Consensus AI Advisor: Trent McConaghy
It is with great pleasure that we announce Trent McConaghy joining Consensus AI as the advisor to the project.
Trent is the artificial intelligence researcher, blockchain professional and entrepreneur who is focused on solving some very challenging problems, building things that matter for humanity in the long term. His list of achievements is incredible — Trent founded several successful startups in the AI space over the years, worked on machine learning research for the Canadian Department of National Defence, wrote 2 books and 35 papers, has 20 patents and holds a PhD in EE from KU Leuven, Belgium, where his thesis was awarded #1 in the field worldwide.
His most recent endeavour is Ocean Protocol — the decentralized data exchange protocol to unlock data for artificial intelligence. Ocean lets people share and monetize the data while guaranteeing control, auditability, transparency and compliance. It provides the technical foundation for the trusted environment that connects the data providers, data consumers and third-party developers. Trent is also the founder of BigchainDB and IPDB, that became the building blocks for Ocean.
The work he is doing is important for a number of reasons, but the most important one is the democratization of data access. Because of the massive data requirements, currently, there are not too many companies in the world that can really build AI. Today, a few centralized corporations hold enormous AI resources, including data assets, which allow them to create powerful machine learning systems. This leads to a state of things where AI development is in the hands of a small group of people — and if things don’t change, this problem will only get worse over time, concentrating colossal power within this very small group. Ocean Protocol aims to unlock data, creating a decentralized marketplace that democratizes the world of artificial intelligence development.
This is very much in line with the aims of Consensus AI — to create a world of shared understanding and better decision making with the use of available data and smart algorithms. We believe that this can only achieved with the decentralization of data storage and processing, to be able to avoid bias and private group interest. While Ocean’s aim is to democratize data storage, access and usage, our goal is to use the available data for public good — to build open, objective and data-driven solutions to the problems of our society — like climate crisis, poverty, conflict, environmental pollution, migration, the changing nature of work and citizenship etc. — and facilitate the solutions’ distribution and adoption by individuals, companies and governments. Also, there is the shared vision for the collective human evolution — not merely to get by, but to strive towards self-actualization. Our perspective on the future is the one where people spend their time not worrying about how to survive and how to protect and care for their loved ones, but instead create — start companies, engage in scientific research, create art, write novels, explore space etc. — and the mundane tasks are automated and the basic needs are provided by machines. This is the future we are looking forward to seeing and are working towards, and we’re incredibly excited to have Trent support us.
Trent and I met during my work at the Government of Estonia e-Residency (among other things he is also the member of the advisory group to the e-Residency team) and he has been very helpful to us by providing valuable perspective and industry insight. Later I discovered that he is also a fellow Canadian living in Europe :) We are very lucky and honoured to have Trent dedicate his unique perspective and time to the Consensus AI project.
You can read more about Trent McConaghy and his work on his blog, especially the articles on the AI DAOs, AI on blockchain and the vision for the future of humanity.
