Cortex is a new project that is working towards creating and integrating efficient AI systems with blockchain technologies. By combining the efficiency of machine learning algorithms and autonomous decision-making with the transparency, security, and privacy of the blockchain, researchers at Cortex Labs are working in an exciting new area of exploratory blockchain development and hope to usher in a new era of growth and progress in the blockchain space. Towards that end, a number of Cortex scientists and engineers participated in a number of international competitions over the past several months and demonstrated the strengths of the Cortex team as well as the effectiveness of Cortex technology.

As revolutionary as blockchain has proven to be, there are always better ways of doing things. Blockchain technologies enable companies and organizations to operate in a fair, transparent, decentralized, and secure way. Despite these benefits, constant challenges facing blockchain projects include the automation of information processes and the application of solutions designed for one problem in different areas. As a result, blockchain projects often find themselves hitting the ceiling in terms of efficiencies and automation rather quickly.

Cortex, by creating smart contracts that can be automated and by helping researchers develop solutions that are easily and seamlessly implementable in different settings, is taking things to an entirely new level. Cortex not only allows for the use of blockchain smart contracts, but it allows developers to write advanced AI and machine learning algorithms that other users can use to build contracts of their own without having to redesign or reinvent the solutions from scratch. In this way, Cortex essentially enables blockchain technologies and solutions to grow and add steps to the ladder instead of dabbling in research and development that has already been done before.

Let’s now look at some of the competitions that Cortex participated in to get a better idea of trends and research areas in blockchain and AI.

The competitions

Participating in competitions and winning awards provide a number of useful benefits and benchmarks not only for Cortex but for the wider body of participants in the AI and blockchain fields. Firstly, they allow the project to establish a noteworthy presence in the fields of AI research and blockchain development, and they also enable the team to network and interact with other specialists working on similar technologies. Furthermore, competitions are a great way to provide the project with exposure, and they also help educate people on the benefits and potential of the project as a whole.

By winning numerous awards and standing out from the competition, Cortex is making a statement about its team’s abilities and the value it sees in AI and blockchain research, which serves as notice to others in the industry to be prepared for interesting developments and announcements as the project continues.

Here is a summary of the competitions and the Cortex researchers who participated in them, brief notes on the specialty areas of each team, and additional notes on other team achievements.

Kaggle: Audio Data Fraud Click Detection

Kaggle is a data analysis platform on which people can learn about data science, create and share projects, and participate in hackathons designed to test the ingenuity, speed, resiliency, and effectiveness of teams and solutions in the data science and AI spaces. Founded in 2010, Kaggle today is one of the most influential data algorithm competition platforms in the world.

Here are details regarding this competition:

Cortex researchers placed 2 nd out of roughly 4,000 teams

out of roughly 4,000 teams Feiyang Pan, Plantsgo Hua, and Shiwen Cui were the winning team members

Their areas of expertise include statistics, computer science, and information countermeasures

They have won dozens of competitions in the areas of forecast analysis, risk assessments, predictive analysis, and more

IJCAI-18: Alimama International Advertisement Algorithm Competition

The IJCAI (International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence) is one of the most prestigious academic conferences in the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computational sustainability.

Here are details regarding this competition:

Cortex researchers placed 5 th out of over 5,000 teams

out of over 5,000 teams Bo Li was the winning team member

His accomplishments include championships developing supply chain optimization solutions, business exit risk forecasts, social media advertisement algorithms, purchasing and sales predictions, and fraud detection projects

KDD Cup 2018:

The KDD Cup is a top international competition in the field of data mining. Known as the Data World Cup, this year’s KDD asked participants to predict the air quality in Beijing and London, two cities plagued by air pollution.

Here are details regarding this competition:

Cortex researchers placed 3 rd out of over 4,000 teams

out of over 4,000 teams Hengxing Ci was the winning team member

His areas of interest are in traffic data mining

His accomplishments include three wins at the 2017 Wisdom China Cup in the fields of traffic (3rd place), finance (1st place), and education (2nd place)

Applications and solutions

What are the general applications of Cortex, and how do these competitions tie into everything?

The competitions serve to prove one thing: that Cortex has the technical know-how and ability to come up with winning solutions to a vast array of problems. This is important because, in general, traditional smart contracts face two problems: an inability to leverage useful information that cannot be used in a smart contract once it has been written, and a lack of efficiency that results from the use of incomplete or low-quality data.

The applications of the type of computational automation that Cortex provides seem to be infinite. AI libraries and machine learning algorithms, once developed, can be built into new projects with just a click of a button. Traditional smart contracts suffer from a lack of capacity and a lack of efficiency, but Cortex’s smart AI contracts have been designed to work with other smart contracts, and the entire decision-making and analysis process of any project can be automated so that human input (and therefore costs and errors) are minimized. Furthermore, Cortex also allows systems and contracts to leverage highly-efficient AI decision-making to calculate predictions, make assessments, extract insights, and learn over time.

In addition to these benefits, building Cortex functionalities into existing smart contracts is extremely easy as well – doing it is as simple as adding a new library or widget to an existing web page or project. Once someone has developed a solution or written specific code, you can easily use them and improve the features and functionalities of whatever it is you are working on, and this can be done for any project, any activity, and any task for which AI and machine learning algorithms are applicable.

Conclusion

The world is a global village, and the best way to promote collective advancement is by sharing ideas, collaborating on projects, and promoting the use of value-added tools and technologies to others. Cortex Labs, as a pioneer in the fields of machine learning and AI, is actively engaged in promoting the benefits of the Cortex platform and showcasing its potential to the world, not to mention the high caliber of the Cortex engineering team, as the competitions above clearly demonstrates.