Smart ledger technology company Fetch.AI has developed a “decentralized digital world” to bring advanced personalized offerings to travelers at hotels.
The Cambridge, U.K.-based company is partnering with mobile-ordering system Wi-Q Technologies to build an Autonomous Economic Agent (AEA) that runs on Fetch’s decentralized network. Wi-Q Technologies is the first hospitality company to deploy an AEA.
Powered by artificial intelligence, the AEA will organize and analyze data and make personalized recommendations for travelers - such as certain foods during certain events or times of day - via Wi-Q Technologies’ mobile ordering and experience platforms Wi-Q and Mi-Room.
Fetch CTO Toby Simpson says the AEAs represent data items from not one, but various proprietary data silos on behalf of the companies that own that data and can interact with other AEAs on the Fletch network.
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“This means the Fetch ‘collective’ is connected to vast amounts of data, but no company ever actually hands its data over,” he says.
“When people collaborate to share data models and predictions we achieve autonomous and intelligent systems much more effectively than a few companies pursuing AI with proprietary data silos.”
With an AEA working on behalf of Wi-Q Technologies, the company says it will be able to boost revenue on its platforms through upsells as well as improve operations such as stock and staff management since consumer demand will be monitored in real time.
Different kind of "chain"
Simpson says Fetch’s technology is not blockchain, but rather “a decentralized digital world in which useful economic activity can take place.
It supports tens, if not hundreds, of millions of autonomous digital entities and uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to connect those that have to those that want, or more interestingly, might, want.
“It’s the ultimate dating agency for value providers, and it uses decentralized ledger technology (of which blockchain is part) to achieve this scalability.”
Looking beyond the Wi-Q partnership, Simpson says Fetch could be used to sell a wide variety of travel products. AEAs “can represent an airline seat, a hotel room or a bus seat, working away and conversing with other agents on the network to determine the best match for the sale to take place,” he says.
“These agents represent inventory, sensors, people and so forth, busily working away and conversing with each other to identify opportunities for value exchange. We envisage a future where pretty much everything will be represented by an agent, it’s a new approach to computing.”
He says the longer-term vision for Fetch is “ambitious” and includes AEAs working with one another to trade and exchange data to the point where very complex systems can be organized autonomously.
“The transport and travel systems are some of the most complex in the world, and they are very hard to organize from the top down,” he says.
“Imagine re-accommodating airline passengers during disruption. [AEAs] representing seats and travelers, coordinated using AI will be much more efficient and effective than today’s approaches.”