Interview with metaMe founder and CEO, Dele Atanda
Dele Atanda is the Founder and CEO of metaMe. metaMe is your digital self and personal AI. It is a universal wallet for managing your money and data and a marketplace in which you can sell your data to brands for money and rewards or tailored products and services, safely on your terms.
What is your background?
I have had one foot in the data space for the last decade, doing research and development around the technologies involved in data sovereignty and data privacy. In parallel I have been building digital engagement platforms on a global scale for large enterprises.
How did metaMe begin?
When we first got into the space, we uncovered big issues around digital rights, human rights, and civil rights as they pertained to the use of our data. We realized people share all this personal information with these huge controlling entities, so we wanted to figure out how to use this data in a way that enables people to have a better experience on the Internet. We started to look at innovations and technologies that could address such issues by providing more secure and private messaging services.
At that time there was social unrest driving change through the use of digital tools. On the one hand it was encouraging to see power returning to the people, but by the same token their lives were now in danger due to their digital footprints. Our objective was to provide people with the tools to continue creating social change without being at so much risk.
Then the Snowden revelations happened. Our first response was to establish our NGO, The Internet Foundation, based on three mandates. One being establishing a Universal Declaration of Digital Rights as an extension of human rights. Two, creating what we call a Clean Data Charter, which is like a self-governance framework for how companies should use consumer data in a responsible and sustainable manner. And three, empowering people to use their data to improve their lives. Setting up our foundation enabled us to separate our advocacy and policy-oriented work from our innovation and commercialization work.
By that time the privacy and security space became quite active. We saw an opportunity to move the conversation forward to data management not only as it applies to security but even in terms of data sharing and data trading. When cryptography and blockchain technologies finally caught up with what we were attempting it gave us the tools to enforce and track compliance in a reliable manner. Combined with incentive design we began creating a new kind of information management framework that brought about metaMe.
How do you feel about governments now beginning to regulate data, as is the case with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the EU?
The Snowden leaks showed us you need a combination of three codes to be truly effective in the data space. Those are one, a moral ethical code concerning privacy and data property, which has evolved tremendously in the last two years. The second is legal code. And the third is technical code. You cannot just have any one of these types of codes on their own because they all must work together. Regulation has an important role to play, and it is imperative law is involved with innovation.
The problem with government interference is unintended consequences. Many people, myself included, strongly pushed for the GDPR, which is definitely a pivotal reset of the worldwide data economy in many regards. However, we are now seeing the digital giants digging bigger moats around their data fiefdoms. Whereas three to five years ago companies like Google said privacy was dead, we are now in a situation where they recognize the importance of privacy. Though, rather than give back ownership of the data they have amassed to the people it belongs to these companies essentially aim to use GDPR to consolidate their position. This then creates anti-trust issues between the monopolies these industry leaders are establishing.
I do believe lawmakers are integral in shaping our governance systems. Unfortunately, they are often ill-informed, or behind the technology. But as a community we can do more to help them create legislation conducive to innovation and growth.
What is the mission of metaMe?
The mission of metaMe is to enable people to have sovereignty, agency, and autonomy over their data, so they can use it to train their own personal AI to drastically improving their everyday lives. We see ourselves as the first self-sovereign AI platform and a universal smart data marketplace whereby you have universal data assets, tradeable in a smart marketplace and you have your own personal AI to negotiate with enterprise AI (i.e. Siri, Alexa, Google Home, etc.).
What do you think you can contribute to/gain from DAIA?
I think working with DAIA will help us realize our vision of self-sovereign data and AI much quicker than we would on our own. The best way for metaMe to help the movement is by partnering with the right kinds of organizations along the way. The very essence of decentralization is community.
There are some great things DAIA can do for us in the short term. Our model uses a wallet-to-wallet framework to bring AI to users’ data. Every party in our ecosystem uses their wallet to either receive or provide data through what we call metaPods (mPods) packed with information. mPods are universal information assets that use blockchain and cryptography to make information exchange as secure and quantitative as exchanging currency. Receivers of mPods process their data in a secure, containerized development environment. Working with DAIA we can optimize our data environment to enable AI services to provide us with valuable and meaningful insights from data seamlessly and safely. We will also ensure the IP of the provider of the AI algorithm is protected and they are properly compensated for any computation they do. This works as a practical model for distributed AI utilization.
What we particularly bring that is beneficial from a technical perspective is access to large volumes of rich, clean and compliant data. AIs can specify the data sets they need and source them in an efficient and precise manner using our mPod framework. I think this is the perfect relationship between a rich, accurate source of data and a rich, diversified source of allied AI providers. That is what metaMe and DAIA together represents to me.
What is metaMe currently working on, and what can we expect to see from metaMe moving forward?
metaMe is currently focused on building up our core protocol. We are working towards having an SDK, DevNet and an API for mPods and our containerized environment, which AI algorithms can use to process mPods within the next three months. We are also working on a series of pilots with a few enterprise partners, such as IBM.
We have a specific first use case around social log-in as a self-sovereign identity management service as an alternative to Google, Facebook, and now Apple. The promise of decentralization is you do not have to trust in a third-party at all. Our blockchain model enables us to provide trusted data and trustless data sharing through AI encoded mPods to ensure data being transferred is only used in ways compliant with consent permissions given by the owner of the information. We cannot wait to share our future innovations!
What is the best way to keep up with metaMe?
Check out the metaMe website at www.metame.com, and while you are there be sure to subscribe to our mailing list to start receiving our newsletter! You can also find us on Medium, Telegram (metaMovement), and Twitter @metaMeHQ.
Interview conducted by Chantel Costa and Adam Spodek — DAIA Press Team
How can you get involved?
The vision of DAIA is to foster a world where AI technologies and associated data are made open with decentralized, democratic control for the benefit of all sentient beings.
The immense potential of AI means that it can either increase the inequalities of our societies or liberate us from numerous sufferings. We believe the best way forward is to come together and work practically toward creating a better future. We see a massive potential for evolution in the established centralized corporations. We believe tech giants can contribute immensely toward making the vision of DAIA a reality.
DAIA welcomes the participation of those corporations that are sincere about their aim and goal of democratizing AI. The open access networks that have come together to form DAIA are the enabling layer for such a democratization process.
To learn more about us and inquire for memberships, please contact us at team@daia.foundation.
