Networking giant Cisco Systems is collaborating with SingularityNET on developing applications of decentralized AGI.

Artificial General Intelligence is a branch of AI that focuses on a computer’s ability to learn intellectual tasks. Whereas existing AI might learn to read characters on a page, for example, a true AGI system might intuit how to write the book.

In a joint statement, Dr. Ben Goertzel, SingularityNET CEO, said, “The scale of the AGI deployments needed by a partner like Cisco is going to be tremendous, and we are working hard to make sure our AGI tools and our blockchain-based platform is up to the task.”

SingularityNET’s platform democratizes AI by decentralizing its source, preventing any single force or player from hoarding computers’ capacity to learn.

Cisco and SingularityNET see the potential in building AGI together, according to Goertzel. He said this technology is “expected to provide tremendous commercial benefit to whomever develops it.”

“This benefit may initially take the form of a generation of ‘Narrow AGI’ systems that infuse general intelligence into products in specific vertical markets like, say, advertising, medical research, computer networking or financial analytic,” he said.

Cisco’s role in worldwide technology kickstarts that goal.

“To really build a global decentralized thinking machine we are going to need to put a lot of complicated ingredients together, and the collaboration between Cisco and SingularityNET has the potential to accelerate things tremendously,” Goertzel said.

Cisco image via Shutterstock