Blockchain Reinvention

Dr. Ben Goerzel, and Dr. David Hanson, of Hanson Robotics, have worked in the field of Artificial intelligence for many years and were recently in the news when they introduced Hanson’s humanoid robot Sophia. They propose to use a network (SyngularityNET) to make Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) available worldwide by using the blockchain, and built on Ethereum smart contracts. They envision an “open market” of AI solutions available to anyone who needs them. However, several issues seem to be insurmountable using current blockchain technology. For example, end-user AGI devices (Agents) will need information that includes code and data objects. These may be many terabytes of information. This information may need to be continuously updated, and must be made available in real time. Blockchain requirements for AGI are conceptually similar to other general distributed applications (GApps). That is, most applications need to solve the CARS problems: C ommunication, A ddress...

How are current crypto-networks going to cope with increased application demand? Bitcoin’s demand is generated mostly by financial transactions. These are an important, but small fragment of all distributed applications. Ethereum’s demand, in addition to financial transactions, is generated mostly by smart contracts used to generate tokens for ICOs. Although ICOs are becoming very popular, again this is just a fragment of all possible distributed applications that could take advantage of “the blockchain”. The researchers involved with both networks are aware of their current limitations in scalability. How could these network provide for the future market of general distributed applications, several orders of magnitude larger? The scalability problem Scalability can be a problem when some resource requirements grow exponentially with the number of nodes in the network. For example, the time to distribute or process transactions, or the time to process a block, or the commun...