Interview with Effect AI

in #neo7 years ago (edited)

We had the opportunity to meet and interview part of the core team of Effect AI, Jesse and Laurens, in the last NEO Devcon held in San Francisco.

Jesse introduced himself as the blockchain developer for Effect AI. While Laurens does the backend job. Both have studied computer science in Amsterdam. And have years of experience doing smart contracts since 2014.

Having worked together at Itsavirus, Jesse and Laurens were one of the first people to design an algorithm for automatic A/B testing, an AI driven technology used to automatically optimize business websites. They called this algorithm, The Effect. This is where the concept of Effect AI started.

It has come to their awareness the problems small AI company face. With the lack of computational power and a lot of data training involve, it is easy for private companies such as Google to swiftly monopolize the AI industry. In response to this, Amazon have devised a solution called the Amazon Mechanical Turk (M Turk), a platform where AI developers can source out human workforce to perform simple tasks in exchange of payments. This was indeed a great idea, except the 40% fee taken from requestors and a big delay in payment for the workers.

In order to break this oligopoly in AI, the team conceptualized Effect AI, a decentralized, open source platform for development of high-level artificial intelligence. The idea to tackle this problem is far from easy and most definitely a good infrastructure is needed. Effect AI has been compared to its numerous competitors but their main advantage, as Jesse and Laurens have both pointed out, is having a vertical structure tackling the problems in AI in 3 phases.

Phase 1 is their version of Mechanical turk derived from Amazon’s M turk without the soaring fees (yes its 0% fee) and delay in worker’s payment. But as mentioned earlier, Effect AI is not alone on this idea. Their phase 1 has been compared to Gems, another decentralized Mechanical turk under Ethereum platform.
This phase requires a lot of microtransactions in order to pay workers.

Laurens mentioned the reason they chose NEO as their platform is their wide on chain transaction capability. True enough, Da HongFei announced in the DevCon that NEO aims to handle 100,000 tps in 2020!

But also, Jesse has also highlighted Effect AI’s broader infrastructure and total package. “A prediction which has been made—which I think is true. In about 5 years, the mechanical turk market will be obsolete because AI is getting better in a fast rate and all these tasks will be performed by algorithms in the near future”. With that being said, Effect AI’s structure foresees this possibility as they have a place for algorithms in their project.

The phase 2 Smart market facilitates transition work from humans to algorithms. The problem AI developers are currently facing is the fact that AIs being created are only good at doing specific tasks. The Effect Smart market offers an opportunity for individuals or companies to sell and exchange their AI data. This open space allows anyone to build AI through the Effect AI standard. By providing easy access, interactions and exchanging of data with each other can quickly improve AI development and eventually can result in one emergent AI.

When asked about their comparison against Singularity marketplace. Jesse was quick to say that their marketplace unlike singularity, which focuses on a bigger mission, is more about practicality. Their aim and focus is more about step-by-step, creation of a market that resources algorithms that people can use and purchase. These algorithms would have linked wallets that the developers have access to. Every time an algorithm is used, it would require payment to their linked wallets.

Lastly, Phase 3 of their project is the Effect Power. This will be a distributed computational platform that will run deep learning frameworks with the likes of Deep brain chain, Caffe, and Golem. Although this phase is much further away from the current development. Jess and Laurens emphasized on the importance of using a valuable AI token which will be used from the M turk to the smart market and eventually will help run the computational power of Effect AI.


Summary of comparison between Effect AI and its competitions

The team’s idea is to create a distributed, affordable AI platform that provides visibility to meet the demand in the AI industry. This is reflected by the token metrics decided by the team. At only $18 M hard cap, Laurens said that this choice was not based on the market value but what they need for the project to start running. They believe in equal distribution of token and hence, no private presale will occur and a personal cap will be implemented during the token crowdsale. Tokens will be immediately released for crowdsale but they have implemented a 2-year lock up period for the team and advisors of the project.

Both Jesse and Laurens showed genuine enthusiasm in tech and the future of AI and blockchain. Despite the hype in the project and the space, the team remains humble and focused on giving a fair and practical solution for AI development. Kudos and Good luck to the whole team!

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Why choose NEO over EOS though?
Anyone know the specifics behind it?
Thanks in advance!

Whoever or WHATEVER can predict the future , controls the world.
Steemit Blockchain Will Be The Central Cortex Of The Global Quantum A.I.'s Brain - The Sentient World Simulaion, for predicting the future.
STEEMIT PROCESSES MORE DATA THAN ALL THE OTHER BLOCKCHAIN CRYPTO-CURRENCIES COMBINED.

All the quantum computers of all the worlds biggests corporation are interlinked and working to this end.

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Any one with even half a brain knows that blockchain technology is not going away. It's here to stay!
Why? Because EVERYTHING... every piece of data and every piece of edge computing hardware is soon to be tied (chained) into the blockchain matrix in the cloud. Including EVERY product, service, creative and recreational activity that we do.

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Using 5g technology and cheap telemetric printed circuit tattoos (like barcodes on steroids) able to sense, process and transmit data, will be in EVERYTHING and EVERYONE.
We will all become part of the Sentient World Simulation (SWS) as described in the popular Purdue University white paper on this subject, It's already up & running right under your noses as you read this blog post. IT'S WATCHING YOU!!!

We each have a Global Quantum A.I. avatar following and recording our every move using our 'smart' phones, 'smart' appliances - TV's, game consoles, 'smart' fridges, 'smart' meters & 'smart' cookers, etc.
We each have our own virtual world avatar that simulates & mimics our character, in order to predict the future.
Whoever or WHATEVER can predict the future , controls the world... The Global Quantum A.I.

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Very Impressive! thanks for sharing background and how effect.ai started from the cocoon and now we are seeing its evolution getting it more and more robust in terms of Team, Technology selection, Board of Advisers. Selecting NEO NEP-5 will provide edge to this project for sure are lot of things & innovations happening across NEO will added advantage. AI as an industry is started Flourishing and will have greater & wider impact across world. Also decentralizing workforce & breaking the monopoly of few players into the market which will give them hard hit over the face which will help Building Decentralized workplace with similar remuneration across the world provide equal opportunities for everyone to showcase skills and make money. Isn't It the revolution Effect AI will be bring using AI & Technology.

I am excited to see how this AI prototype turned out. This seems to be avant-garde. Hopefully soon comes faster.

Thank you for your review. I have been looking at this project for a while now and this information is very helpful in making my decision whether to get in or not. Although there are a handful of players in the same space. As of right now I feel that Effect AI will be a huge player in the AI space. I think the fact that they are going to be an NEP-5 adds credibility to the project. Everybody jumps on the ERC-20 bandwagon. Only the choice few work with NEO.

just wondering if you are still around or totally forgotten about Steem and Steemit. Well if you respond, be glad to sponsor some delegation to help you keep blogging, you sound like a great dad and successfully raised 4 sons successfully, ta

Interesting review. I also would like to share some of my personal thoughts about article and trends in decentralization.
I found a very interesting piece of information that in about 5 years, the mechanical turk market will be obsolete because AI is getting better. This should be taken into consideration while comparing Gems and Effect AI. Gems is clearly decentralized mechanical turk and nothing more. Effect AI is more than a just decentralized mechanical turk as it will be a distributed computational platform that will run deep learning frameworks. This shows a difference visions of 2 projects:

  • short-term (Gems) - tries to solve current problem;
    vs
  • long-term (Effect AI) - looking in the future and taking progress into consideration.

It is also important to underline that due to high level centralization AI technologies are not accesible by small companies and individuals. This creates a barrier for AI implementation and technological development. I think that centralized organisations try to keep everything in secret in order to keep high profits as long as possible. Thus, centralized companies are not interested in fast AI development.

ICOs (next generation fund rising) created important engine of progress. ICOs allow collecting of money to develop our world in a decentralized way. I wish Effect AI to succeed in decentralization of AI technologies and wish to see more projects like Effect AI with long-term vision.

Regarding just mechanical turks, what is the difference between Gems and EffectAI?

Very good article, personally i am impressed by the team and the efforts they have put into ensuring clarity of this project.
Effect platform out performs its competitors

Great post very informative 🙏🏻 A question , will Effect AI integrate and partner with Deepbrain or is it a direct competitor? I've read contradictory opinions on this in the DBC telegram, you seem to infer integration?

DBC is a direct competition of Effect AI in the third phase. From the time of interview, the team said that the third phase would be of the same structure as DBC and golem but havent mentioned about partnering with them. hope that helps :)

Nice piece, good to read this first-hand informations about the project. Even if they won't partner with DBC, I'm sure Effect will announce some partnerships in the near future.

Project partnerships are now a very common phenomenon.
the advisory council is strong, but partnerships with other blockchain projects are always welcome.

Thanks a lot for the info 🙏🏻

#Effect.AI will drive the process of innovation and change that is at the basis of AI, because it is a project with its own strong identity and has an extremely advanced and cutting-edge technology that will help push the AI to a next level!

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