Snips AIR: an open source, private, blockchain-based alternative to Amazon Echo | Hacker News Reader

Snips AIR: an open source, private, blockchain-based alternative to Amazon Echo

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13 pointsmfester21 comments

I've always wanted a trustless, decentralized, proof-of-work-based alternative to proprietary devices like Alexa and Google Home.

Oh, wait, I didn't. What I've wanted is some nice open hardware with a good ML model for recognizing speech. I don't know what a blockchain is doing here.

How to determine if you need a block chain:

(1) Are you building a fully decentralized global ledger for use by multiple parties that do not share a common basis of trust?

If YES: Congratulations! You might need a block chain.

If NO: You do not need a block chain.

There are no more questions. :)

Exactly, and when there's a use case for a blockchain that isn't "building a trustless currency", I'd love to know, because everything else I've heard would be better suited by a database on a server.

Decentralized DNS and distributed CAs are possibilities, but those are quite close to a distributed trustless currency in that they apportion a finite resource or assign trust.

It started as we wanted to avoid using credit cards and thus having to identify users (the whole point of this new product is 100% privacy). The token will be user to run a TCR-like appstore on the consumer side, and to incentivize people to participate in federated learning developer side.

Why make your own token? Why not use an already-existing currency like Nano or something?

(It's a rhetorical question, I know the answer is "because we want to sell our tokens for a shitload of money")

And I do invite you to try out our voice platform, running 100% on-device on Raspberry Pi 3 or equivalent (and soon MCUs). We're on par with Amazon, Google et al. in terms of performance:

- https://makers.snips.ai/

- https://github.com/snipsco/snips-nlu

- https://medium.com/snips-ai/snips-nlu-is-an-open-source-priv...

This demonstrates nicely that the "we need the cloud to do good voice analytics" argument is baloney. Local voice recognition is perfectly do-able, especially on today's hardware with today's cheap storage. They need the cloud to do bulk surveillance.

Oh I know, I've tried it and that's why I like what you guys have been doing. The missing piece of the puzzle is a decent hardware kit, but putting a blockchain on any of this is completely unnecessary.

Totally agree that we need decent, open hardware, and that's why we're set on building it :) This will take some time, but in the mean time, we've launched a "Maker Kit" (https://makers.snips.ai/kit/) so that everyone can get started building voice assistants for their home that don't listen in.

The blockchain is a key ingredient in what we are trying to build, that is, 100% private AI assistants. We will detail this in our upcoming white paper.

Oh I'm sure that a blockchain is a key ingredient, I'm just not sure why your blockchain is a key ingredient. There are thousands of other coins you can use here instead of fragmenting the space even more and spending development effort on yet another blockchain.

I know that the goal of your blockchain is "cash in on that sweet sweet ICO hype", I just wish you either didn't or that you were more upfront about it.

Hi everyone!

I am a co-founder at Snips. This is a new product we are working on, which is due for next year

You can read more about it here https://medium.com/snips-ai/snips-air-a-private-by-design-op...

We will be publishing our whitepaper in the coming weeks, and are welcoming any feedback!

Cheers

Hi! I am co-founder of Snips (https://www.snips.ai), and happy to share a big announcement with you: in the end of 2019, we will start shipping Snips AIR (https://air.snips.ai), the first open source, private by design voice assistant running on the blockchain! If you want to learn more, we are hosting a livestream Q&A session tomorrow Wednesday, May 30th at 6pm CET, with my co-founder, Rand Hindi. Let us know you'll be there by filling this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd8n6ER5OrSBH_w5kwp..., and we will send the link to the livestream prior to the event.

Wait what? I upvoted your previous announcement a few days ago but I didn’t dig in.

Why is this blockchain based? This sounds incongruous.

I came to ask the same thing, I don't understand what part of the core offering (voice assistant) requires the block chain. I can see how you might be able to shoehorn it in there, but it doesn't seem very practical or useful for customers. There's also very little about its use on the website.

Hi bluehatbrit. We will publish our whitepaper in a few weeks, which will thoroughly detail the usecases for our blockchain, and how it fits in our roadmap of building 100% private voice assistants.

Chain of trust for software update/delivery from what I understand. Nothing good ol' RSA signing could not solve if that is the case.

This is just another token scam.

I can guarantee it is not! We are a VC backed, 60 people AI team from Europe, having worked on AI for a few years. This is a new product we are launching next year

"[…] Download features from the OpenSkillStore, based on the blockchain"

I wonder, does it work with a contract on a public blockchain like ethereum or does it run on Snips's own blockchain?

If so is there a white / yellow paper we can dig into?

Hey! We are publishing the whitepaper in a few weeks. We use a blockchain in a number of places, both on the consumer side for the skills marketplace, and on the developer side for federated learning.

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