structures, optimizing database settings, and manually re-writing the analysis algorithms (because we exceeded our RAM limits), first just for the analysis to compute at all, and then to finish in days instead of months. A lot has changed since then.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The three currently most prominent enterprise technologies are without doubt AI, blockchain, and IoT, and the driving factor behind them is data; people even go so far to proclaim that \u201cdata is the new oil\u201d.&nbsp;New technologies enable&nbsp;<strong>collection, sharing, analysis of data, and automation of decisions<\/strong>&nbsp;based on them in ways that haven\u2019t been possible before&nbsp;<strong>in what is essentially a data value chain<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/50\/1*Tigk11Y2s9SAp4ZuSHMRNQ.png?q=20\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption>Data Value Chain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Out of the three,&nbsp;<strong>blockchain technology is what assembles the pieces<\/strong>&nbsp;and there is a whole ecosystem of data-driven blockchain projects emerging. This decentralized ecosystem is set to help incentivize people to contribute data, technical resources, and effort:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>1st generation projects have been focussing on\u00a0<strong>creating the data infrastructure<\/strong>\u00a0to connect and integrate data, e.g.\u00a0IOTA,\u00a0IoT Chain, or\u00a0IoTex\u00a0for data from connected IoT devices, or\u00a0Streamr\u00a0for streaming data.<\/li><li>2nd generation projects have been working on\u00a0<strong>creating data marketplaces<\/strong>, e.g.\u00a0Ocean Protocol,\u00a0SingularityNet, or\u00a0Fysical\u00a0<strong>and crowd data annotation platforms<\/strong>, e.g.\u00a0Gems\u00a0or\u00a0Dbrain.<\/li><li>With solutions covering the first steps on this data value chain maturing, my friends\u00a0@sherm8n\u00a0and Rahul started to work on\u00a0Raven Protocol, a first 3rd generation project that will close an important gap at the analyze stage:\u00a0<strong>Compute resources for AI training<\/strong>.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A recent&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.openai.com\/ai-and-compute\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">OpenAI report<\/a>&nbsp;showed that \u201cthe amount of compute used in the largest AI training runs has been increasing exponentially with a 3.5 month-doubling time\u201d, this is a&nbsp;<strong>300.000x increase since 2012<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/50\/1*BD1e1FIfUNEB0iUq4D9aXw.png?q=20\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption>OpenAI Report: AI and Compute<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The immediate consequences from this are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Higher costs<\/strong>, as used compute is increasing faster than supply<\/li><li><strong>Longer lead times for new solution<\/strong>, as model training takes longer<\/li><li><strong>Increased market entry barriers<\/strong>&nbsp;based on access to funding &amp; resources<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These consequences can proof&nbsp;<strong>dire for smaller firms and researchers<\/strong>, limiting their ability to create competitive models without significant funding. And even with funding, they might be blacklisted from resources if they\u2019re considered competition by the providers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/50\/1*IQEPofSiMHvgF7wYu-q0ug.png?q=20\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption>\u201cSo Gavin Belson can just pick up his phone and make us radioactive to every single web hosting service?\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But&nbsp;<strong>big corporations will feel the costs as well<\/strong>&nbsp;considering both the growth rate of resources and the growth rate of their AI efforts multiplied. I spoke to a few Chief Data Officers of Fortune 500 firms over the past months, and while they don\u2019t consider it an issue yet, even they have to agree that they can invest their money in better ways than in bought-in HPC resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The beauty of&nbsp;<strong>blockchain ecosystems<\/strong>&nbsp;is that they allow to tap into otherwise unused resources, trade resources that would not have been tradable, and allow people to participate in a market that otherwise could not participate. From an economic perspective, it improves the leverage on existing resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Where 1st &amp; 2nd generation data blockchain solutions used this to lower the barrier for access to annotated quality data,&nbsp;<strong>Raven Protocol is going to solve the training cost challenge<\/strong>. It is closing the gap that would have prevented the proverbial chain to hold, that is only as strong as its weakest link (hint: it\u2019s the data value&nbsp;<em>chain<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Together, the solutions in this blockchain data ecosystem create new opportunity and they lower cost. Especially the second is key as&nbsp;<strong>it lowers the entry barriers for new innovation<\/strong>, enabling more people to contribute and therefore potentially accelerating our progress as a society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If this all sounds a bit abstract, just have a look at\u00a0<strong>one area where AI can help: Healthcare<\/strong>. Our global healthcare system is in serious distress. Costs are exploding, they are\u00a0expected to increase by 117% over the next 10 years\u00a0despite already being at\u00a0up to 18% of a country\u2019s GDP. At the same time, research for new drugs is\u00a0hitting a cliff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Our healthcare systems needs lots of innovation to keep healthcare affordable, and there are\u00a0many opportunities where AI solution can help; for this reason,\u00a0<strong>healthcare is the industry with the highest investments in AI,\u00a0<\/strong>and has been for years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/50\/1*Fz4xS_07TQj5S2cA7pwO8w.png?q=20\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption>CBInsights:\u00a0The State of Artificial Intelligence 2018<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, access to data and high costs create an entry barrier, which would limit research of new solutions to incumbents &amp; other big players.&nbsp;<strong>The blockchain data ecosystem changes that and increases our chances of finding the right solutions in time.&nbsp;<\/strong>Raven Protocol is probably not the last, but an important stepping stone to make that work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Author \/ copyright goes to  Sebastian Wurst<br> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the beginning of my professional career, I used to work as a Data Scientist, and one of my early projects was the analysis of raw human genome data from &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/?p=10670\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10673,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,532],"tags":[10189,10190,10188],"class_list":["post-10670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cyber-world","category-technology-news","tag-ai","tag-blockchain","tag-the-future-of-ai","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10670"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10671,"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10670\/revisions\/10671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generalknowledgetoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}