Decentralized AI is key for self-sovereignty — Onicai executives

Artificial intelligence researchers from the Dfinity Foundation — the nonprofit behind the Internet Computer Protocol — and executives from decentralized AI developer Onicai recently released the Manifesto for Decentralized AI. The manifesto outlined seven points to ensure that AI benefits the end-user, including self-sovereign AI that works for the user and not large institutions.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Onicai CEO Patrick Friedrich said the centralization of AI creates the potential for abuse by powerful corporations or state actors to control and manipulate populations in a near-absolute way. The Onicai CEO told Cointelegraph:

"Going forward, with more and more AI agents that act autonomously, we don't know what all of them can do, and we want to make sure they are not biased by some bigger interest — whether those be governments, political parties, or huge organizations and companies."

According to the Onicai executive, a solution to the problem of information censorship or manipulation is running decentralized AI through smart contracts on permissionless networks, which are immutable, open-source, and highly transparent.

This transparent set of rules would govern and constrain AI behavior and allow users to run their AI with custom parameters using local storage methods, decentralized clouds, or even hybrid models — giving users true control over the entire software stack running their AI.

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Stifling innovation and ignoring the niche

“I do not think we come from a direction of fear, but really from a direction of potential that AI has,” Onicai chief technical officer Arjaan Buijk said.

Buijk told Cointelegraph that AI companies focus on building general-purpose AI models, instead of custom-tailored or niche models. The lack of profitability means niche and unique implementations of AI models never materialize. This stifles innovation and limits the growth potential of AI.

The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI) launched the Cortex decentralized AI in November 2024 for this reason. Cortex is an enterprise-grade artificial intelligence for industrial needs that allows businesses to tailor AI models to their needs and reduce the reliance on general-purpose, centralized AI.

Michael Casey, the co-founder of the Decentralized AI Society, recently told Cointelegraph that the nonprofit group is exploring alternative funding methods for AI projects as a counter-balance to venture capital-funded projects.

On Nov. 11, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Lex Fridman that human-level AI may arrive in 2026 or by 2027. 

Amodei’s prediction that artificial general intelligence (AGI) will materialize by 2027 is years ahead of earlier predictions made by artificial intelligence researchers, who predicted the advent of AGI in the 2030s or beyond.

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