Category: Innovation

The Dawn of Self-Improving AI: Meta’s Secret Weapon

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn AI, Innovation, MetaverseLeave a comment

In the relentless race toward artificial general intelligence (AGI), tech titans have long vied for supremacy. Yet, in recent months, whispers from the corridors of Meta — formerly Facebook — suggest a revolutionary breakthrough that could redefine the landscape of AI: self-improving intelligence. This development, still shrouded in corporate secrecy, promises to fundamentally alter how machines learn, adapt, and evolve.

The Age of Autonomous Learning

Traditional AI systems, no matter how advanced, are bound by the limitations of their initial programming. Machine learning models improve through human-curated data and incremental updates, requiring engineers to intervene at nearly every stage. Meta’s rumored innovation, however, could unlock a new paradigm: machines capable of autonomously identifying inefficiencies, generating novel strategies, and iteratively improving their own architectures without human intervention.

Imagine an AI that not only solves problems but actively redesigns its own cognitive structure to perform better. This is no longer science fiction. Meta’s approach reportedly leverages recursive self-improvement, a concept long theorized in academic circles but never fully realized in a practical, scalable system.

The Mechanics Behind the Breakthrough

While Meta has remained tight-lipped, analysts speculate the core of this technology combines three critical components:

  1. Advanced Neural Architecture Search (NAS): Allowing AI to automatically discover optimal network structures for any task.
  2. Meta-Learning Algorithms: Teaching AI systems how to learn more efficiently from limited data, effectively learning how to learn.
  3. Self-Optimization Protocols: Enabling continuous performance evaluation and autonomous refinement of both model parameters and operational strategies.

Together, these elements could allow an AI to self-evolve at unprecedented speed, shrinking the gap between human-level intelligence and machine cognition.

Implications for the Future

The implications of such a system are staggering. Economically, industries from finance to pharmaceuticals could experience dramatic acceleration in innovation cycles. Imagine AI that designs drugs, develops new materials, or optimizes global supply chains faster than any human team could conceive.

Societally, however, the stakes are equally high. Self-improving AI could outpace regulatory frameworks, creating ethical and safety dilemmas that humanity is ill-prepared to manage. Ensuring that such systems remain aligned with human values will be paramount — a task as complex as the technology itself.

Meta’s Strategic Edge

Meta’s secretive culture, combined with its vast computational resources, gives it a strategic advantage. Unlike startups, which often focus on narrow applications, Meta possesses the infrastructure to scale a self-improving AI globally, integrating it across social platforms, virtual reality ecosystems, and potentially even financial services.

This capability suggests that Meta isn’t just chasing incremental improvements in AI — it is aiming to redefine intelligence itself, positioning the company at the forefront of the next technological revolution.

The Dawn of a New Era

We may be standing at the threshold of a new era, where intelligence is no longer solely human-driven but co-created with autonomous, self-improving systems. Meta’s breakthrough, if realized, will force industries, governments, and societies to rethink not just technology, but the very definition of knowledge, creativity, and agency.

The future of AI is no longer about performing tasks — it is about evolving, iterating, and surpassing the boundaries of its own design. And in that future, Meta could very well be the architect of a new epoch in intelligence.

Is Aave making the case for decentralized social media?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn Blockchain, DeFi, Innovation, Web 3.0Leave a comment

What shall we call ‘decentralized social media’? Decentralized finance was easily turned into DeFi, but DeSM or DeSocMed doesn’t have quite the same ring. Still, somebody will come up with a shortened version in time.

One of the proponents of decentralized social media is Stani Kulechov, the founder of the Aave DeFi protocol. He has been tweeting teasers about his support for decentralized SM platforms, pointing out that there is a widespread belief that the current SM platforms generally ‘suck’. Twitter has also been talking about it, which surely points to that’s the way it is considering going.

According to The Defiant, five persons in crypto told the website that Kulechov has sent them a cryptic text asking them to sign up to ‘lens.dev. However, The Defiant was unable to find out from Aave or Kulechov any more information about this site.

The Lens Protocol

Follow the lens.dev link yourself and you’ll find yourself at a simple site that contains a  short letter expressing dissatisfaction with Web2.0 social media companies, such as Facebook and Twitter. The letter says, “Web3 brings forth a renewed hope for what social media can be. It offers the ability for us to control how our content is used. We can have the power to own and monetize our content and community with no middlemen or centralized data harvesting.”

Should you wish to sign the letter, you do so with a tweet. The tweet includes a cryptographic signature that uses their Ethereum wallet and text that usually reads “I should own this tweet @lensprotocol #digitalroots.”

This is not the first attempt to decentralize social media. Other efforts include STEEM, which emphasized blogging; FEEDWEAVE, which was built on Arweave and Cent is an experiment in selling content. None of them have made much impact on the SM world, but as The Defiant says, “the top minds in the space seem to believe that this is still a crackable use case for one blockchain or another.” Indeed, Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX said, “I think social media on the blockchain — I continue to think this could be absolutely huge. I think it solves a lot of existing pain points, which are really coming to the forefront of society right now.” Of the others who have been talking up the idea, one supporter is Vitalik Buterin, who has proposed an SM platform built on the Ethereum blockchain. However, perhaps Aave will beat him to it, and these cryptic tweets are just the beginning of the platform’s attempt to finally deliver a blockchain-based, decentralized social media platform. Then perhaps we’ll know what to call it!

The Black Wall Street App: A Road to Financial Inclusion

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn apps, DeFi, Innovation1 Comment

Consensus 2021 is always a fount of new ideas and initiatives, and the Black Wall Street App is one of them. As Jordan Muthra writes at Coindesk, it aims “to increase access to financial education in Black and other communities of color.”

The project from Hill Harper and his team states on its home page, “You can’t be free if the cost of being you is too high.” Not only is this the world’s First Black-Owned Digital Wallet, it has also been built and designed by the Community, with the Community and for the Community.

Last week, Harper told CoinDesk’s Consensus 2021 event, ““When you really, actually peel back the onion, 90% to 95% of the financial products and services that have historically been offered to Black, brown and marginalized communities have been either predatory on their face or hidden predatory.” Perhaps this is an aspect of finance you haven’t considered, or to say it as Black Wall Street app does – Black Cash Matters™.

Muthra points out, “We are entering a phase of increased collective consciousness but not without a wide wealth gap, institutional racism and proud racists surfacing.” What is more, as he says, we have become jaded “by the widespread evidence of prejudice due to the proliferation of social media,” and this has a tendency to stop us thinking about the many facets of prejudice and how they are intertwined.

It is systemic prejudice that is behind Muthra writing the following, “As a community, Black folks have always strived to own and operate both infrastructure and the means of production but have been continually held back by structural inequality and attacks from extremists and the government alike.” If it didn’t exist, this would not be a necessity. Nor would the existence of the Black Wall Street app be necessary, but it is.

I’ll leave you with this thought: Black Americans hold only 1% of US wealth, and are systematically refused access to the financial system. With this app, people can learn about financial wellbeing and investing, invest in cryptocurrency, start building wealth and send/receive cash and crypto with community members. Being in charge of your finances and understanding the system, as well as making it work for you, is a necessary step on the road to freedom at a bearable cost.

Is it too soon to talk about a virus-based battery?

On By mehranmuslimiblogIn InnovationLeave a comment

Futurist writer Leon Okwatch, poses an interesting idea in his latest Medium post. He suggests that viruses could be used to manufacture batteries in the future. This may not be quite the right time for any positive mentions of what Okwatch calls, “nature’s microscopic zombies,” but then again, perhaps it is the perfect time to understand how they can be harnessed for a good use.

Okwatch also points out something that many of us may not have thought about: the global reliance on batteries has increased at speed. Not only are they required for basic electronic devices (my Apple mouse uses them at an alarming rate), but the advent of electric cars also ups demand for batteries. As a result there is a need for better, more reliable and higher energy batteries, and viruses might be the solution.

How would viruses be used in batteries?

According to Okwatch, back in 2009, Angela Belcher, a professor of bioengineering at MIT, demonstrated a lithium-ion battery that used viruses to assemble its electrodes. The inspiration for her experiment came from “studying organisms that can grow incredibly strong structures by using chemicals found in nature.”

Citing the example of the way in which an abalone snail builds a strong shell by gathering calcium molecules, a process that is encoded in the snail’s DNA, Belcher worked on the basis that an organism’s DNA could be tweaked “so that it can attract conductive materials such as gold or copper.” She then looked at viruses because it’s easy to alter their DNA.

Belcher experimented with M13 bacteriophage, a virus that only infects bacteria and is therefore harmless to us humans. It had a further advantage: its genome is quite easy to manipulate.

Through genetic engineering, Belcher created a virus that encodes proteins that can latch onto metals that act as semiconductors.

Another upside to working with a virus in this way is that whilst billions of virus copies are need to make a battery, it’s relatively easy to produce at this quantity, because they multiply rapidly in the bacterial host. Furthermore, she “proved that her genetically modified viruses can be used to make batteries that are thin, flexible, and able to fit into non-standard shapes,” Okwatch says. And she has a US patent to prove it!

Why do we want virus-based batteries?

In brief, because we want more powerful batteries that are able to be recharged faster.

A battery created with a virus shortens the path of the electrons moving through it. This results in increasing the battery’s charge and discharge rate, giving it additional energy capacity and a longer cycle life, as well as a faster charge rate. That’s very important for electric car owners.

A virus-based battery is also more environmentally friendly, because the conventional battery uses toxic chemicals, whereas with belcher’s method all that is needed is the electrode’s metal, water, and genetically modified viruses.

Why don’t we have these batteries?

If Belcher first demonstrated this in 2009, what’s the hold up in producing these more eco-friendly batteries? As with many discoveries like this, scalability is the issue when it comes to launching a commercial product.

As Okwatch points out, “The goal is to find a sweet spot where we can achieve economies of scale without compromising on the quality, efficiency, and reliability of the product.”

Viruses have for centuries been feared as the agents of death and disease, with 2020 being the perfect illustration of our sentiment about them. However, they also have unique properties that can be utilised for good, and batteries may not be the only product where viruses play a leading role in the future. As Okwatch says, “nature offers a new frontier to solve problems that haven’t been solved so far.”