Primer: Arif Khan is a visionary. His company, Alethea AI, enables users to integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) into NFTs as Intelligent NFTs. NFTs will now have a personality of their own and can communicate with users. In this episode, Arif shares his experience on AI, the NFT space, and how the two could be combined to provide us with interesting use cases.
Origins
Immigrant entrepreneur. Came to the US 3 years ago. Grew up in Singapore and worked in the tech industry (LinkedIn, Grab)
Brought in a speaker, who is a friend of his, to share about Ethereum to his team. None of them could fully understand the speaker
That reminded him of his childhood where he hacked his Xbox console to enable it to run bootleg versions of games. Enjoyed tinkering as a hobbyist
Was burnt out in his corporate gig and decided to look into Ethereum in 2017
Met Dr Ben Goertzel who brought a robot called Sophia to a conference. Sophia was leading people through meditation
As part of his vision for SingularityNET, Dr Ben Goertzel wanted to create an AI marketplace on the blockchain. Arif joined him as their Chief Marketing Officer
Subsequently, he founded Alethea AI
"And I think, what crypto did there was it just opened my eyes to the possibility of becoming self sovereign again, right?" - Arif Khan
On AI
The foundations of AI is mathematics
AI is misunderstood by people. People use imprecise analogies such as the new paradigm that could change the world. This does not separate the hype from the reality
"The golden, true north of AI is to get to this idea which Ben as well created, which was AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, where the AI itself is aware, self-aware, and is able to autonomously create meaningful output, but also be able to infer accurate information." - Arif Khan
At LinkedIn: When data is generated by the user (e.g. job update), it would go into an algorithm that would create an output that businesses could then use (e.g. shaping their talent strategy, go-to-market strategy, recruiting strategy, etc)
Current trend is moving towards content production by AI
Alethea AI
Introduction
"In fact, we [Alethea AI] are focused on ensuring that we can create really compelling cool content for creators and creators can use this tools, and then they can own the asset." - Arif Khan
Alethea AI is a company that focuses on AI-generated content
Tied to some pain points he experienced as SingularityNET's CMO. He had to travel with Sophia the robot and the number of interviews she could do is limited because she can only speak English and her physical presence could not be multiplied. Began thinking about how to solve content and video production at scale
These interactive characters could be used in the metaverse and will be powered by AI
Use Cases
Pioneering a new standard called Intelligent NFT
Intelligent NFT: An AI character whose provable scarcity is locked into an NFT
Can be a virtual assistant for users
In the future, intelligent NFTs might turn into celebrities
"Now, a quick example here would be, you have a Waifu token, for example, like a Waifu character, or CryptoPunk, or, or a Hash Mask, and now you want it to have a personality and you want to interact with it, and you want to have a conversation with it, or you want to learn from it right?" - Arif Khan
NFTs can be scaled up by giving them the gift of personality
"So think of NFT is like, like babies and you'll be able to impart as a parent to that NFT an intelligence structure and language structure, you'll be able to teach it what, what values you want it to have." - Arif Khan
How Does It Work
Access the AI Pod in Alethea AI
Add in text to the AI pod. The NFT will draw its personality from the text. Users can tweak the parameters like voice, texture, type of tone from the Big Five Personality Traits. If the NFT has a face, the face can be animated and be brought to life
Personalities can range from simple to very complex
The AI Pod
The AI pod can be detached from the NFT and resold on secondary markets/given away to others
The Alethea AI platform is designed to give users flexibility
Other Aspects of Intelligent NFTs
Intelligent NFTs can create their own currencies and their own communities in the future
5-Year Vision for Alethea
People will create their own AI and monetize them
Creators will deeply benefit from this. Empower people from developing countries to take charge of their financial lives
"We think that one day a person in Indonesia would be able to create their own AI character. And that person in Indonesia would be able to feed their entire family or village because that AI character became so popular in like a famous contest." - Arif Khan
GPT-3
Introduction
GPT-3 is an intelligent machine that can understand inputs in plain language and produce meaningful outputs in plain language
Large Tech giants made it easy to spin up servers and rent computational power. Many startups have access to these technologies to experiment
GPT-3 is enabled on a very simple API call. Startups do not need a chief data scientist or a machine learning engineer to access it. They could just write a prompt, much like how you would ask a friend a question, and some possible answers and it will learn from those examples and produce a reasonable answer
It is in closed beta because it could be used for harm if it's accessible to everyone
History
GPT-3 is created OpenAI, a company founded by Elon Musk
OpenAI's company structure was changed from a non-profit to a for-profit
Has a strategic partnership with Microsoft
Future Versions of GPT-3
Bigger challenge is to cross the uncanny valley.
Uncanny Valley: The difference between something that is "almost real" and "real", triggering a sense of discomfort or unease
Tough to answer this question
Platforms and Censorship
Centralized platforms (e.g. Youtube, Twitter) are stuck in a conundrum. Have to determine what is hate speech and moderate it
Lack of transparency as to how centralized platforms censor
"So for people to be able to choose what content stays on the platform is, is really important. So that can be perhaps, like, what we're thinking about is there will be opportunities for DAO to govern that, to set certain standards about what's possible." - Arif Khan
Hitler example: to preserve historical records of this person called Hitler and the evil he has done or to censor him and his hate speech towards Jews
AI And The Metaverse
Witnessed AI creating their own metaverses in the private beta of the OpenAI team
Any News To Share
Launching the Intelligent NFT Standard. Opening it up for people to experiment with it
Single Favourite NFT
EthDenver POAP badge. It was the last conference he attended before the COVID pandemic. It reminded him of the cool creators he had met and the relationships that he has made
If He Could Change One Thing In The Space
Getting more philosophers involved in the NFT space and having deeper philosophical discussions
World Of NFTs In 3 Years
Intelligent, interactive NFTs are everywhere
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