DAIS

Decentralized AI Society Welcomes New Members Hedera, NEAR and Secret

Rapid Expansion Marks Expanding Interest in “DeAI” Movement

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New york, January 15, 2025

The Decentralized AI Society (DAIS), an alliance of artificial intelligence and Web3 organizations dedicated to ensuring that the emerging AI economy is open, transparent and free from centralized domination by Web2 behemoths, announces three new members: Hedera, NEAR Foundation and the Secret Network Foundation. Each covers a distinctly different but equally important element of the rapidly growing decentralized AI ecosystem, with Hedera bridging to the broader enterprise world, NEAR Foundation drawing on its AI-pioneering pedigree and Secret helping to scale vitally important confidential computing infrastructure.

DAIS – whose founding members also include Ceti, Filecoin Foundation, Bloq, Hypercycle, Morpheus, Hemi, Odyssey and Lumerin – was launched in September to address the urgent need for a decentralized model of development, ownership and governance that can save the AI economy from the mistakes of the Web2 economy. Its goal is to give the leaders of this nascent industry the capacity to better collaborate as they collectively challenge the concentration of control over data and computing resources. The Society’s ultimate objective is to ensure that the AI era is not beset with the rampant privacy abuses, growing societal divides and stark economic imbalances that defined the post-millennial Web2 age.

In a statement

DAIS Chair Michael Casey, an author, journalist and former chief content officer at CoinDesk, expressed excitement over the organization’s broadening representation, as well as the development of some additional strategic partnerships. Following the integration of the Decentralized Storage Alliance, a global network of leading software, hardware, and solution providers committed to advancing decentralized storage solutions for enterprise, under a mutual partnership arrangement announced last month, DAIS is now entering into research collaborations with two other institutions. The Society will work with MIT Media Lab, where a decentralized AI initiative is being led by Prof. Ramesh Raskar, and with the Bermuda government.

The accelerating membership growth at DAIS is validation of decentralized AI’s potential as a transformative technology movement and that it represents a core use case for the data integrity and distributed ownership qualities enabled by blockchain technology,” said Casey. “These new members are all providing critical, complementary components of the DeAI ‘stack,’ which means their presence within DAIS will strengthen the Society members’ collaborative potential to overcome the challenges their industry faces and will put it on track to compete with the dangerously opaque centralized model.

Hedera Chief Operating Officer Shyam Nagarajan, said joining DAIS presents a unique opportunity to help the Society incorporate Web3’s decentralized technology into a wider variety of businesses that are looking to integrate AI into their operations.

Over the last 8 years

Hedera has built deep expertise and a strong network of enterprise partners in the DLT space” Nagarajan commented. ”With Hedera’s technology already supporting a number of innovative AI projects, this collaboration with DAIS is a key step in ensuring AI is developed both ethically and responsibly. We’re excited to share our insights and apply our enterprise experience to help develop industry-wide standards, policies, and principles for decentralized AI.”

With the addition of Near Foundation, DAIS incorporates the developers of one of the most dynamic Layer 1 blockchain communities and one that is drawing its founders’ unique AI pedigree to bring fundamental new AI capabilities to its core technology. Near Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin, a former member of Google’s “Transformer 8” group that helped spawn generative AI, said in a statement that there is a unique opportunity to channel resources and talent through DAIS to ensure that the emerging AI world is built on user-centric rails, provable data provenance and tokenized economics that allows for broad ownership of the most important technology facing humanity.

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol and NEAR AI, said: “In order to maximize the benefits of AI for users, businesses, and communities, we must make sure super-powerful AI is user-owned. Building decentralized, open source AI that can compete with major closed-source players will require collaboration and sharing resources at every layer of the stack. NEAR AI and our ecosystem of 50+ teams look forward to working with our DAIS colleagues and sharing our expertise at the intersection of AI and Web3.”

Finally, with the integration of the Secret Network Foundation, DAIS recognizes the key role this leader in the cutting edge field of confidential computing plays in developing and promoting a suite of technologies providing vital confidential infrastructure for major AI companies. In doing so, Secret is ensuring that businesses and consumers can easily and safely engage with confidential AI applications and start to tap its massive potential.

Lisa Loud, Executive Director at Secret Network, said

The accelerating membership growth at DAIS is validation of decentralized AI’s potential as a transformative technology movement and that it represents a core use case for the data integrity and distributed ownership qualities enabled by blockchain technology,” said Casey. “These new members are all providing critical, complementary components of the DeAI ‘stack,’ which means their presence within DAIS will strengthen the Society members’ collaborative potential to overcome the challenges their industry faces and will put it on track to compete with the dangerously opaque centralized model.

In Bermuda, DAIS is working with genetic data lab CariGenetics and other entities on the island in an initiative to encourage financial innovation for projects that give Bermudians ownership and control over DNA data used in AI health research. Within the context of that project, the Bermuda government is engaging with DAIS to understand how constructive policy can be applied in such areas.

Bermuda’s Premier, the Honorable David Burt, said the DAIS partnership stemmed from his government’s interest in developing constructive policies and regulations that encourage innovation in decentralized AI while protecting citizens from harm.  “This is an area where we can demonstrate our jurisdiction’s leadership in providing clarity for businesses looking to progress a more open and fair ecosystem,” Premier Burt said. “DAIS’s work in Bermuda is providing valuable insights to our policymakers as we explore this emerging technology sector, a field that will surely complement our regulated digital finance market.”

On Tuesday

January 21 during the World Economic Forum in Davos next week, DAIS will host a three-hour “Decentralized AI Salon” at the Global Blockchain Business Council’s lounge at the Beveldere Hotel, with the generous support of new member Hedera. Various speakers will explore decentralized AI’s opportunities and challenges, amplifying DAIS’s core message that by sharing information, seeking out common solutions and encouraging interoperability, the industry can more effectively compete with the centralized players and ensure the benefits of AI are widely distributed.

In pursuit of that mission, DAIS’s core areas of focus include:
  • Sponsoring research to tackle the challenges of decentralized machine learning and data processing.
  • Exploring innovative financing models for decentralized AI (DeAI) startups, including tokenized funding and traditional venture capital.
  • Working with policymakers to craft fair regulations that support the DeAI sector and prevent regulatory capture by entrenched tech giants.
  • Bridging the gap between the crypto world and mainstream institutions.
  • Promoting the benefits of decentralized AI over centralized alternatives.

About DAIS

The Decentralized AI Society (DAIS) brings together leading players in the decentralized AI ecosystem. It supports the development and adoption of AI products founded on self-sovereign data and identity, digital assets, open-source code, privacy-preserving models, edge computation and security, and decentralized infrastructure. DAIS’s mission is to share information, organizational heft and resources to ensure the internet of AI is built by and for the benefit of human beings rather than a few giant data-hogging social media companies.

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