Computer scientist Ben Götzel wrote his first AI code 30 years ago, and he has long believed that artificial intelligence should be decentralized. Today, as the world approaches the dawn of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), who will lead this breakthrough could have profound implications for the future of humanity.
At the Consensus conference in Toronto, Canada, Götzel told Cointelegraph, 'We may launch AGI capable of thinking and transcending training and programming within one to three years.'
His project SingularityNET is a decentralized ecosystem that is building a global AI service marketplace and closely collaborates with partners such as Mind Network and the Filecoin Foundation, investing $53 million in new supercomputing and merging with Ocean Protocol to promote decentralized AI development.
In 2024, Götzel founded the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, which is the world's largest open-source project dedicated to decentralized AGI.
After decades of AI development and promotion of decentralization, Götzel believes that the tech community has finally caught up with these once-radical ideas, driving a trillion-dollar industry.
The Meaning of Decentralization
Götzel said, 'During the period from 1993 to 1995, I realized that AI should be decentralized.'
At that time, the internet itself was also decentralized, so the decentralization of AI seemed to be a natural progression.
However, the centralization of the internet undermined the foundation of decentralization. 'Later, companies like Google and Facebook created massive internet data centers, achieving efficient centralization.'
Regarding the next leap for AGI, Götzel believes that decentralization is an important safeguard against technological monopolies and abuses.
His argument is that AGI must be fundamentally decentralized, rather than retrofitted later, in order to serve humanity rather than the interests of concentrated power.
'We hope to be one of the first teams to achieve this goal through decentralized team collaboration.'
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