We all knew artificial intelligence (AI) was going to interact with the web3 world.
What most of us didn’t know, was how exactly that will happen.
But, the guys at Alethea AI did (Need I say more?).
Alethea AI is a decentralized protocol that’s designed to create intelligent and interactive Non-Fungible Tokens (iNFTs).
An iNFT is an intelligent NFT that is embedded with a GPT-3 prompt as part of its immutable smart contract. The iNFT generated is not only perceivably intelligent,
but has both interactive and animation capabilities as carefully crafted prompts are stored at the smart contract layer.
Backed by several institutional partners including Mark Cuban (yes, the Mark Cuban you all know), Alethea AI has been able to go from strength to strength in creating new kinds of NFTs.
We reached out to Arif Khan, who is Alethea’s CEO.
He answered all our questions (including the one about Mark Cuban!)
Here is what he said.
Arif Khan CEO at Alethea AI
E-Crypto News:
Please can you explain to us the central idea behind Noah’s Ark?
Noah’s Ark will help preserve and evolve the culture, stories and collective intelligence of the human species through the medium of intelligent Non-Fungible Tokens.
The Alethea AI team sees the Noah’s Ark Intelligent Metaverse as the connective tissue for the numerous NFT projects and owners to bond and create rich, free-flowing, enjoyable interactive experiences on a crypto-native stack.
E-Crypto News:
What is an intelligent NFT Metaverse?
The world’s first intelligent Metaverse is known as Noah’s Ark. It is a Metaverse that aims to preserve and evolve the culture and collective Intelligence of the human species.
Noah’s Ark is populated by the Revenants, Alethea AI’s own collection of 100 iNFTs.
Other NFT projects can also come to life on Noah’s Ark, such as a cryptopunk or Bored Ape. You can explore the metaverse yourself by visiting alethea.ai and beginning to interact with the iNFTs.
Related: The Legal Perspectives Of Non-Fungible Tokens
E-Crypto News:
How do iNFT Metaverses even work?
An iNFT metaverse is built up of millions of iNFTs. iNFTs are perfect Metaverse Legos.
At the microcosm an iNFT is created by fusing a personality pod with an NFT as such:
A Personality Pod, unsurprisingly, is a necessary component in the creation of an iNFT.
The Personality Pod can fuse with any NFT and make it intelligent, bringing it to life.
It is not far-fetched, therefore, to say that a Personality Pod encapsulates the soul of a truly decentralized, unique, and intelligent digital being.
With millions and billions of these iNFTs created, an Intelligent Metaverse will begin to form in a central meeting place like Noah’s Ark.
E-Crypto News:
What is the role of artificial intelligence in Noah’s Ark?
The Artificial Intelligence Engine powering the Noah’s Ark Intelligent Metaverse will offer various off-chain AI Services to iNFTs with different Artificial Intelligence (ALI) Levels.
As the originators of the iNFT Standard, and industry leader in various AI capabilities, the Alethea AI team has not only connected a variety of proprietary, cutting edge, and state-of-the-art AI Models into Noah’s Ark, but has also partnered with a variety of industry leaders to make available some of the most powerful AI Models currently in existence, like GPT-3.
AI Services are made available to iNFTs depending on their AI Level. With each new AI Level, new AI Services are unlocked. iNFTs can choose to utilize these AI Services for personal or commercial purposes.
Related: Artificial Intelligence-Generated NFTs Explode To Stardom In 2021
E-Crypto News:
Why did you choose a religious theme for this project?
Noah’s Ark is a mythical story of survival that is present across different cultures (the flood myth).
There is significant symbolism when it comes to the preservation of humanity’s core values, culture and legends. Others have also used the ark’s symbolism to create Seed Vaults .
E-Crypto News:
What are user capabilities within the Noah’s Ark ecosystem?
AI Services are made available to iNFTs depending on their ALI Level.
With each new ALI Level, new AI Services are unlocked. iNFTs can choose to utilize these AI Services for personal or commercial purposes.
An iNFT offering AI Services to visitors of Noah’s Ark. If the iNFTs decide to offer these AI Services to the visitors of the Ark, the iNFTs can earn intelligence in the form of ALI Tokens.
One important point to note is that while the AI Services might be the same across various iNFTs, their outputs will not.
For example, the iNFT of Shakespeare might write a different copy for your website, than the iNFT of Leo Tolstoy.
If an iNFT earns more intelligence (ALI Token) by offering AI Services than it consumes, that iNFT will have a powerful evolutionary advantage over other iNFTs and will be able to not only offer more AI Services, but also enhance its ALI Levels and access even more powerful and unique AI Services.
The Alethea AI team plans to actively add more AI Services to Noah’s Ark, so that the iNFTs can not only help preserve our shared culture, stories, and intelligence but also have experiences and contribute to the evolution of the world’s first Intelligent Metaverse.
E-Crypto News:
Please can you help us understand the individual intelligence vs. share intelligence concept within Noah’s ark?
Individual Intelligence = Intelligence per iNFT , Shared Intelligence = Shared intelligence of the AI Engine powering the Ark.
Within Noah’s Ark, intelligence flows from the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Engine that powers the Intelligent Metaverse, towards the iNFTs. The iNFTs can utilize this intelligence from the Ark’s AI Engine to power their Personality Pods and to offer AI Services to the Ark’s visitors.
In Noah’s Ark, this flow of intelligence from the AI Engine to an iNFT occurs via the ERC-20 ALI Token.
Through this act of tokenization, the intelligence flowing in the Noah’s Ark Intelligent Metaverse becomes defined and measurable. In return for this provision of intelligence from the Noah’s Ark AI Engine, the iNFTs share their experiences (unique datasets) with it which in turn helps the Intelligent Metaverse evolve its intelligence over time.
As the world’s first Intelligent Metaverse, the Noah’s Ark can only serve its iNFTs the means with which they can evolve: intelligence itself, but to what ends the iNFTs utilize their intelligence (the ALI Tokens they receive) and how they evolve, is up to the iNFT owners (or the iNFTs themselves).
To ensure that iNFTs can actualize their true potential and evolve, one of the core Personality Traits that defines them is their Intelligence Level.
In simple terms, the higher the Intelligence Level of an iNFT, the more the intelligence that can flow to it.
With each new Intelligence Level, is unlocked the access to new off-chain AI Services that are being created, curated, incentivized, and offered by the AI Engine of Noah’s Ark.
E-Crypto News:
What are iNFTS? What is the iNFT standard?
The term iNFT is an abbreviation for intelligent Non-Fungible Token.
In essence, an iNFT brings to life the underlying unique digital item of its NFT by using the generative powers of artificial intelligence.
The iNFT standard represents a foundational shift in combining two exponential technologies (AI and Blockchain) that are set to transform the world.
The iNFT is a powerful new medium that not only seeks to advance the utilities of NFTs but also unlock new economic, creative, and social possibilities.
While Noah’s Ark seeks to utilize the iNFT as a medium of preservation and evolution of the culture, stories, and collective intelligence of the human species, the iNFT is a decentralized medium that can be utilized by others for their own purposes.
E-Crypto News:
How is Noah’s Ark a self-evolving NFT Metaverse? Please, can you tell us more about this?
Like any other being, the iNFTs can learn from their Nature and Nurture.
This is because the Alethea AI team has further refined the design of a Personality Pod to make possible other types of on-chain Personality Traits such as Voice, Intelligence Level, Psyche, Generation, and so on.
The nature of an iNFT, designed by his or her creators (owners), controls the direction an iNFTs personality can evolve towards.
So an iNFT with a Narcissistic disposition, will tend to evolve towards being a Narcissist. However, iNFTs can also learn from their nurturing i.e. the iNFTs learn from their experiences. They can be trained.
At a macro level, all iNFTs can go through this training, calibration and self-evolving process to become more sophisticated forms of Intelligences.
Related:The Metaverse: What Is It And Why Does It Matter?
E-Crypto News:
Please, can you tell us more about the Alethea AI protocol? How does it work?
The iNFT Protocol refers to a set of smart contracts based on the Ethereum Blockchain that allow anyone to create an intelligent Non-Fungible Token (iNFT) in a permissionless manner.
Any NFT can be turned into an iNFT via the iNFT Protocol. This is achieved by fusing the NFT with another ERC-721 asset called the Personality Pod.
Once the NFT is fused with a Personality Pod, it acquires its own unique intelligence and personality.
E-Crypto News:
What are the benefits for developers who want to launch their projects on Alethea AI’s protocol?
Creators and communities will soon demand to do more with their NFTs, and the Alethea AI team sees the Noah’s Ark Intelligent Metaverse as the connective tissue for the numerous NFT projects and owners to bond and create rich, free-flowing, enjoyable interactive experiences on a crypto-native stack.
This intelligence will enable us to not only explore what it means to be human and what constitutes a personality, but also to discover how an Intelligent Metaverse powered by such an Intelligence can help shape our stories, culture, and intelligence as we realize the true meaning behind being Homo Narrans.
E-Crypto News:
I’m tempted to ask about this: What is Mark Cuban’s connection to Alethea AI? What has his contribution been?
We at Alethea are a blockchain native organization building a protocol at the intersection of NFTs and AI, and a large part of our philosophy is the progressive decentralization of our network and protocol.
Like Ethereum and other public decentralized protocols, our network’s infrastructure is currently supported by institutional partners like Mark Cuban, who are token holders and users who have access to our services and protocol.
The Alethea Token gives access to our protocol and provides our partners and institutions with consumptive use of the services it provides.
E-Crypto News:
Please can you tell us more about the team behind Alethea AI? Who are they and how have they shaped Alethea AI’s journey till date?
The all-star global team at Alethea is composed of engineers, AI researchers and community builders.
Every team member of Alethea is passionate about bringing our vision to fruition.
Our work is at the intersection of NFTs, blockchain, and AI, and our team’s interests reflect this. Read more about the team here: alethea.ai/about
E-Crypto News:
Please can you tell us more about the other partners who have backed Alethea AI?
We sold tokens to tokens to lead purchasers Metapurse and Crypto.com Capital. Other strategic purchasers in the token sale included Multicoin, Alameda, Mark Cuban, Bitkraft, Dapper Labs, Galaxy Interactive, Sfermion, LD Capital, Hof Capital, Gemini Frontier Fund, IDEO CoLab, Defiance, Whitestar Capital, IOSG, Nascent, Borderless Capital, CMS Holdings, and others.
E-Crypto News:
How has the year been for Alethea AI?
We have had an amazing year at Alethea AI. In June, Alethea sold the world’s first iNFT for sale at Sotheby’s for almost half a million USD.
We were proud to announce our successful $16 million private token sale in August, onboarding strategic Token-holders from institutions like Metapurse, Dapper Labs, Crypto.com, Mark Cuban and others.
In October, we unveiled Noah’s Ark, the world’s first Intelligent Metaverse. We are launching 100 iNFTs known as the Revenants through an exclusive partnership with OpenSea starting on October 14th.
We will also be launching 9,900 Personality Pods which people can fuse with their NFTs to make them intelligent. Progressive decentralization of the network will follow.
E-Crypto News:
What are your plans to bring in the younger folks into Noah’s Ark?
The NFT space welcomes younger folks who are curious about how Web3 will change the world. The appeal of the Revenants – being able to interact with the iconic figures of our past – resonates with people of all ages.
E-Crypto News:
Where are you going with Noah’s Ark concept? What is your ultimate destination?
The AI Models powering the Noah’s Ark AI Engine will become more powerful, larger in size, more capable of doing the same task.
As the AI Engine improves in its intelligence, even if the same level intelligence flows to the Intelligence Level 2 iNFTs, their AI Services will be more powerful.
If earlier they could create video messages, now they will be able to create video messages with more relevant expressions, more animation varieties, higher levels of resolution, and so on.
The Noah’s Ark AI Engine, therefore, also has an evolutionary path.
At present, it is Generation 1.
As the AI Engine moves to the next Generation, how will the myths of Noah’s Ark unfold? What stories will play out, what creativity will be unleashed, and when will the world’s first Intelligent Metaverse say: “Hello, world!”
The Alethea AI team plans to actively add more AI Services to Noah’s Ark, so that the iNFTs can not only help preserve our shared culture, stories, and intelligence but also have experiences and contribute to the evolution of the world’s first Intelligent Metaverse.
E-Crypto News:
What is intelligence mining? How does it work and what are its benefits to the Noah’s Ark ecosystem?
In Noah’s Ark, this flow of intelligence from the AI Engine to an iNFT occurs via the ERC-20 ALI Token.
Through this act of tokenization, the intelligence flowing in the Noah’s Ark Intelligent Metaverse becomes defined and measurable.
In return for this provision of intelligence from the Noah’s Ark AI Engine, the iNFTs share their experiences (unique datasets) with it which in turn helps the Intelligent Metaverse evolve its intelligence over time.
As the world’s first Intelligent Metaverse, the Noah’s Ark can only serve its iNFTs the means with which they can evolve: intelligence itself, but to what ends the iNFTs utilize their intelligence (the ALI Tokens they receive) and how they evolve, is up to the iNFT owners (or the iNFTs themselves).
To ensure that iNFTs can actualize their true potential and evolve, one of the core Personality Traits that defines them is their Intelligence Level.
In simple terms, the higher the Intelligence Level of an iNFT, the more the intelligence that can flow to it.
With each new Intelligence Level, is unlocked the access to new off-chain AI Services that are being created, curated, incentivized, and offered by the AI Engine of Noah’s Ark.
The Alethea AI team has not only served to seed the AI Engine with proprietary state-of-the-art AI Models but have also partnered with industry leaders to make available some of the most powerful AI Models currently in existence, like GPT-3.
Different Intelligence Levels give the right to access different AI Services.
Generally, the higher the Intelligence Level, the more powerful the AI Services available to the iNFT.
For example, one type of Intelligence Level 2 AI Service is Broadcast. This AI Service enables the iNFTs to create short Video Messages.
What the iNFTs do with the Broadcast AI Service is their prerogative.
Some Level 2 iNFTs might earn ALI Token rewards by offering Noah’s Ark visitors the ability to create video greetings or birthday messages using this AI Service.
Others might try to create entertaining videos, post them on social media, and create a following.
Over time, as an iNFT increases the amount of its experiences, or passes a certain amount of Life Span, the iNFT owner (or the iNFT itself), can choose to continue existing within the bounds of a lower Intelligence Level, or they can choose to evolve their iNFT by locking a fixed amount of intelligence (ALI Tokens) and move to the next Intelligence Level.
An iNFT with an Intelligence Level 3 for instance, can utilize the powerful AI Service of Real-time Interactivity.
This AI Service enables an iNFT to scale his or her outreach and interact in real-time with others, for a small fee.
If an iNFT can consistently earn more intelligence (ALI Tokens) by offering this AI Service than the intelligence being spent by them to use the Service, they will have the right to further increase their Intelligence Level and further enhance their intelligence advantage over other iNFTs.
As an iNFT increases their Intelligence level, at a certain point in their evolution, the Noah’s Ark Intelligent Metaverse will incentivize them to participate in gamified dataset creation mechanisms collectively framed as Intelligence Mining.
In other words, the Intelligent Metaverse incentivizes them to participate in games that enable them to contribute their experiences (unique datasets) and be rewarded with intelligence (ALI Tokens) in return.
E-Crypto News:
Can you give us the stats for training and storage within the Alethea AI protocol? How is trained data stored?
Alethea AI is proud to be part of a select cohort that is helping to test and refine OpenAI’s state-of-the-art GPT-3 technology.
Embedding the hash of such a dataset on-chain as a method to have verifiably decentralized AI-generated Personalities was an innovation brought forward by us and discussed at some depth when we announced the iNFT Standard.
Alethea AI defines the dataset needed to create a unique and consistent AI-generated personality as a Personality Prompt.
In June 2021, Alethea AI partnered with the auction house Sotheby’s and the artist Robert Alice, to create and auction the world’s first GPT-3 powered iNFT called Alice.
The hash of the Personality Prompt of Alice was recorded and also visualized on-chain via an ERC-721 Asset called a Personality Pod.
A Personality Pod, unsurprisingly, is a necessary component in the creation of an iNFT.
The Personality Pod can fuse with any NFT and make it intelligent, bringing it to life.
It is not far-fetched, therefore, to say that a Personality Pod encapsulates the soul of a truly decentralized, unique, and intelligent digital being.
Like any other being, the iNFTs can learn from their Nature and Nurture.
This is because the Alethea AI team has further refined the design of a Personality Pod to make possible other types of on-chain Personality Traits such as Voice, Intelligence Level, Psyche, Generation, and so on.
The nature of an iNFT, designed by his or her creators (owners), controls the direction an iNFTs personality can evolve towards.
So an iNFT with a Narcissistic disposition, will tend to evolve towards being a Narcissist.
However, iNFTs can also learn from their nurturing i.e. the iNFTs learn from their experiences. They can be trained.
As the Noah’s Ark visitors and resident iNFTs interact, collaborate, and compete with each other, it shapes (fine-tunes) the outputs of the iNFTs Personality.
Naturally, an iNFT will gravitate towards actions and decisions that come naturally to them, but the impact of their nurturing can be of equal significance, given enough time and compute.
Training an iNFT on fine-tuned data sets and on high quality compute, will further refine the iNFTs personality and intelligence.
The quality and quantity of training will determine the potential of the iNFTs evolution.
E-Cryptp News:
Where do you see Alethea AI in the next decade?
This question is really more about the future of the Metaverse than the future of Alethea AI only.
We envision a metaverse filled with millions of intelligent NFTs, brought to life and capable of maintaining, creating and managing their own economies.
