On 23 September, the Center for Responsible Business and Innovation (CRBI) of the University of Nottingham Ningbo China successfully held its fifth session of "Let'S talk!" The event invited Dr Max Li, Adjunct Professor in the department of electrical engineering at Columbia University in the City of New York, the founder & CEO of OORT, a cloud for decentralized AI, to speak on "Decentralised AI" to discuss its potential solutions which could address issues of privacy, transparency and sustainability.
Moderated by Dr Steven Zhou, Deputy Director of CRBI, the "Let'S talk!" event aims to create a platform for interaction and dialogue with leaders in sustainable development and innovative thinking. It seeks to explore innovative solutions, enhance awareness and practice of sustainable development.
In his welcome address, Professor Kok Wei Khong, Dean of Nottingham University Business School China, emphasised the importance of sustainability and the university's relentless quest to achieve it.
In his keynote speech, Dr Max Li first unravelled the "algorithmic black box" of Centralised AI, a challenge that is mainly reflected in users' concerns about the privacy and security of their personal information, the opacity of the algorithmic decision-making process, and the bias of AI results due to the bias of the training data, which can weaken the basis of user trust in AI technology. In response, Dr Li suggested, "the only viable solution to these issues is to develop Decentralised AI and create a true 'OpenAI' while enabling contributions to sustainability."
On this basis, Dr Li elaborated on the multiple advantages and solutions of Decentralised AI, specifying that Decentralised AI has the benefits of being transparent, sustainable, private and scalable. He then gave an in-depth analysis of the three core solutions of Decentralised AI: a community driven, blockchain-powered datahub; a decentralised object storage service; a decentralised computing service.
Dr Li also demonstrated the OORT cloud platform as a practical example of Decentralised AI.
OORT is a decentralised, verifiable cloud computing platform. By utilising global resources from data centers to smartphones, it aims to enable trustworthy AI applications for humanity. The platform consists of three components: the OORT datahub, the OORT storage, and the OORT compute. Of particular note, the OORT datahub demonstrates a high degree of inclusivity, ensuring easy access for users regardless of region, time of day or device type. Its payment mechanism quickly rewards data contributors with timely rewards. At the same time, transparency is another highlight, with all the processed datasets recorded in detail on the blockchain, ensuring that the data operations are open and traceable.
During the interactive Q&A session, there was an in-depth discussion on how AI technology can contribute to the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on "Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure" (SDG 9) and "Responsible Consumption and Production" (SDG 12), while also following ESG (Environment, Sustainability and Governance) principles.
Professor Jing Dai, Director of CRBI concluded her speech by saying, "Today's event not only provided theoretical insights but also introduced pragmatic methodologies to help us better understand and apply AI. The development of Decentralised AI is far from over; it represents the future and heralds endless challenges and opportunities. I am excited for CRBI to continue organising high-quality lectures and exploring diversified platforms for knowledge exchange and sharing to educate responsible business and shape a more sustainable future."