The Municipal Secretariat of Urban Infrastructure and Works contracted blockchain firm Construtivo to implement a blockchain solution for city hall, Cointelegraph Brasil reports on Sept. 1.
The municipal government of São Paulo, Brazil, is going to use a blockchain registry for its public works projects.
The city has decided to implement a blockchain solution for public works after poor conditions forced the closure of several bridges and roads, despite significant public investment in their construction.
Better transparency after past inefficiencies
According to Marcus Granadeiro, president of Construtivo, the platform will improve access to project-relevant data for all stakeholders. He said:
“It is imperative that data from all construction work assets in the city of São Paulo or from ongoing projects be available online to any decision maker. Process and document management takes place in real time from anywhere.”
Granadeiro added that using blockchain technology for public works projects will allow the city to identify the source of problems that may surface years after a project’s completion, as the technology provides an immutable record of all pertinent information.
Blockchain in public administration
In Brazil and in other countries, blockchain technology is increasingly implemented by various levels of government to improve transparency and efficiency in public administration. Earlier this summer, the Brazilian federal government began considering a draft bill that requires all units of local public administrations to promote new technologies such as blockchain.
In August, the government of the Indian state of Maharashtra, the second-largest state in the country, began preparing a regulatory sandbox for testing blockchain solutions across various applications. The Maharashtra government aims to apply blockchain technology in supply chains, agricultural marketing, vehicle registration and document management.
Cisco, SingularityNET to Decentralize Artificial General Intelligence via Blockchain
Networking giant Cisco Systems selected the blockchain-based platform developed by SingularityNET to host its decentralized AGI project.
Artificial General Intelligence is a branch of AI that focuses on a computer’s ability to learn intellectual tasks. Whereas existing AI might learn to read characters on a page, for example, a true AGI system might intuit how to write the book.
In a joint statement, Dr. Ben Goertzel, SingularityNET CEO, said, “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.”
SingularityNET’s platform democratizes AI by decentralizing its source, preventing any single force or player from hoarding computers’ capacity to learn.
Cisco and SingularityNET see the potential in building AGI together, according to Goertzel. He said this technology is “expected to provide tremendous commercial benefit to whomever develops it.”
“This benefit may initially take the form of a generation of ‘Narrow AGI’ systems that infuse general intelligence into products in specific vertical markets like, say, advertising, medical research, computer networking or financial analytic”, he said.
Cisco’s role in worldwide technology kickstarts that goal.
“To really build a global decentralized thinking machine we are going to need to put a lot of complicated ingredients together, and the collaboration between Cisco and SingularityNET has the potential to accelerate things tremendously”, Goertzel said.
Cisco Partners With SingularityNET on Decentralized Artificial Intelligence
Decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) firm SingularityNET and tech conglomerate Cisco have partnered to develop applied artificial general intelligence (AGI) technologies.
AGI is one aspect of AI technology that concentrates on learning the intellectual tasks of which humans are capable. Sometimes referred to as “Strong AI”, AGI emphasizes a machine’s ability to reason in uncertain situations, solve puzzles, plan and communicate in natural language.
Goertzel also said that the scale of Cisco’s AGI deployments will be a major driver for the firm’s development, stating:
“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.”
Early applications
SingularityNET founder Dr. Ben Goertzel said that initial deployments of AGI may take the form of “Narrow AGI” systems that combine the tech into verticalized markets like advertising, medical research, computer networking and financial analytics.
Indeed, SingularityNET has already applied its technology in certain sectors. In May, the Singapore and Malaysia division of Domino’s Pizza partnered with SingularityNET to use the blockchain-powered AI technology in its supply chain processes.
That same month, Chinese insurance giant Ping An partnered with the firm in a collaboration that will purportedly focus on optical character recognition, computer vision and model training.
Dr. Goertzel has said that AGI will gain broad traction in the near future, stating, “In 10 years you’re going to see AGIs with IQs higher than humans.”
