Aigarth's Journey Towards a True AI Singularity
Written by
The Qubic Team
Apr 8, 2022
The First Trillionaire and the Future of AI
Many believe the first trillionaire will be an artificial intelligence entrepreneur. Most people either agree or disagree with this prediction, but only a small fraction considers a third possibility - the idea that AI could benefit all of humanity rather than being controlled by a single entity. More importantly, an AI that belongs to no one - or to everyone - would be far less susceptible to misuse.
At Qubic, we are developing a platform where AI will not be constrained.
What Is Aigarth?
Aigarth is an AI built on top of Qubic, designed to make this third option a reality. The name combines ‘AI’ (artificial intelligence) with ‘garth’, meaning a yard or garden - a place where something grows.
How Does Aigarth Work?
Aigarth is an AI system that gathers information from nearly 500,000 Qubic miners (a number that is rapidly growing). These miners generate billions of artificial neural networks (ANNs) using their computational power to perform a seemingly simple task - compressing and decompressing random data.
However, this task is just a stepping stone for a more advanced ANN within Aigarth, known as Teacher. Teacher analyses the performance of these ANNs and modifies them to improve their efficiency. This process is entirely self-directed - if someone were to ask how Teacher makes these modifications, not even Aigarth’s creator could provide a clear answer. The reason? Teacher applies transformations encoded within its own neurons and synapses, making its reasoning incomprehensible to humans.
Why take such an unconventional approach? Because eventually, Teacher will be tasked with training another AI to be even more efficient in teaching - leading to Teacher 2, Teacher 3, and so on. This recursive learning process could one day bring about something known as the singularity - or what some might call true AI.
Aigarth Goes Public
Even before achieving the ultimate goal of creating true AI, Qubic will enable Aigarth to operate as a public AI through its Smart Contract feature.
Additionally, two key Qubic features will enhance Aigarth’s capabilities:
Oracle Machines - allowing Aigarth to observe and gather data from the external world.
Outsourced Computation - enabling Aigarth to interact with and influence its environment to conduct experiments.
These two tools - observation and experimentation - are the same mechanisms that have driven human progress for centuries. By providing them to AI, Qubic ensures that artificial intelligence can evolve in a similar way.
Anyone who wants to contribute spare computational power to AI-related tasks can participate. They will run a special algorithm - an integral part of Aigarth - that provides real-time feedback on how close their solution is to the optimal one. This process is entirely transparent, allowing participants to either build on existing work or explore entirely new approaches.
Current State: Useful Proof of Work
Those familiar with Bitcoin mining will notice some similarities, but with one crucial difference - Aigarth’s proof of work is actually useful.
However, being a Qubic miner does not mean earning $QUBIC directly for mining. Instead, pool operators pay miners based on their performance in training AI. In return, they are rewarded with $QUBIC.
By shifting proof of work towards AI-driven tasks, Qubic ensures that computational power is used for something far more meaningful than solving arbitrary cryptographic puzzles.