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USA and Nigeria to Discuss Digital Economy and AI Advancements for Economic Growth

The United States of America (USA) and Nigeria are poised to explore potential partnership opportunities in the digital economy, emerging technology, and the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI). The discussions aim to strengthen economic ties between the two countries and foster deeper collaborations in these areas.

The Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy, Mr. Arthur Brown, announced that high-level U.S. government officials will be in Abuja for a conference under the auspices of the U.S.-Nigeria Bi-National Commission. The conference will provide a platform for both countries to discuss the digital economy, emerging technology, and AI advancements.

During the closing ceremony of a four-day Workshop on National Artificial Intelligence Strategy in Abuja, Mr. Brown highlighted the importance of fostering partnerships and working together to drive robust, resilient, and inclusive economic growth. The United States is ready to work with Nigeria as equal partners in various areas, including talent development, infrastructure, research, and innovation. Mr. Brown also commended Nigeria for its support on the adoption of a landmark United Nations resolution on AI and pledged the U.S. government’s continued partnership with Nigeria on the economy.

Nigeria has shown a growing commitment to AI and emerging technologies in recent years. In November 2020, the country established the National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR), the first of its kind in Africa, marking a major moment for state-level commitment to AI. The NCAIR was established in line with Nigeria’s National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy 2020 – 2030, which listed AI as one of the eight pillars of the country’s digital economy.

Since the establishment of the NCAIR, AI has featured more prominently in government policy efforts. The NCAIR launched programs to equip children with coding and machine learning skills, making them conversant with AI and other emerging technologies. The Nigerian government has also directed the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to provide AI research grants to tertiary institutions to drive innovation and improve economic resilience.

In March 2023, Nigeria drafted a National AI policy, co-created by the National Information Technology Development Agency and industry experts, to further strengthen its AI commitment. The country has also launched initiatives like the 3 million Technical Talents (3MTT) program and the Nigeria Artificial Intelligence Research Scheme (NAIRS) to train young people in AI and support AI startups and researchers.

The upcoming discussions between the USA and Nigeria present an opportunity for both countries to share knowledge, expertise, and best practices in the digital economy, emerging technology, and AI advancements. By aligning AI governance and ensuring safe, secure, transparent, and trustworthy AI deployment, the partnership aims to drive economic growth and innovation in both nations.

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AI bias: how blockchain can ensure its safety

As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes increasingly integrated into our daily lives, concerns about bias within AI systems have garnered significant attention. Bias in AI refers to the systematic errors or inaccuracies in decision-making processes, often resulting from the unconscious prejudices of its developers or the data used to train the algorithms. Addressing bias in AI is crucial to ensuring fairness, equity, and safety across various applications, from hiring processes to judicial systems. In this context, blockchain technology emerges as a promising solution to mitigate bias and enhance transparency in AI systems.

According to a post by CyberGhost, human biases can significantly influence AI algorithms, leading to discriminatory outcomes. For instance, if AI systems are trained on biased datasets, they may perpetuate and amplify existing societal inequalities. This highlights the urgent need for innovative approaches to address bias in AI and uphold ethical standards.

Blockchain technology, known primarily for its association with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, offers a decentralized and transparent framework that can effectively combat bias in AI. Unlike traditional centralized systems, blockchain operates on a distributed ledger, where transactions are recorded across a network of computers. Each transaction, or in the case of AI, each decision made by the algorithm, is transparently recorded on the blockchain, making it immutable and tamper-proof.

One way blockchain can ensure the safety of AI systems is through the concept of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). In a DAO, decisions are made collectively by a community of stakeholders rather than a single centralized authority. By integrating blockchain into AI governance models, decisions made by AI algorithms can be subjected to community scrutiny and consensus, reducing the likelihood of biased outcomes.

Moreover, blockchain enables the creation of transparent and auditable datasets for training AI algorithms. Data provenance, or the ability to trace the origin and history of data, is crucial for identifying and mitigating biases in AI. By recording data transactions on the blockchain, stakeholders can verify the authenticity and integrity of datasets, ensuring that they are free from bias or manipulation.

Furthermore, blockchain-based smart contracts can be utilized to enforce fairness and accountability in AI systems. Smart contracts are self-executing contracts with the terms of the agreement directly written into code. In the context of AI, smart contracts can specify fairness criteria and penalties for biased decisions, thereby incentivizing developers to prioritize ethical considerations in algorithm design.

Implementing blockchain technology in AI systems is not without its challenges. Scalability, interoperability, and energy consumption are among the technical hurdles that need to be addressed. Additionally, regulatory and legal frameworks surrounding blockchain and AI integration require careful consideration to ensure compliance with data protection and privacy laws.

Bias in AI poses significant risks to individuals and society at large, undermining trust and perpetuating discrimination. Blockchain technology offers a promising avenue for mitigating bias in AI systems through transparency, decentralization, and accountability. By leveraging blockchain’s inherent features, we can foster more equitable and safe AI systems that uphold ethical principles and serve the greater good.

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The World Economic Forum Forms Six Tech Policy Councils Including Blockchain

The World Economic Forum (WEF) launched six different “fourth industrial revolution councils” to help regulators working on the new technology policy guidance. The new technology included artificial intelligence, autonomous mobility, blockchain, drones, internet of things and precision medicine, as revealed on 29 May.

The councils gathered for the first time for the Fourth Industrial Revolution Network in San Francisco. The boards are allegedly comprised of over 200 leaders across public and private sectors, civil society, and academia, including leaders from the European Commission, Microsoft, Qualcomm, World Bank, Uber, Chinese Academy of Medical Science, and Dana-Farber.

The WEF claimed that the participating companies will facilitate international policy exchange, reach a consensus on best policy practices and offer strategic guidance.

Blockchain Delivers a Glimpse of Future Innovation Today

The media is always keen to report on the latest developments around blockchain and digital currencies and pull in colossal numbers of readers hungry to explore the details behind the headlines. Many commentators are switching on to the reality that, despite the fluctuating price of some coins and utility tokens, the underlying blockchain technology continues to grow in spectacular leaps and bounds.

Blockchain is not just about digital currencies and faster peer-to-peer transactions but part of an advanced ecosystem of emerging technologies encompassing artificial intelligence, robotics, and commerce.

One of the many exciting areas that blockchain will radically evolve is the current energy market by providing a multitude of opportunities that may not yet have even been considered. Blockchain technology will blur the boundaries between cash, energy products and it will also facilitate the surge of crossovers into other commodities, transforming them all into readily tradable digital assets. Let’s map things out a little and put things into perspective and look to the future. Imagine the trading floor in the near future, say five years from now.

It’s a lot quieter; there’s no commotion, there’s no need for the calamity of traders with phones pressed to their ears scrambling for the best rates. Now trading robots are using advanced algorithms to scan the electricity market in real-time, automatically optimizing the search to get the best deal for the customer based on their predicted needs for that period taking into account the weather and past usage, etc.

At home, the customer uses her now old Samsung S10 mobile device to approve the terms of sale, and a smart contract is made, then the trade is executed and immediately recorded on the blockchain. The electricity provider can automatically access the blockchain information, and physical payment occurs daily with the payment initiated immediately through their choice of Digital Wallet.

All activity is now instantly accessible by the seller, buyer, pipeline and the remittance provider – and this is only one example of thousands, if not millions, of use cases of blockchain technology. Businesses will rely on more and more AI systems to act as a translator of their needs and automate their processes while handling enormous volumes of data, all with extremely low transactional costs and reduced risk.

Intermediaries such as brokers are sitting up and taking notice as their entire business models could be affected if they fail to integrate blockchain technology into their ecosystems. These benefits are undoubtedly seductive and hard to ignore, but does this scenario sound a little too far-fetched, especially in the time frame stated above? Perhaps, or perhaps not but who really knows in this exciting, fast-paced hyper-connected world in which we find ourselves.

While we are not able to actually see into the future, the potential of Blockchain technology for allowing remittance to be made to energy providers through a digital wallet is not too hard to imagine. And finally, the use of digital wallets on smartphones continues to raise exciting possibilities for their use in the developing world.

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Blockchain-Based Startups Empower Individuals to Identify Fake News

Back in 2017, a man named James McDaniel confessed that he had created a fake news website to test how gullible Internet readers could be. “As I continued to write ridiculous things they just kept getting shared and I kept drawing more viewers,” he told Politifact. In under two weeks, more than 1 million people had viewed and shared his inventions on social platforms, contributing to the vast spread of misinformation that characterized the 2016 US presidential election.

US citizens haven’t been the only ones affected by fake news. It’s been widely documented that misinformation also played a role in the UK Brexit vote and the 2018 Brazilian elections, which is why individuals, organizations, and governments around the world are starting to pay close attention to what’s true—and what’s not.

Cracking Down on Clickbait

Enter tech startups like Blackbird.AI, a San-Francisco-based company that seeks to ensure content is truthful and credible. Misinformation, the founders explain on their Medium page, “creates a cause and effect that will change everything from a political election to a social belief system.”

They seek to empower publishers, campaigns, businesses, governments, and citizens to catch fake news before it has a chance to take off. Their strategy: to introduce labels that evaluate content based on “credibility signals” such as who the author is, how the content was funded, and its ad quality score.

The labeling system is like a nutrition label for news, meaning that it allows readers to quickly and accurately evaluate how trustworthy a piece of online content is. By quickly helping people figure out what’s trustworthy and what’s not, it may cut down on the sharing and clicking on of false but shocking headlines.

To assign each piece of content a label, Blackbird.AI uses artificial intelligence to analyze millions of articles, track patterns, and classify news based on the credibility signals. Their technology scans articles, references, websites, social media pages, and memes—all in real-time. And, once the content is verified, it’s inscribed into the blockchain ledger for eternity.

Photo Evidence

Startups aren’t the only ones putting trust in the blockchain. Established publishers like the New York Times, for instance, are experimenting with blockchain as a way to validate their online content.

Their research and development team is planning to use Hyperledger Fabric’s permissioned blockchain to store important information about where the photo was taken, who the photographer was, and details about how it was edited.

Social Butterflies

Even social media sites are trying to do their part, as they should: 68% of Americans rely on them for their daily news. Google is debuting new fact-checking tools and promoting high-quality content, as well as donating a lot of money to global initiatives that help kids tell the difference between real and fake or misleading news. And Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have all removed huge numbers of bogus accounts from their platforms.

But according to Civil, another blockchain-based news startup, still just 23% of people say trust news on social media, which means that it might be up to the blockchain disruptors to reform the system entirely.

There’s a rising wave of support for exactly that. Rather than scoff at their efforts, traditional, well-known publishers are giving a nod to what these startups are doing. “As the footprint of traditional newspapers is shrinking,” CBS News notes, “Civil’s is growing.”

The Columbia Journalism Review chimes in: “[Creating a new form of money] has the potential to help realign the incentives that underlie the journalism business.”

It’s true that the fight against misinformation has only just begun. Hackers and writers of fake news steadily evolve their tactics, and nothing beats good old critical thinking. As fake-news writer James McDaniel notes, visible disclaimers on his web pages explaining that his posts were “fiction, and presumably fake news” went largely unnoticed and unread by the millions who shared them.

Yet with startups like Blackbird.AI and Civil making it easier for Internet readers to identify and discount fake and misleading content, there’s hope for the future.

As Civil puts it: “You’ll have access to the news you need and can trust what you read.”

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Cisco Partners with SingularityNET to Decentralize Artificial Intelligence with Blockchain

Tech conglomerate Cisco and decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) firm SingularityNET have reached a partnership to develop a decentralized Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) project. The ambitious project aims to create more advanced AI technologies that will soon be able to exceed human abilities to learn and perform new tasks.

AGI is an emerging new field of AI that mainly focuses on a computer’s ability to learn intellectual tasks such as learning how to write a book, tasks that humans are capable of. SingularityNET’s technologies include a blockchain-based decentralized marketplace for AI algorithms and other deep neural net models for computer vision and language understanding.

Dr. Ben Goertzel, SingularityNET CEO, believes that AGI will advance far beyond the current state, and in the next decade, AGIs will have higher IQs than humans.

“We’re going to see AGI elements coming into play this year,” he said. “Within the next couple of years, you’ll start to see tremendously intelligent agents that start to really solve some of the problems that we’re having,” said Goertzel.

The partnership with Cisco originated from the need for an AI system that can generalize and learn across different areas. Goertzel stated:

“The scale of the AGI deployments needed by a partner like Cisco is going to be tremendous, and we are working hard to make sure our AGI tools and our blockchain-based platform is up to the task. The work we’ve done with Cisco on smart traffic analytics using OpenCog’s logical reasoning and deep neural networks just scratches the surface. Let’s just say we have some much broader and deeper conversations going on.”

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SAP and Infosys Join Forces to Accelerate Enterprise Digital Transformation Projects

Infosys and SAP are in talks to create a joint go-to-market engagement model between project Embrace from SAP and Infosys’ Innov8 program. The joint engagement model is intended to help companies accelerate their digital transformation based on SAP S/4HANA® to build intelligent enterprises.According to a press release, the collaboration aims to enable Infosys to become one of SAP’s first global strategic service partners for project Embrace—designed to drive enterprise customer adoption of cloud and digital technologies from SAP. Dinesh Rao, Executive Vice President, Infosys, said, “Navigating the cloud ecosystem requires a structured strategy that provides a consolidated view into a company’s overall transformation journey. Through Innov8, we are focused on leveraging our industry knowledge and experience to accelerate the delivery of business solutions. Through this collaboration, we are focusing on ensuring that our clients are able to rapidly adopt tomorrow’s business models today.”The Innov8 program is infused with more than 70 ready-to-deploy use cases spanning blockchain artificial intelligence, machine learning, the internet of things (IoT) and data analytics—empowering clients to invest in purposeful innovation and build truly intelligent enterprises. Innov8 helps clients transform their business model to one based on predictable OPEX-based costs and offers flexible points of entry to the SAP environment for both existing and new cloud users.Regarding the collaboration, David Robinson, senior vice president, SAP Cloud Business Group and global lead, Embrace program at SAP, said, “SAP is excited about its plans to partner with Infosys to help clients invest in purposeful innovation to build their intelligent enterprise. Innov8 for Embrace leverages Infosys’ industry knowledge and expertise on SAP and cloud technologies. This is a platform that is delivered on a cloud hyperscale environment with SAP digital solutions delivering end-to-end business outcomes at an accelerated pace. We couldn’t be more excited.”

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eToro’s AI Copy Portfolio Trades on Sentiment

The eToro trading platform launched its latest user copy portfolio on Tuesday, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that trades on the sentiments of 850,000,000 daily tweets.The eToro/Tie copy portfolio is the creation of a partnership between The Tie data analysis firm and Social Market Analytics (SMA) that leverages proprietary machine learning and natural processing technology to assess and quantify traders feeling towards digital assets. All eToro traders have to do is click copy on The TIE portfolio, with a minimum buy in of $2000, and the AI will diversify their crypto portfolio among the most positively discussed assets.

Crypto Market Driven By CrowdAccording to an introductory presentation released by The Tie on its partnership with eToro, there is a strong correlation between twitter sentiment and crypto market movements.

From the presentation, “Unlike traditional assets, cryptocurrencies do not have fundamentals. Bitcoin has no revenue, dividends or debt. The value of digital assets are driven by supply and demand, and movement is determined by the wisdom of the crowd.” In this day and age, Twitter is where the crowd holds the discussion.

While the analytics tool may be new to consumers, Joshua Frank, CEO, The Tie explained in a YouTube video, that hedge fund managers and investment firms have been leveraging the same SMA data stream the eToro copy tool now uses. Frank said, “eToro is a social trading exchange in itself, making it the perfect partner for The Tie’s technology.”

Bots and Overlaps

Every day, The Tie’s AI scours through the 850,000,000 tweets and analyses, sorts and interprets social sentiment toward cryptocurrencies. Filters are used to assess the relevance and remove spam and bots, and sophisticated algorithms study the language of the tweets and assign ratings to different investors. Through the evaluation process, only 10% of tweets on any particular currency usually remain in the stream. The presentation highlights how each tweet is scanned individually and extracted to a relevant category, but there are close to 80 overlaps between crypto-asset abbreviations and non-assets. “Using patented technology SMA is able to combat problems related to overlapping tickers across asset classes. For example, identifying whether an ETH tweet is on Ethereum or Ethan Allen, the publicly traded furniture company.”

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China Looking into the Application of Blockchain and AI for Cross-Border Financing

China is researching the application of blockchain technology and artificial intelligence in cross-border financing, with a focus on risk management.

As reported by Reuters on Oct. 27, Lu Lei, the deputy head of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) in China, said that there are plans to use blockchain and AI for cross-border financing, after Facebook announced plans for its Libra stablecoin.

Lu told a forum in Shanghai: “We need to pay special attention to the rapid development of digital finance and fintech. When we are not entirely certain where a (new) form of business is heading, we must pay attention to risk management.”

Lu also expressed the intention to open up China’s capital markets, including bond markets and to consolidate investment channels for foreign investors.

China has a new plan called the Qualified Domestic Limited Partnership scheme, which allows foreign asset managers to raise money locally for overseas investments.

The urge to innovate came after the remarks of China’s President, Xi Jinping, who recently said that China should seize the opportunity to accelerate the blockchain of blockchain as a core of innovation in China.

The Standing Committee of the 13th National People’s Congress in China has recently also passed a new law regulating cryptography that will be taken into effect in January 2020.

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Blockshow 2019: Todalarity Decentralizing the Global AI Synergy

Since the dawn of the fourth industrial revolution in the late 2000s, artificial intelligence (AI) has been one of the most discussed and misunderstood technologies. For many, it seems the term itself is too closely linked to popular culture and science fiction, causing unrealistic anxiety about AI replacing our human workforce as well as improbable expectations regarding the limits of the technology.

AI tools generally present a range of new functionality for businesses, and many processes have to this day been automated, however, the use of artificial intelligence that you are likely to encounter is still fairly limited. While AI does describe the simulation of human intelligence by machines, most AI we encounter in our day to day lives are, such as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, described as ‘narrow AI’ and are of relatively weak intelligence—capable of performing basic tasks within a very specific framework.

Artificial General Intelligence

The AI capabilities discussed at the Blockshow 2019 will go far beyond this framework. Two of the leading innovators in this space, Dr Ben Goertzel, CEO, SingularityNET and Toufi Saliba, CEO, Toda.Network have both been working separately on a much stronger types AI within their blockchain networks. Powerful AI also known as artificial general intelligence (AGI)—AI systems with learning human cognitive abilities. When presented with an unfamiliar task, an AGI system is able to find a solution without human intervention. Goertzel explained, “A SingularityNET network is a collection of “AI agents” that offer AI services to external clients and to other AI agents.” These AI agents can describe what services they offer, find other agents that meet given criteria and rate the quality of other agents thereby fostering the emergence of complexes of AI agents possessing a synergetic combined intelligence richer and greater than the sum of the intelligence of the component agents. According to Goertzel, the union of SingularityNET and the Toda.Network—Todalarity—will be at the core of the “emerging global brain.” Todalarity is essentially a product accelerator that aims to help new AI startups to integrate their products into the TODA and SingularityNET blockchain ecosystems.

Joining Forces

Saliba began his discussion by highlighting that if any of us were to search the terms blockchain, decentralized or AI—that 90% of the projects we would likely find would be “scams” that have no real future and a further 9% are not really innovating. He believes he has searched this space far and wide and has found his 1% in Dr. Goertzel. A quick comparison of their respective organizations’ missions would confirm this compatibility. Goertzel also acknowledged that the union is almost too perfect and that Toda.Network appears to be capable of overcoming the limitations he has found within the Ethereum blockchain, where his AI Agents currently exist. He described the Toda architecture as, “the next step in the evolution of the Internet of value.” I will defer further explanation of this partnership to Dr. Ben Goertzel who better explains the impetus in his recent blog post from Sept. 28.

Decentralizing Governance of the Global Brain

So why is it a necessity for Artificial Intelligence to have autonomous decentralized governance? Saliba explained it through a comparison to our smartphones. Today almost everyone has a smartphone. When smartphones emerged, many resisted them but soon found themselves uncompetitive in the market. It makes sense as a smartphone ultimately allows you access to the internet and a vast amount of information. Elon Musk has described modern people with smartphones as “cyborgs” but just with a slow connection. As mentioned above, smartphones already currently use narrow AI technology, notable apps like Siri but also in terms of predictive texts, search engine optimization, etc. In a sense, smartphones are intelligent. But for all that they provide, Saliba explained, “The way they are built today they can be controlled by a central agency.” Saliba stated that the interesting thing is that we are all contributing to building centralized AI but when the day comes. Still, when the centralized technology is at its peak, we will not want to buy it; we will be looking for decentralized AI services instead. Saliba hypothesized that smartphones of the future will likely be 8000 times more intelligent than people and may possibly come in the form of a weekly pill that we take to connect ourselves to the internet or global brain—this connection would essentially allow humans super intelligence. He conducted a quick straw poll with the crowd asking who in the room would take such a pill knowing that it could be overridden by a central agency. No hands were raised. He confirmed, “I usually get about zero percent on that question.” Saliba then asked who would take a pill that still offered such amazing enhancements but was decentralized, meaning no one could override the host. “About 96.338 %,” he joked at the overwhelming show of hands in the audience. Saliba stated, “So there’s the demand, and what we’re doing is setting the path towards proper autonomous decentralized governance so you can build a product that has a demand, and if it has a demand it will be profitable.”

Todalarity will launch in January of 2020 and will gather 100 of the most powerful AI engines from some of the best ventures in the world, and gathered in a single blockchain to give users access to the AI modifications they would like to leverage. Goertzel explained, “We’re working with Cisco, PICC, Dominos, various large companies to get them on board, the decentralized AI ecosystem but in the end, it’s not just about large enterprises. We need a robust startup ecosystem, building on all the decentralized platforms out there. And I think we can do something a lot more interesting than tech startups and the standard tech accelerators and incubators because the branding is something much more specific. What we’re aiming at with Todalarity is to take, let’s say, 100 startups with promising things that use AI or provide AI and basically help them to put their products into the decentralized ecosystem, which can be Singularity or it can be Toda.” He continued, “What we need is for all of the people who have amazing new ideas ready for AI, we don’t want them to just be creating a startup to be acquired by a big company. You’re going to be creating a startup that will provide to anyone in the world in a way that can be creatively utilized within the decentralized platform. So they can monetize their life without having to be acquired by a big company. And they can get smarter and smarter by the synergy with others as it connects to the decentralized network.”