Artificial intelligence and blockchain are developing extremely fast. They both are able to make big changes but when they are combined they can do much more.

Artificial intelligence technologies are developing rapidly. The science fiction inventions and fantasies of the writers of the 20th century are becoming everyday realities. It is difficult to find a sector where this technology is not finding its application. Medicine, business, education, logistics, and entertainment are industries that are literally overwhelmed with developments, the foundation of which is a chain of technologies with artificial “intelligence” at the core. Artificial intelligence is capable of transforming all sectors of human life.

Such widespread use of the technology is due to the following factors:

It is capable of automating the processes that previously required the participation of human resources, as such it becomes possible to optimize the business models of companies, manufacturers and service providers, and thus reduce financial costs.

It has the ability of processing large amounts of data and calculating a huge number of possible outcomes using various variables.

The efficiency of machines and robot does not depend on human factors.

Based on strictly scientific data from IBM’s survey, the AI, which includes millions of medical records in its database, makes more accurate diagnoses than human doctors. These statistics confirm the advantage of using AI and the further trend of its development on the market.

Sophia Robot

Meet Sophia, a humanoid robot in the form of a woman developed by the Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics. Sofia has artificial intelligence, she comes equipped with visual information processing functions and face recognition technology. Sofia’s artificial intelligence software was developed by SingularityNET. It analyzes conversations and improves responses in the future based on new data.

“At Hanson Robotics, we’ve made a cloud-based infrastructure for robot intelligence, but now we’re looking to take that to the next level and we’ve launched a new project called SingularityNET, which is AI and blockchain together.”

SingularityNET

SingularityNET represents the first general-purpose decentralized marketplace for AIs – the first service providing an extensive, inclusive, and holistic array of AI services purchasable for cryptocurrencies.

SingularityNET provides:

An API and a set of smart contracts for interacting with AI Agents;

A token-based economy for handling the financial exchange with AI Agents;

A democratic governance mechanism for adjusting the parameters of this economy.

Due to its specific features, blockchain provides significant value for managing transactions in a Singularity economy. A blockchain-based framework designed to serve the needs of AI Agents as they interact with each other and external customers can foster the emergence of collective intelligence.

SingularityNET is a protocol and a structure implemented in smart contracts to create a Decentralized Self-Organizing Cooperative of AI. As such, it can be built on any open, decentralized framework that satisfies certain basic requirements.

Currently, the development of the Singularity technical environment is based on Ethereum. However, due to the prevailing economic model of the project, the company’s management does not exclude the possibility of the platform moving to a faster and more democratic blockchain, which can provide higher transaction processing speed and an expanded list of smart contract functionality.

The Singularity White Paper states:

“To enable an AI to AI economy, a scalable transaction infrastructure is required. Current networks (Bitcoin, Ethereum) cannot support the transaction volume required, nor will they be able to if multiple high transaction volume services are running on those chains. While the prototype can run on Ethereum, eventually a public chain optimized for AI to AI transactions will be required.”

Blockchain Solutions for AI

The technological features of the Credits blockchain platform, for example, its high network bandwidth and high data validation speed, can meet the future needs of the SingularityNET economic model, which may rise due to the increase in the number of Network Agents.

The main advantages of using the Credits platform in terms of the concept stated by SingularityNET are the following:

A single protocol for issuing, storing and transferring various types of tokens. Every participant of the Singularity network will be able to tokenize models based on artificial intelligence algorithms that will be presented on the Singularity marketplace.

An infrastructure on a decentralized network with a public registry which is suitable for the Singularity democratic network model.

Decentralized process of communication/connection with a data source through a smart contract.

Development of cross-chain solutions that will let SingularityNET interface with multiple blockchains.

With the spread of AI services that will require high volumes of transactions through the network, SingularityNET will need more high-performance technologies, and Credits is one of the most suitable options for future cooperation, as it is already capable of handling 130,000 transactions per second on average with low limits on transactions costs at 0,001 USD.

The Credits platform provides an advanced application programming interface (API) on the basis of Apache Thrift for integration with other programming languages (C++, C#, Python, Delphi, Rast, Go, and many others) that allows connecting smart contracts to other external systems.

The Walmart Standalone Robot

The potential of AI has also attracted the attention of the global retail giant Walmart. The US Patent Office (USPTO) has filed yet another Walmart patent application for a system that controls “authentication of autonomous robots at the place of operation”. This marks the start of work in the future direction of the company. And well, let us be honest, it looks quite promising in conjunction with AI.

According to the company’s plan, robots will serve as instruments for participating in the processes of delivery of goods at different ends of the supply chain using wireless signals for communication and authentication. Walmart’s technical experts suggest that the blockchain will help protect the system from hacker attacks.

The authors of the application note:

“In some embodiments of described above, blockchain technology may be utilized to record authentication signals and identification information to facilitate or resulting from in-field authentication between autonomous electronic devices. One or more of the autonomous electronic devices described herein may comprise a node in a distributed blockchain system storing a copy of the blockchain record.”

Credits and Walmart Together?

The Credits blockchain is an immutable, decentralized digital database, where all communications between devices and robots can be recorded and stored in the history of the blockchain. Thus, every Walmart system robot has the ability to track any information necessary for the supply chain.

Due to the fact that blockchain technology is based on the basic principles of cryptography, this allows protecting data from being replaced and edited by external devices, since the entire process of authenticating the actions of other robots is carried out by connecting the robot to a decentralized database through which communication with all other devices takes place. In addition, robots can use smart contracts to create online agreements in which the terms and conditions of delivery are set in lines of code.

Thus, companies can achieve the autonomous functioning of devices with AI without the need for centralized management or a single administrator. The use of cycles of smart contracts on the Credits platform allows re-registration of data from robot devices. For an industry like retail, it is important to consider the time of dispatch and delivery of a product, as this is the main factor when choosing a supplier. Thanks to the CScheduler service implemented on the Credits blockchain platform, it becomes possible for the robot to call a certain order of previously planned actions recorded in the conditions of the smart contract and on the Credits blockchain network, such as debiting payments, refunds, etc. The scheduler allows setting the execution of certain processes not only at a certain time and day but also cyclically and chaotically, depending on the specifics of client needs.

Conclusion

The combination of AI and blockchain for industries cannot be undervalued. AI alone is incomplete and requires an infrastructure capable of bearing the immense amounts of data generated in the process of analyzing flows. Blockchain alone is incomplete as well since it requires an application to use it for storing data. It is thus technologically logical and viable to combine the two technologies and produce valuable systems that can be applied in a variety of industries. The start has already been announced, now it is up to the developers to create applications and try use cases for the AI-blockchain duo.