• The Interview

A Sit Down with DBC’s He Yong

DeepBrain Chain stormed into the blockchain world with a successful ICO in late 2017 and has presented an extremely interesting project for those interested in the advancements of blockchain and artificial intelligence. The team is stacked with artificial intelligence experts that are keen on exploring the practical application of blockchain to innovate within an industry that is limited by its increasingly expensive computation resources.

DeepBrain Chain pools together computer resources from people all over the world to provide computational power to artificial intelligence companies. This helps AI companies significantly cut down on the costs of computational resources, allowing them to become more effective in prototyping and practice.

When we met He Yong, the DeepBrain Chain CEO, we wanted to get a deeper look into the makings of the platform and its goals for the future. He Yong greeted our questions with a persistent smile and a jovial demeanor, and our interpreter, Joya, navigated our questions and CEO’s responses with impressive eloquence.  We hope that you’ll find the talk as informative as we did.

The following interview with He Yong was conducted at Blockchain Connect 2018 by Alex Moskov and Colin Harper.

The Interview

CoinCentral: So my first question is, why artificial intelligence on the blockchain?

He Yong: This is a very good question–there is a reason behind it.  We’ve been in the AI field for 4-5 years now, but every time we have a meeting, our CTO will raise a question.  He will tell me that we don’t have enough machines–we need to buy more machines and computing power. Also, we need to buy more data, so everyone’s a little troubled because it’s very expensive equipment and data to buy.  So we were wondering, the troubles we were encountering, were other AI companies having the same issue?  It just so happened at the time that I was also researching and studying the technicals behind Bitcoin.  So it occurred to me, perhaps, blockchain technology could help AI solve some of its issues. This is how DBC came about.

Brilliant.  So what I’m gathering from this is, you mentioned a lot about when an AI platform wants to expand, it needs to acquire more data, more infrastructure.  So distributed computing power through blockchain would allow DBC to acquire data more easily?

You should put it this way: DBC will allow AI companies to acquire data more easily.  Because a lot of data are private data.  They have heavy security, such as on health and on finance.  For AI companies, it’s almost next to impossible to acquire these data.  The reason being, these data are easy to copy.  After the data is copied, they’re easy to leak.  One of DBC’s core features is trying to solve this data leakage issue, and this will help AI companies’ willingness to share data, thus reducing the cost you spend on data, to increase the flow of data in society. This will expand and really show the value of data.

So the focus seems that you’re trying to make data easier to acquire without sacrificing cost and security.

Yes, this is one of the issues we’re trying to solve–you’re very correct on that point. To reduce the cost of data and to also increase the flow of data to help more companies acquire data, this is also based on protecting data.

One thing that we’ve been seeing in the space with projects that are very tech-heavy, they’re working on very innovative ideas.  But one thing that we’re noticing from a lot of these projects is that they have a very vague business map of the future.  

DBC’s idea is very clear.  Its target clients and roadmap are also very clear.  Our top clients are all AI companies.  Second, our roadmap is also very clear, according to the core features of our product.  First, our feature is to reduce computational cost for AI companies.  This is our first core feature, and we’re going to test it in Q3 this year.  Next, AI companies can buy data on the platform, and data providers will provide this data.  In the future, we want to help AI companies with financing, we want to try to help them financing on our platform.

So what’s the day in the life of the CEO of DBC look like?

“There is not a lot of regular schedule in a day.  Because our company is based in Shanghai in China, but also in Silicon Valley and also in Korea.  So my working time is not very regular.  As soon as I wake up, I start working on my phone and have to go to multiple countries.

So in that vein, what is your favorite thing to do that’s not this?

In the past I liked to watch films–in the past.  But I don’t go to the cinema.  It’s just on my laptop.  It’s been almost six months since I watched films regularly.

So now to circle back into the project.  How do you see what you’re working on, making data easier to process, evolving into other industries?  Like VR and AR, for example.

 There’s a very core feature in the industries that we’re trying to help.  The data they’re trying to acquire have very high security, the reason behind this level of data security being government regulations–that’s why the data can’t be shared.  We can help them with this, by not keeping the data on a lone island and instead sharing it with the companies. Amongst these industries, they actually have a lot of data, for example the Internet of Things.  They have a lot of data, but albeit having a lot of data, they only use their own data in training.  They’re too afraid to share for someone else to use.  Because if they do so, there will be a few issues.  First, this data could be leaked to their competitors.  Second, the privacy of their users could be leaked.  For an IoT company, this is a very serious issue.  So companies cannot share data easily, and this gives the impression that there is little data out there, but in reality, there is a lot.

So what I’m getting from this, one of the benefits of DBC is accessibility.

Yes

And we’re starting to see AI, ML really starting to bud as a potential technology that could revolutionize any given industry in the future.  Do you think DBC has the chance to reduce human error in this space.

You could put it this way.  The AI industry want to increase efficiency, which is increased productivity.  So a lot of things that were once by labor will now be done by machines, so we believe that AI will change the world.  And we want to help AI companies change the world easier and faster with low costs.

Do you think that a blockchain program like DBC will be essentially to help AI reach its potential?

This should be a basis for the AI industry, the basic technology.  It will help the growth of the AI industry, to help them better serve humans. So yes.  I also believe that, at the moment, we do not broadcast our service much to the outside world.  But that’s because maybe the need of it isn’t exactly very urgent.  Some people claim that AI is threatening humanity.  We think that blockchain can stop that, because AI is actually not that intelligent at the moment, so the threat is relatively low.  But in a decade, two decades, AI will be really strong, a lot stronger than it is now.  When AI is running on blockchain, on smart contracts, we can refrain AI.  For example, we can write a blockchain algorithm to restrain the computational power of AI and keep it from acting on its own.

So, essentially, it would be a checks and balances of sorts?

Yes, if AI runs on blockchain we can control AI computations, but outside of blockchain, it will be hard to control.  This is one of our potential functions, but we have never broadcasted such. Because we don’t think at the moment there’s a need for such a service because AI is not threatening humanity right now.

So, let’s say that someone reads this interview, gets really excited, and wants to get involved.  How can our readers support DBC?

There are a few things they can do to support if they want to get to know us more.  Follow us on Twitter, look at our website–we will keep information updated on our website.  If they want to invest in us, they could go on Huobi or KuCoin exchanges.

If there are people who want to become a strategic partner with DBC, how would they contact you?

They should email [email protected].  We are working on a community program, and the community, if anyone wants to contribute to the development of the community, we will reward them.

To learn more about He Yong and the DeepBrain Chain project, check out their site, whitepaper, and Twitter.