Decentralized AI: Edge Intelligence and Smart Blockchain, Metaverse, Web3,and DeSci

07-22-2022 Article by Longbing Cao Published by the IEEE Computer Society

Decentralization1 complements and enhances centralization for systematic, all-round, and

multifold objectives, functionality, and consequences. The paradigm shift from centralization to distribution has substantially mitigated methodology, knowledge, and capability gaps in social science, management science, decision science, economics, computing, complex systems, and AI. On the other hand, open-source and science have made paramount complementary achievements and contributions, and blockchain is transforming and inspiring finance to decentralized finance (DeFi), and the World Wide Web to Web3. In contrast, decentralizing AI is still an open area. By reviewing decentralized movements, systems, and technologies, including the recent movements on the blockchain, Web3, and decentralized science (DeSci), we paint a research picture of decentralized AI (DeAI), the research issues in edge intelligence, and the tasks of synthesizing centralized AI (CeAI) and DeAI. These further envisage and inspire the opportunities of DeAI-enabled smart blockchain, Web3, metaverse, and DeSci.

DECENTRALIZATION

Decentralization is not a buzzword, hype or myth, although such concerns have been widely raised on decentralization-oriented initiatives, such as Web3 and the metaverse. Decentralization is also not a new or mysterious concept.1 It has a 200-year history and is grounded in political science (such as subsidiarity, democracy, liberty, equality, and the decentralist movement), management and decision science (e.g., systems theory, self organization, and self-determination), and economics (e.g., decentralized free markets and fiscal decentralization).

Decentralization (with forms, such as devolution, deconcentration, delegation, etc.) is complementary or an alternative to centralization (and concentration), such as decentralized organizations, infrastructures, administration, operations, and services, corresponding to their centralized counterparts. In contrast to centralizing resourcing, manufacturing, and supply, globalization partitions, distributes, and decentralizes industrial, manufacturing, and supply

chains to usually isolated and local economies and productivity. Open society, open government, and open science further promote the decentralization of administration, governance, governmentality, and scientific activities.

Distributed to Decentralized Systems

In technology, the thinking and conceptualization of technological decentralization have evolved for over half a century. A flagship decentralized IT movement is the open and shareable initiatives and programs, represented by open source, open data, open access, and open science.a A representative early stage distributed and decentralized computing flagship is the formation of Linux operating systems and their ecosystems. This movement has been further

intensified by public and private cloud services for decentralized infrastructures, storage, sharing, computing, applications (DApps), and services. In IT practices, a recent trend is that an increasing number of organizations have removed or are decentralizing their existing centralized IT divisions, substituted by subscribing to vendor-centralized cloud-based infra- structures, computing, applications, and services. Furthermore, edge computing2,3 emerges to connect isolated end-level devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) through edge nodes (networks) rather than centralized cloud infrastructures and to support decentralized computation, communication, storage, sharing, and management at end devices or edge nodes.