The 21st century is the century of Asia. In the previous industrial revolutions in the process of human industrialization, Asia was either absent or followed. Although in the past more than a century, we in Asia have always been "people who have seen the tide on the river", but this time, the fourth industrial wave is surging, "the dragon turns the vast sea and the waves are strong", Asia is not only a participant and It is a promoter, and will become a leader in the ensuing fourth industrial revolution. It is in a leading position in all aspects of emerging technology research, application, market cultivation and development, business model innovation, regulation and policy guidance. The following four aspects can roughly reflect the current status of emerging technology development in Asia today:
1. Artificial intelligence (AI) in Asia has begun to promote the development of productivity on a large scale and on a large scale
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the deep development and utilization of computer systems to perform tasks that usually require human intelligence. It has been upgraded from the early symbolic artificial intelligence to the knowledge-based expert system, machine learning (Machine Learning) and today's deep learning (Deep Learning). With the support of big data, advanced algorithms, powerful computing power and cloud services, artificial intelligence has made great development achievements in the past decade. At present, artificial intelligence mainly focuses on six directions, namely computer vision, image recognition, machine learning, natural language processing, speech recognition and robotics. Convolutional Neural Network (Convolutional Neural Network), Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) and Variation Autoencorder (VAE) have the most potential for game environment engines.
When it comes to artificial intelligence, we must first talk about China. As of July 2022, the total number of mobile Internet users has reached 770 million, of which more than 470 million are 5G high-speed network users. Huge users have generated unprecedented massive amounts of big data, huge market demand and strong policy support, making China far ahead in high-quality academic research and applications in the field of artificial intelligence, and becoming the leader in the Asian artificial intelligence market. In terms of 2020 revenue, SenseTime is the largest artificial intelligence software company in Asia and the largest supplier of computer vision software in China. Many unicorns such as DJI, UBTECH, Cambrian, Yuncong Technology and Yitu have made China the world's leading commercial AI application center. Representative companies in China, such as SenseTime, use technological advantages to build open technology platforms and provide developers with an artificial intelligence development environment. At the same time, Japan also has a large AI patent portfolio. India has the fastest growing use of AI. Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Korea and other countries are also major competitors in the Asian artificial intelligence market. In 2019, Singapore released an 11-year national artificial intelligence strategy, intending to vigorously develop artificial intelligence technology. As the world's leading Web3 node, Singapore's artificial intelligence companies will grow exponentially in the next few years.
2. The competition in cloud services is fierce, and the Asian market structure is stable
Currently, China is undoubtedly the largest cloud computing market in Asia, followed by Japan, India, South Korea and Hong Kong. India is developing the fastest. The Chinese market is currently dominated by local companies Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu. Due to the Sino-US trade dispute and technology market regulation caused by geopolitical reasons, the current data and cloud service customers in China are nicknamed the "Tsinghua" customer group. The main reason is that the customers are basically Chinese and Chinese companies. International companies are in fierce competition with local cloud service companies in other Asian countries. For example, Amazon's AWS's leading position in the Asian and global markets can be said to be "one rides the dust, alone seeks defeat." Likewise, with the growth of web3 in Asia, individuals and businesses will have massive demand for cloud services and AI applications.
3. In the field of chip manufacturing, "the mountain is about to come and the wind is full"
Asia is an important production base for chips. In 2022, Taiwan, China will account for 65% of the world's semiconductor production capacity and almost 90% of advanced process chips. In contrast, mainland China accounts for only 5% of global production capacity. The data for 2021 shows that chips produced in Asia account for 80% of the world's total chip production capacity, of which Taiwan accounts for about 22%, South Korea about 21%, and mainland China and Japan about 15%. Chip production capacity only accounts for about 8%. China, Japan, South Korea and other countries and regions have provided strategic financial incentives for the development of local chip technology to expand and upgrade production. In fact, the world's photoresist coatings and high-end aluminum electrolytic capacitors are critical to the manufacture of the most advanced chips, but all supplies come from Japan, where technology companies are consolidating control of manufacturing components and chemicals, competing with the United States and China. With the increasingly intense global geopolitics and the challenges of civilizational conflicts, in such an environment of external uncertainty, the advantages of Japanese manufacturers are becoming more and more obvious.
4. Internet 3.0 (Web3) is developing rapidly, and the Metaverse is about to emerge
Internet 3.0 (Web3), based on the concept of decentralized network and blockchain technology, aims to solve the pain points of today's Internet, that is, to allow users to regain control of their own information: privacy and ownership of information; Trusted Internet of Value. We see the financial system of Web3: Decentralized Finance (DeFi); Confirmation Tool: Non-homogeneous Token (NFT); breakthrough.
The open source and composable features make Web3 have unparalleled development conditions, and the open and transparent organization method stimulates participants' enthusiasm for innovation. Web3 is bringing unexpected new products faster than expected and becoming an important part of the Metaverse. We see more and more ordinary people entering the metaverse to enjoy interesting digital virtual life.
Singapore, Japan, and South Korea are striving to become important nodes (nodes) of Web3. Japan even formulated Web3 regulations in June this year, and China is also laying out a Metaverse with Chinese characteristics. Under the guidance of reasonable supervision, Web3 is developing rapidly, and the metaverse will become a part of people's daily life in the future. In 2021, the global Web3 market size has reached 3.2 billion U.S. dollars. It is estimated that by 2030, the market size of Web3 will reach 81.5 billion U.S. dollars. In 2019, the market size of Metaverse will maintain a long-term strong growth at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 51%.
Judging from the current development status of the most important emerging technologies, Asia is not only in a leading position, but also constantly rising. We are in China and Singapore, and we can deeply appreciate the exponential changes that technology has brought to our lives. And one of the important driving forces is the convergence of technology (Convergence). The complementary advantages between different technologies can give full play to and enhance the role of technology. By focusing on just one technology, we risk missing the broader impacts and opportunities driven by technological convergence. Let's use the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain (Blockchain) technology as an example to see what changes such technology integration can bring to our lives in the future?
Blockchain is actually a type of public database, or a distributed ledger, that provides instant, public, and verifiable encrypted data when multiple parties initiate and complete transactions. The blockchain is supported by a number of technologies, including: data exchange and processing, multi-party storage technology based on modern encryption technology, distributed consensus protocol, peer-to-peer network communication technology, and smart contracts and other cutting-edge technologies. Blockchain technology can be applied to international payment, international trade, supply chain, medical health, public service, education, intellectual property, personal identity and privacy protection, etc., and it is very convenient for large-scale application in the consumer market. So, what can artificial intelligence bring to the blockchain? Tshilidzi Marwala and Bo Xing have done this in "Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence". Let's discuss the two points of view.
1. Optimize the energy consumption of the blockchain and promote sustainable development
AI has long been used to optimize large-scale systems, for example, the planning and operation of energy systems. Blockchains are essentially large-scale distributed systems. From the perspective of large-scale systems, we can establish a unified artificial intelligence-supported blockchain energy optimization solution to promote sustainable development. Or more directly, through artificial intelligence, solve the pain point of the application scenario of the blockchain system that consumes a lot of power.
2. Implement collaborative learning to facilitate scalable capabilities
The performance of the blockchain will be limited by the scaling problem. Each block has a certain amount of transaction data, and innovative artificial intelligence algorithms can learn from distributed data resources to provide an optimal global solution for the target blockchain system.
3. Detect blockchain application layer intrusion problems and improve security
At the blockchain application layer, intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion protection systems (IPS) are an important part of detecting threats. A branch of artificial intelligence technology - swarm intelligence has been widely used in intrusion detection systems to improve the overall performance of the system. Another branch of artificial intelligence—computational intelligence can also create more secure passwords and improve the ability of the blockchain system to defend against attacks. ability".
4. Predict the possibility of a node meeting a specific mining task, thereby improving efficiency
The network utility maximization model of artificial intelligence can help us find distributed solutions for congestion control, routing and scheduling of computer networks. Therefore, artificial intelligence can perform active and dynamic learning to accelerate the prediction of resources and improve the overall performance of the blockchain.
5. Establish a multi-agent system to alleviate the blockchain talent shortage
Introducing a multi-agent approach through artificial intelligence to alleviate the shortage of blockchain talents. By creating multitasking-driven virtual agents, the process of reading and writing blockchain transaction data can be fully automated. On the other hand, online learning supported by artificial intelligence technology can also help us train and cultivate blockchain talents.
6. Use open source data to make decisions
With more and more data based on blockchain technology, companies and individuals need to use the data at hand to make decisions. Artificial intelligence is well suited for this type of task.
Since it is technology integration, of course it cannot be one-way, and integration is a two-way dynamic process. Above we talked about the empowerment of artificial intelligence to the blockchain. Thang N. Dinh and My T. Thai proposed blockchain empowerment of artificial intelligence in "AI and Blockchain: A Disruptive Integration". We discuss their views below.
1. Privacy protection and data security sharing
The application of artificial intelligence technology requires massive amounts of data to train models. These data are currently only owned by Internet giants. Therefore, data privacy issues have attracted people's attention. And blockchain technology can solve this problem very well, because it can increase the transparency of data, and record who accessed the data responsibly and when. People can use blockchain technology to realize the separation of data ownership and usage rights, and determine the sharing objects and uses of data. In addition, people can also sell the right to use data through smart contracts to obtain economic benefits, eliminate middlemen in the data market, protect privacy, and enable small companies to obtain the right to use data and carry out artificial intelligence innovation. Through zero-knowledge proof technology, buyers of data usage rights can obtain the desired relevant information analysis results without knowing the data content or the identity of the data owner, rather than the data itself.
2. Configure idle computing capacity
Through blockchain-based cloud computing, distributed computing capabilities can be brought to artificial intelligence. Gamer PCs whose GPUs are typically used only part of the time can now earn revenue by selling computing time in the form of artificial intelligence contracts. AI developers, on the other hand, can leverage a large number of player GPUs to prepare, train, and deploy deep learning algorithms.
3. Preserve the overall decision-making process and clearly understand the attribution of decision-making
Machine learning has not been widely used in practice because it is difficult for humans to examine the attribution of its decisions. People need an immutable tracking system to verify the data change process. And blockchain provides a perfect match. People can track and preserve the complete decision-making process to better understand the logic behind the decision.
4. Coordinate untrusted devices
Artificial intelligence can mobilize untrustworthy devices such as group robots, Internet of Things, and mobile phones to make collective decisions. The consensus mechanism of the blockchain can play a good coordination role in this process.
Technology integration is the tipping point of application innovation. The integration of artificial intelligence and blockchain brings us the potential for a very wide range of application scenario innovation and business model innovation. The dividends of artificial intelligence will not only accelerate with the development of the blockchain, but with the integration of the two technologies, the blockchain will also be implemented on a large scale and in various industries faster and form productivity. This is what we often call technological synergy. The following are the successful practice cases we have seen:
In terms of the separation of data ownership and usage rights, PlatON uses cryptography-based privacy computing technology to make data available but invisible, helping artificial intelligence models to establish compliant data acquisition channels without infringing on data privacy. The data trading market built by block chain technology realizes the compliant circulation of data assets and releases the potential of data.
In terms of traceability and evidence storage, the copyright AI computing engine of AntChain uses artificial intelligence technology to quickly extract audio and video features, and complete automatic identification and judgment of similar content in a short time. As early as 2019, AntChain launched the copyright protection platform "Que Chisel", which uses blockchain technology to verify, store certificates and protect original pictures. Circulor leverages blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies to bring traceability solutions primarily to complex industrial supply chains.
In addition, in terms of smart contracts and smart service transactions, Cortex is an open source, peer-to-peer, decentralized blockchain that supports uploading, storing, and executing artificial intelligence models on a distributed network. AI models can be easily integrated into Cortex's smart contracts to create AI-enhanced decentralized applications. SingularityNET makes it easy for people to create, share and monetize AI services through its blockchain-based decentralized AI marketplace.
AI can manage the blockchain more efficiently than humans. Blockchain can help us track, understand and explain the decision-making process and attribution of AI decisions. Artificial intelligence can quickly and comprehensively read, understand and correlate data at an astonishing speed, greatly improving the level of intelligence and network efficiency for blockchain-based business networks. Using blockchain to store and distribute AI models can realize the deposit of audit trails. Therefore, the integration of blockchain and artificial intelligence can greatly enhance data security, privacy and enhance privacy protection and data security.
Hugo, a great French writer, has a famous saying: "The thinking of the beginning era has irresistible power." Let us maintain an open, inclusive, and curious attitude, and jointly promote the integration and coordinated development of cutting-edge technologies to promote artificial intelligence and regional development. Richer new application scenarios and more exciting business model innovations of blockchain in the Web3 metaverse.
author
Li Guoquan: Professor of Financial Technology and Blockchain, Singapore University of Social Sciences
Zheng Jincheng: Web3 researcher at Singapore University of Social Sciences
Yan Li: Senior Lecturer, Department of Strategy, Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
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