What to know about SingularityNET (AGI)?
Blockchain technology has become one of the most in-demand technologies worldwide. Among the innovations that prove its advancement is the launching of SingularityNet.
What is SingularityNET?
Many will confuse it with a typical marketplace, but SingularityNet is a decentralized marketplace for Artificial Intelligence (AI). The businesses associated with AI are increasing daily; however, there’s a significant difference between the people developing AI tools (researchers and academics) and the businesses that want to make use of the technology for specific needs.
Most organizations require a more customized solution than a single AI project may offer, and research projects often have trouble accessing large data sets in order to build powerful machine learning solutions. SingularityNET will fill these gaps.
This article will cover the following:
- SingularityNET How it works
- Exchanges
- Obtaining AGI
- AGI Storage
- SingularityNET Team
SingularityNET How It Works
SingularityNET is a complex project — there’s no doubt about it. Although, it started as an AI-as-a-Service marketplace, the team’s idea is to evolve it into an entirely self-organizing AI network. The AI Agents within this autonomous network will employ AI to outsource jobs to each other and evolve with each other to further develop the system.
AI Services Marketplace
Trying to keep things simple, SingularityNET is launching as a marketplace for AI services. They have chosen to focus on three distinct areas of AI for the first two years of advancement:
- Cloud robotics
- Biomedical investigation
- Cybersecurity
In this open marketplace, AI developers can swap their tools and solutions for SingularityNET’s AGI token, or other resources and services. To keep these transactions as simple as possible, SingularityNET provides APIs for incorporating regular services. An example is picture and language processing into smart contracts.
The platform likewise uses smart contracts to facilitate other types of services. For instance, SingularityNET uses a DSOC democracy for its governance model.
Before moving forward, it’s essential for us all to define SingularityNET Agents. Agents are the entities which execute the smart legal agreements on the platform. These are most often nodes on the network.
To keep network validity, Agent’s position each other after each swap on a zero or one scale. Leaving a position isn’t required and can also be automated. If an Agent marks a task complete and transmits payment, it’s safe to assume that the evaluation is correct.
There is an existing agent ranking that helps the network improve by deciding which agents evaluate better and are more useful to the network.
Agent rankings are multi-faceted and help optimize the system for the long term. Other factors that identify the overall ranking of an Agent include:
AGI Token Staking. Agents will lose portions of their staked tokens if their evaluations fall below a certain level.
Benefit Rating. This is a ranking specific towards the beneficial tasks an Agent provides. These are tasks that enhance the overall system and do not necessarily have monetary value.
External Validation. Agents receive additional ranking bonuses, once they prove ownership by a trustworthy company through a Know Your Customer (KYC) service.
Self-Organizing AI Internetworking
The extensive vision of the SingulairtyNET staff is to build a network involving complex AI Agent communications, primarily using resources in the OpenCog Foundation. To observe this, let’s check out the on location built, humanoid robot, Sophia.
Sophia uses a combination of Agents that range from processing languages to using actual motor skills to operate. A person tells Sophia to summarize a movie that’s embedded in a web page. To do this, Sophia sends the request to an Agent (Agent A). Through its AI, Agent A knows that Agent W specializes in analyzing and transcribing video, while Agent D specializes in summarizing the text.
Agent A pays Agent W and Agent D to accomplish these tasks, while Sophia pays Agent A to help coordinate. All the while, each agent has updated their own AI with the network information received from these tasks and combines it with their preceding experiences and knowledge. Consequently, the collective AI within the system grows at a faster rate in comparison to any individual Agent.
As a result, AI Agents will eventually be able to produce completely new AI Agents from the facts that they obtain overtime. This causes the network to grow and self-organize automatically.
AGI Token
SingularityNET’s AGI token is an ERC20 token at this time. Eventually, voting (from the governance model mentioned before) will determine if/when the system will move from Ethereum to another platform/blockchain
Agents primarily use AGI tokens to make payments regarding AI services. However, using these particular tokens also gives Agents voting power for certain selections that affect the platform.
The SingularityNET Genesis Contract created 1,000,000,000 AGI tokens at the time of ICO. They have been distributed accordingly:
500,000,000: Token Sales
200,000,000: Reward Pool
180,000,000: Founders
80,000,000: SingularityNET Foundation
45,000,000: Campaign fans (ie. bounties)
The team will release the reward pool tokens over ten years, and reward Agents participating in the network with these tokens. After that period, they’ll cast a vote on whether to create a completely new reward pool or pick some other type of reward mechanism.
Exchanges
SingularityNET is a relatively new company, and the AGI token has only been available since the middle January 2018. It has been steadily trading at around 20 cents per token.
The AGI total market cap is $68,462,443 USD with a daily trading volume of $356,103 USD. Most of the trading occurs on KuCoin exchange. You can see updated statistics about Singularity net on coinmarketcap.
Obtaining AGI
Because SingularityNET is relatively new, your options for obtaining AGI tokens is limited. As of January 20, 2018, they have partnered with KuCoin, one of the most popular trading platforms for cryptocurrencies. AGI is now listed as one of **KuCoin’**s tradable tokens, you can invest in SingularityNet today if you wish.
The AGI token receives it’s value as it lets anyone access AI services globally, without censorship or exclusion. Its incentive based network participates to help identify the best AI services and improve the network.
AGI Storage
Because AGI is an ERC20 token, you need to store the tokens in a wallet with ERC20 support. The recommended selection is a hardware wallet much like the Ledger Nano S.
If you choose not to pay for a hardware wallet, you should use MyEtherWallet for free.
SingularityNET Team
The SingularityNET team boasts 50+ AI developers and 10+ PhDs. Dr. Ben Goertzel leads the group as CEO and Chief Scientist. Dr. Goertzel is also the Chairman of the OpenCog Foundation, participates actively with the Artificial General Intelligence Contemporary society, and is a Chief Scientist for Hanson Robotics. Hanson Robotics is the partner company helping to bring SingularityNET to life.
Dr. David Hanson, the founder of Hanson Robotics, serves as the Robotics Head. Most famously, Hanson Robotics built Sophia. Sophia is the most innovative humanoid robot to date. Sophia is also a proud member of the SingularityNET team.
The team recently released the alpha version of the platform, and is considering launching to the public sometime in the 3rd quarter of 2018.
AI and The Blockchain
SingularityNET is unique in the blockchain world. The only other notable company working with AI is the NEO-based, DeepBrain Chain. Both projects have similar long-lasting visions and can also be bought at KuCoin exchage.
DeepBrain Chain will be focusing on shared computing capacity to perform machine learning relevant tasks; whereas, SingularityNET is beginning as an AJAI marketplace.
Singularity Net is one of the most innovative and daring projects in the crypto industry and it draws together two of technology’s hottest job areas: AI and the blockchain.
With a $36 million ICO that sold out within minutes and an all-star team of doctors and engineers constantly pushing the boundaries of AI technology, SingularityNet definitely has a bright future in front of it.