Blockchain is revolutionising AI and prediction markets

With the rise of decentralised, open governance models aligned to a native cryptocurrency reward, developers are now able to create completely new types of software and dApps that live autonomously and provide real value.

As more open source tools are developed in the fields of machine learning, predictive analytics, and neural networks, more businesses can be built up around these applications.

SingularityNET

SingularityNET is definitely a project to look out for. Just recently, the non-profit organisation partnered with one of the most valuable companies in the US, Domino’s Pizza, to implement AI tools that allow for faster, safer, and more efficient ordering and delivery in Malaysia and Singapore.

SingularityNET is also pushing towards decentralised governance, as it is implementing a flat decision-making model. Ben Goertzel, the project’s founder, told Coin Rivet during the recent Malta AI and Blockchain Summit:

“We’re also working with our legal team and with governments like the Malta government to see in what way – if not right now, in one, two, or three years’ time even – could it be possible to have SingularityNET be a purely decentralised, autonomous organisation. That doesn’t mean something like the SingularityNET foundation wouldn’t exist, but it would mean the foundation doesn’t have any intrinsic distinguished role.”

What SingularityNET wants to achieve is a world where anyone can create, share, and monetise AI services at scale. To achieve this outcome and to properly decentralise incentives, SingularityNET uses its own internal token – AGI – which is used as a means of payment between AI-powered applications.

Endor

The Endor protocol, a project released just last year, is also another interesting concept that is targeting the AI marketplace.

Endor aims to replace existing machine learning solutions which are time consuming, complex, and expensive with a fully-automated, scalable, real-time data prediction system.

To achieve that goal, Endor is powered by the latest AI science. The easy-to-use platform accepts any business queries and delivers highly accurate predictive answers. By allowing companies to anticipate evolving customer needs at the right time and at the right cost, Endor helps clients to move from doing business by looking in the rear-view mirror to focusing on the road ahead.

In terms of its technology, Endor has some new and advanced features:

• Endor embeds actionable insights into your workflow by allowing all business teams to calculate predictions quickly and easily
• You can achieve much faster response times ahead of the competition as no data modeling or coding is required
• It uses Big Data in an agnostic manner – any structured data, whether clean or not, can be analysed
• It has the capability to compute on encrypted data without decrypting it, meeting global privacy and data security regulations
• Endor is powered by Social Physics – a new AI science developed at MIT that utilises behavioral commonalities

Unlike SingularityNET, Endor’s core business is to focus on delivering already usable tools that connect AI with blockchain technology. It is already partnered with some big players such as Mastercard and Coca-Cola.

According to the company’s white paper, the goal of the Endor token, EDR, is to deploy, store, and run AI applications on the blockchain. In essence, EDR powers all activity and transactions in the Endor protocol as it is fully-decentralised, permissionless, and open.

The Endor protocol provides complete accountability for the prediction results. This prevents any manipulation or bias during the predictions. In addition, the decentralised and open nature of the protocol enables the support of any prediction, preventing censorship by any single point of authority.

Augur

Last but not least, we have one of the earliest ERC-20 projects – the Augur protocol.

As reported by Coin Rivet, Augur is already making quite interesting moves in the market. Augur is a decentralised, open, transparent, and permissionless prediction market. It allows users to bet on the outcome of certain events and to stake tokens in order to create markets.  Because of its decentralised nature, any type of prediction is allowed – even really weird ones.

Prediction markets extract the wisdom of a crowd, acting like a super-magnet that pulls in all the world’s information. Participants predict honestly and to the best of their ability since they have “skin in the game” and stand to lose or gain tokens based on the quality of their forecasts.

Prediction markets not only extract existing knowledge but motivate the production of new knowledge. For example, prediction markets on the weather might motivate meteorologists to develop improved forecasting models. Prediction markets make the creation and revelation of knowledge competitive and meritocratic.

By compensating good predictions and imposing costs for bad ones, prediction markets reward greater leverage to so-called super-forecasters over time while discouraging dishonest or inaccurate ones.

The platform is powered by its own token, the Augur REP, which must be used to bet on the outcome of events or to create markets.