Ben Goertzel Bets on 'Decentralized AGI': A Crypto Path Against OpenAI and Anthropic

BlockBeats News, June 21st - Ben Goertzel, Chairman of the AGI Association and Chief Scientist of Sophia the Robot, stated that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is "too important to be controlled by venture capital or a few tech companies," and advocated for building an open, decentralized AGI ecosystem through a blockchain network to replace closed-model paths like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Goertzel is advancing this initiative through his project SingularityNET and the "Artificial General Intelligence Alliance," which operates on a cryptographic network designed to allow AI capabilities to be collectively owned and maintained by users worldwide. He emphasized that open-source code alone is not sufficient; AGI must run on a distributed infrastructure to avoid control by a few computing powerhouses.

He proposed the concept of an "AI Agent Economy," where users can deploy multiple AI agents to collaborate on tasks and execute transactions. The future system will offer paid AI services and maintain a decentralized backend architecture while hiding the blockchain's underlying structure from end-users.

Goertzel forecasted that AGI may emerge between 2027 and 2030 and warned that if technological development remains concentrated in a few countries or companies, it could exacerbate global inequality. He stated that his first AI agent product, Omega Claw, will be released soon.