Autonomous, artificial intelligence-powered agents capable of independent decision-making and coordination are the most promising technological innovation of our generation.
These entities, which can execute complex tasks on behalf of their human users with little to no oversight, look set to dominate the financial world. They possess the ability to monitor financial markets in real time, make instantaneous decisions based on the signals they identify, and automatically execute transactions, all within a split second. With such unprecedented speed and clarity, they promise to revolutionize the way people invest and build wealth.
However, if AI agents are to provide these benefits to everyone and truly change the world for the better, they must be built on a very different foundation. For truly autonomous AI can only exist when it must be powered by a decentralized infrastructure that everyone controls.
The Risks Of Centralized AI
The inspiration for AI agents is the desire to create intelligent machines that make smarter decisions and take actions on behalf of everybody, without the need for humans to constantly intervene. They represent a paradigm shift from traditional AI models, which rely heavily on human inputs and oversight. Unlike models such as ChatGPT, AI agents need to operate in more dynamic environments that evolve in real time, with the ability to search the web without prompting, and perform hundreds of different tasks seamlessly.
Although inspired by generative AI, AI agents are completely different in terms of their capabilities. Most importantly, they must break free of their reliance on centralized infrastructure, which is the basis of their data and their processing power.
At present, models like ChatGPT are hosted on centralized servers controlled by giant corporate entities that can shut them down at a moment’s notice. As such, they’re reliant on human intervention, as users are required to pay to access their computing resources. The reliance on centralized computing also creates issues around security and trust, as they are vulnerable to single points of failure and human exploitation.
AI agents must break free from these constraints if their users are to exert full control, and the only viable option is to implement decentralized infrastructures that cannot be undermined by a single entity.
Distributed Compute
Decentralized infrastructures are different to centralized cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Rather than having a corporate entity that owns enormous data centers packed with computer servers, the processing power, data storage, and decision-making processes are spread across global networks made up of independent nodes. It’s a distributed model that ensures no single node has complete control over the network. It eliminates the need for centralized oversight, and instead, every network participant plays a role in ensuring its upkeep, with each one having an equal say on any decisions that need to be made.
With decentralized networks, computing is distributed across hundreds of devices, which could be anything from smartphones to laptops to data centers. Examples of this include platforms such as Filecoin, which provides decentralized storage services that anyone can access, and Berkeley Compute, a computing platform made up of distributed GPUs. These platforms reward users who contribute storage space and processing power from their personal computers. Such networks tap into the idle resources of thousands of individual laptops and mobile devices, essentially renting out their unused computing power and making it available to AI agents seeking processing power to perform calculations.
Decentralized networks can grow to an immense scale, offering an almost unlimited pool of computing resources, which is essential for tasks such as AI training, inference and reasoning. AI agents can therefore scale without the limitations imposed by centralized cloud services.
Decentralized Governance
AI agents can only become truly autonomous when they are governed by their users. In traditional AI systems, the developer or corporate entity that controls them always retains significant influence over their decision-making processes and their evolution. This centralized control is in stark contrast to the ideals of autonomy, because it means their evolution and growth remain totally dependent on their human creators.
On the other hand, AI agents with decentralized governance are more democratic, as decisions are made on the consensus of their users. Decision-making is achieved through blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations, which enable stakeholders to discuss and vote on key matters relating to the agent’s objectives, operations, and ethics.
For example, the decentralized agentic AI network Skynet has created AI agents that are operated by intelligent Guardian nodes that enforce community decisions through their consensus mechanism. This means that no single user has control over their AI agents. Any proposals to update the agents are carefully reviewed by network users before a vote is held to decide whether or not to implement any changes. Decisions are made collectively, in a fully transparent way.
It means that AI agents are no longer controlled by their creators. Instead, their users make the decisions, ensuring their evolution is aligned with the community’s interests.
Enhanced Security
For AI agents in industries such as finance and healthcare, security is a paramount concern. Centralized servers are extremely vulnerable to hacking and data theft, and can be manipulated all too easily. Cyberattackers only need to breach a single server to compromise the entire network.
With decentralized systems, data is much more secure. Because these networks are made up of thousands of nodes, which must cooperate to validate and execute transactions, they become exponentially more difficult to compromise as they grow.
In the case of decentralized AI agents, consensus mechanisms and cryptographic security are used to protect users’ funds and data, and ensure that databases cannot be hacked or tampered with. The information is stored across multiple nodes, and it can only be manipulated if an attacker gains control of more than 50% of the network, meaning they are far more resilient to attacks.
Autonomous Operations
Full autonomy requires that AI agents can manage their resources and funds without any input from humans. In the case of traditional AI systems, they’re governed by centralized entities, which means they’re always exposed to risks such as fraud and mismanagement.
On the other hand, AI agents based on decentralized infrastructures have full control over everything they do. Giza’s AI agent ARMA, for instance, is capable of managing users’ funds, making investments, interacting with smart contracts, and moving funds from one liquidity pool to another, without any human intervention. There’s no way for any human to access the funds under its control, which protects users from the risks of mismanagement.
The advantage of ARMA is that it overcomes the cognitive deficiencies of humans, who cannot possibly hope to keep up with dynamic financial markets and the millions of permutations that affect them, in real-time. This is only possible with advanced AI agents that not only track hundreds of protocols and thousands of assets in real-time, but also can make instantaneous decisions and act on them in milliseconds.
ARMA interacts with a number of DeFi protocols, monitoring them 24/7 and taking into consideration the dynamic network fees to ensure users can optimize their yield across dozens of liquidity pools. It can execute highly sophisticated investing strategies without any human oversight, with the only human input coming from the community via a democratic governance process. In this way, it can operate autonomously and sustainably, free from the risks of centralization.
Freedom Starts With Decentralization
If AI agents are to live up to their potential in the financial industry, they must become truly autonomous. It’s only to ensure their users’ interests will always remain the number one priority. And that’s exactly the way it should be, for in financial matters, nobody wants to leave anything to chance.
By removing the limitations of centralized infrastructure, we can build AI agents capable of truly independent decision-making, with greater security and more efficiency. True autonomy can only happen if AI agents have complete freedom, and that necessitates having a decentralized platform as a foundation.
Featured image via Shutterstock.
