How Artificial Intelligence Can Grow by Onboarding the Unbanked

Everyone wants to know what technologies will dominate the future so that they can either get ahead of the game as an investor or with regard to choosing an occupation. Personally, I believe that artificial intelligence (AI) presents a lot of opportunities and that we will find more applications for it at a rapid pace.

But developing AI takes a lot of time and manpower, which is an interesting thought since a large component of AI is the idea that processes and outputs can be accomplished without human intervention. Yet, to get there, human access and influence is important.

On that basis, Dbrain, an AI startup, was born. It  creates a hybrid blockchain platform that uses both public blockchain build on the top of Ethereum and private blockchain to promote human involvement in building an AI database. It only works with a solid user base that will review sets of images and label them properly in exchange for a reward -- cryptocurrency. The specific cryptocurrency that users are to be rewarded with is called the Dbraincoin, and Dbrain says that users will be able to withdraw their earnings at any time.

Among the clients and partners listed by Dbrainon its website are some of the biggest names in the AI space and companies that have major market capitalization in the U.S., including Microsoft and NVIDIA.

The company has raised a total of $2.5 million in 1 funding round to date, which was announced mere days ago as part of a seed round.

"Talented and highly-skilled engineers are vital for AI development," said Dbrain chief executive Dmitry Matskevich. "But the truth is, their tech won't work without the input from less-skilled workers in developing countries, who analyze, markup and create those large datasets. We at Dbrain want to create a community which is involved in income distribution as much as in the development process. Anyone can join the platform, earn crypto and become a part of AI-driven industrial revolution."

And that is precisely Dbrain's target -- the hard workers in developing countries who are often unbanked. If Dbrain is able to onboard those workers and persuade them to accept the cryptocurrency in exchange for their input, then it is a process that may end up working well for Dbrain and companies looking to take advantage of inexpensive labor.