When a part of the world condemns cryptocurrency as a “Ponzi scheme” that could “cause the next recession” and another part worries that AI will take jobs away from millions of people, an India based company, Accubits Technologies is building products integrating both AI and the technology behind bitcoin, the Blockchain. And it seems, combining these two technologies would make the world a better place to live in.
AI and Blockchain – a day probably won’t go by without you hearing something about these technologies. AI is fast-growing, it has successfully proliferated into several industries that directly or indirectly touch our lives. It has amazed us with its many capabilities ranging from diagnosing cancer more accurately than its human counterparts to defeating the world champion in the game Go. Even though we started hearing about Blockchain only recently, it is hailed as one of the essential IT inventions since the Internet. This decentralized technology has the potential to change the way the world works. It allows users to take power away from central authorities and then distribute it among lower rungs.
So far, in real life, the applications of AI and Blockchain have not crossed paths.
The most prominent applications of AI are in Natural Language Processing (NLP) and predictive analysis. Whereas Blockchain’s prominent applications are in ensuring value and data integrity. These two technologies have been moving in parallel so far. But we have now come across avenues where these two technologies could intersect with some examples of applications that have been able to bring AI and Blockchain under a single umbrella.
Penetration of AI in different industries is happening faster than ever before. Every day we come across an AI application in some shape or form. Maybe in the form of a conversational tool or something as simple as a FaceApp. Any AI application needs good data to generate good results. If we input authentic data into the AI system, we can generate trustable and accurate results. But at the same time, if the input data is not authentic or manipulated one, the results will also be unreliable. Which is the same problem that concerns every AI developer out there?
Developers at Accubits Technologies, an India Based company focusing on AI and Blockchain development, faced the same problem. They developed an employee performance tracking platform which collected a lot of data from different sources like employee attendance, tasks completion, performance review, reports, etc. Based on all the data collected, the system generated several signals and insights which could help the organization streamline the process to yield the improved output from the team. One of the key features of the platform Accubits built on was the performance rating of employees. The platform generates a score based on its machine learning algorithms run over all the data it collected.
Most organizations still rely on employee feedback to identify the shortcomings in management and operations. But unfortunately, the conventional process for feedback collection is not very efficient due to several reasons. Some employees may be skeptical about giving honest feedback because they think the superior may look at them unfavorably. In some other cases, the feedback provided by employees can be edited or manipulated by team leads or team managers if they feel the feedback could affect their reputation. Employee feedback, manager feedback, HR manager feedback, etc. are crucial factors that affect the rating of an employee. But, this rating could never be accurate if employees are skeptical about disclosing honest feedback and if the team leads edit or manipulate the feedback entered by employees.
This was a challenging problem to fix, and the developers at Accubits fixed it by introducing Blockchain to their platform architecture. They saved all the relevant data in a permission blockchain network. This prevented individuals from changing the records for their gain without all other users of the system validating it. Moreover, the employees’ feedback was anonymous since the feedback was accompanied only by a cryptographic hash, which encouraged employees to provide honest feedback. This integration of Blockchain in the AI system promises to preserve the integrity of the data since no one would be able to manipulate it without being noticed. Moreover, information is passed to only those members of the network who has permission to access it. Such an integration helped to achieve high accuracy in the results predicted by the system and eventually benefiting the organization which uses it.
The potential of integrating AI and Blockchain are compelling. These technologies complement each other in that one technology teaches machines to think and generate results, whereas the other technology distributes power to the lower levels where it should be. A world in which these technologies have been integrated will surely be a better place to live in.
