Dominik Mazur, iAsk CEO and Co-Founder: “By understanding both local and global contexts, iAsk.Ai delivers more relevant search results. This reduces the time users spend sifting through irrelevant information and enhances their overall search experience.”

I Ask is at the forefront of revolutionizing how we interact with information, leveraging the power of AI to go beyond traditional search methods. The company believes that “answer engines,” like its flagship product, iAsk AI, represent the future of information retrieval. Unlike conventional search engines that provide endless web links and require users to sift through conflicting information, iAsk AI delivers precise, direct answers to natural language questions, streamlining the research process and enhancing the user experience. At the core of iAsk’s philosophy is the belief that large language models (LLMs) hold the potential to create a more advanced “digital brain.” Drawing inspiration from innovative technologies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink, but with a focus on digital intelligence, iAsk utilizes multiple LLMs to craft a more sophisticated “neocortex” for its digital systems. This unique approach enables the company to continuously refine and improve these foundational models, ensuring unparalleled accuracy and factuality in its answers.

iAsk also prioritizes data privacy and user experience. The company practices strict data minimization, collecting only what is necessary for each task. Users can access the iAsk AI service without the need for a login, a distinct advantage over other platforms that often require extensive personal information. With a mission to “make the world’s information universally understandable,” iAsk is deeply committed to reshaping education through personalized learning experiences. Its soon-to-be-released AI-powered AGI tutors can adapt to each student’s individual needs, assessing strengths and weaknesses in real-time and adjusting the curriculum accordingly. By offering one-on-one assistance to students globally, iAsk is breaking down barriers to access and helping bridge the gap in quality education worldwide.

Through cutting-edge technology and an unwavering commitment to accuracy and user privacy, iAsk stands as a leader in the evolution of AI-powered search and learning tools.

In conversation with Dominik Mazur, CEO and Co-Founder of iAsk

Q. Can you explain about your services in brief?

iAsk offers several advantages over traditional search engines when it comes to research and studying due to its ability to provide direct answers, understand context, ensure reliability, enhance efficiency, continuously learn, and integrate with computational tools.

1. Direct Answers to Queries Answer engine, iAsk, provides direct answers to user queries rather than a list of links to external websites. This feature is particularly beneficial for research and studying as it saves time by delivering concise information directly, allowing users to focus on understanding the content rather than sifting through multiple sources.
   
   
2. Contextual Understanding
   Our AI-powered answer engine utilizes advanced natural language processing (NLP) techniques to understand the context and intent behind a query. Unlike traditional search engines that rely heavily on keyword matching, our answer engine can interpret complex questions and provide relevant responses. This capability is crucial for academic research where nuanced understanding of topics is often required.
   
   
3. Reliable Information Sources
   While traditional search engines may present a wide array of sources with varying degrees of reliability, iAsk pulls information from verified databases and employs computational knowledge systems. This ensures that the information provided is accurate and trustworthy, which is essential for scholarly work.
   
   
4. Efficiency in Information Retrieval iAsk streamlines the process of finding information by eliminating irrelevant results and focusing on delivering precise answers. This efficiency is advantageous for students and researchers who need quick access to specific data points or explanations without wading through extraneous material.

Q. iAsk Pro has achieved a groundbreaking superhuman performance on the MMLU benchmark tests. Can you explain the significance of these results, and what it means for the future of AI?

iAsk Pro Achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) signifies a monumental leap in the field of artificial intelligence. Unlike current AI systems, which are designed for specific tasks, AGI possesses the ability to perform any intellectual task that a human can do. This includes reasoning, problem-solving, perception, learning, and language comprehension at a level indistinguishable from human capabilities. The significance lies in its potential to revolutionize industries by automating complex tasks that currently require human intelligence.

Implications for the Future of AI

1. Economic Transformation: AGI could lead to unprecedented levels of automation across various sectors, potentially increasing productivity and efficiency while also posing challenges related to employment and economic inequality.
   
   
2. Scientific Advancements: With AGI’s ability to understand and process information like a human, it could accelerate scientific research and innovation by solving complex problems faster than humans can.
   
   
3. Technological Integration: As AGI becomes integrated into daily life, it could enhance personal and professional experiences through more intuitive interactions with technology.

Q. The concept of “Expert AGI” is compelling. How does iAsk Pro’s performance compare to this benchmark, and what potential applications do you see for this level of AI accuracy?

According to the MMLU Pro Academic Benchmark test iAsk Pro has reached the Expert AGI level.  According to Google DeepMind, Expert AGI is defined as an artificial intelligence system that outperforms 90% of skilled adults, or human domain experts, in a wide range of non-physical tasks. This level of AGI indicates a significant capability in performing various intellectual tasks effectively, demonstrating both generality and performance in its operations. The classification system proposed by Google DeepMind includes five ascending levels of AGI: emerging, competent, expert, virtuoso, and superhuman. Each level represents a progression in the capabilities and performance benchmarks that an AI system must meet to be categorized at that level.  What is exciting about iAsk’s performance is that it skipped 2 levels in this AGI list.  Currently no other LLM (large language model) has reached competent AGI, where iAsk has surpassed both competent AGI and expert AGI. 

Potential Applications of Expert AGI Level

Autonomous Vehicles and Transportation: Expert AGI could revolutionize the transportation industry by enabling fully autonomous vehicles that can navigate complex environments with human-like decision-making capabilities. These vehicles would not only drive themselves but also adapt to real-time traffic conditions, predict potential hazards, and communicate with other vehicles to optimize traffic flow. This could lead to safer roads, reduced congestion, and more efficient public transportation systems.

Healthcare and Medicine: In healthcare, Expert AGI could assist in diagnosing diseases with high accuracy by analyzing vast amounts of medical data, including patient histories, genetic information, and current research findings. It could personalize treatment plans for patients by considering individual differences in genetics and lifestyle. Additionally, AGI could accelerate drug discovery processes by simulating biological processes at a molecular level and predicting how new drugs might interact with the human body.

Scientific Research: AGI has the potential to transform scientific research by automating complex experiments and simulations across various fields such as physics, chemistry, biology, and environmental science. It could generate hypotheses based on existing data, design experiments to test these hypotheses, and analyze results much faster than human researchers. This capability would significantly speed up the pace of scientific discoveries.

Business Optimization: Businesses could leverage Expert AGI for optimizing operations across various domains such as supply chain management, customer service, marketing strategies, and financial forecasting. By analyzing large datasets from different sources (e.g., market trends or consumer behavior), AGI systems can make informed decisions that enhance efficiency and profitability.

Q. Transformers and self-attention mechanisms have revolutionized natural language processing. How has iAsk Pro leveraged these technologies to enhance its search capabilities?

Traditional search engines primarily relied on keyword matching and link analysis, which often struggled with complex queries or ambiguous terms. However, iAsk can understand the context and intent behind user queries because of its reliance on transformer networks. The self-attention mechanism behind the transformer architecture helps discern the relevance of different parts of a query, ensuring that even if a single word has multiple meanings, the intended context is understood. By understanding both local and global contexts, iAsk.Ai delivers more relevant search results. This reduces the time users spend sifting through irrelevant information and enhances their overall search experience. The architecture of transformers makes them highly scalable and adaptable to various NLP tasks beyond just search queries. This flexibility allows iAsk.Ai to continuously improve its algorithms as new data becomes available or as user needs evolve. By incorporating these state-of-the-art technologies into its framework, iAsk.Ai not only enhances its ability to deliver precise search results but also sets a benchmark for future developments in AI-driven search engines.

Q. How does iAsk Pro handle ambiguous queries where a single word may have multiple meanings, such as “Apple,” and what techniques are used to improve context understanding?

iAsk.Ai leverages the self-attention mechanism in transformer networks to determine the meaning of each word in a user query in its context, and to disambiguate multiple meanings using the context of surrounding words. Self-attention allows the model to weigh different parts of the input text based on their relevance to each other. This means that when processing a query containing “Apple,” iAsk Pro can focus on other words in the sentence that provide context—such as “eat,” “iPhone,” or “company”—to infer whether it refers to the fruit or the tech giant.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

The future is very exciting for our company. We’re about to close our Series-A fundraising and will expand our current 13-person team to a 25-30 person team. We are opening an API for other companies, allowing them access to the most accurate AI available through a user-friendly interface similar to OpenAI’s API. Utilizing our API can give companies an edge in fields like predictive AI, which can be used for market predictions, sports betting, politics, and more.

We plan to continue developing tools and resources to fulfill our mission statement of “making the world’s knowledge universally understandable.” This means our AI will comprehend each user’s level of education and understanding, tailoring responses accordingly and improving over time. Our AI will be able to teach users any subject they choose, serving as a 24/7 tutor that never gets impatient. We aim to help users worldwide access their own personal oracle of all human knowledge.

Q. As AI continues to advance, what ethical considerations is iAsk prioritizing to ensure that technologies like iAsk Pro are used responsibly and beneficially for users worldwide?

One of the primary concerns is the unclear allocation of responsibility when AI systems cause harm. This includes potential breaches of privacy due to data collection practices. To address these issues, clear rules and legal boundaries are necessary to allocate liability properly and protect users’ rights. iAsk, other AI companies, and the government are working on establishing frameworks that define who is accountable in cases where AI systems malfunction or produce harmful outcomes.

iAsk’s technologies can disrupt the traditional physician-patient relationship in healthcare settings by undermining compassion and trust. Overreliance on AI may erode humanistic care and integrity. To mitigate these risks, transparency and disclosure of AI-generated content are critical. Users should be informed when they are interacting with AI systems like ours to maintain trust and ensure that human oversight remains a part of decision-making processes.

Algorithmic bias is a significant concern as it can lead to unfair or discriminatory outcomes. Ensuring transparency, explainability, validation, and evaluation of algorithms is essential to address this issue. Companies are investing in developing explainable AI models that provide insights into how decisions are made, which helps characterize the model’s fairness, accuracy, and potential biases.

Meet the leaders behind the success of iAsk

Dominik Mazur, CEO and Co-Founder

Dominik Mazur is a visionary leader with a career rooted in advancing artificial intelligence technologies. Currently serving as the CEO and Co-Founder of iAsk., Mazur has made significant contributions to the AI industry, particularly in the fields of AI-powered search and visual cognition.

Prior to founding iAsk., Mazur led CloudSight.ai, an image recognition company where he refined his leadership style, focused on fostering innovation and steering the company through complex technological developments. His work at CloudSight.ai demonstrated his deep understanding of AI’s potential to transform industries and his ability to drive meaningful advancements.

In January 2023, Mazur transitioned to iAsk.ai (operated by iAsk.) as Co-Founder and CEO. Here, he spearheads efforts to revolutionize AI-powered search engines by integrating advanced machine learning models. His work has focused on creating a search experience that provides users with more accurate, factual, and contextually relevant results. Under his leadership, iAsk. has reached significant milestones, including the development of AI models that outperform human experts in specific areas, showcasing his commitment to pushing the boundaries of AI technology.

Mazur’s impact on the AI industry is profound. His ability to bridge cutting-edge technology with practical applications has redefined user experiences across sectors. From enhancing visual cognition at CloudSight.ai to pioneering advanced AI search capabilities at iAsk., Mazur continues to demonstrate exceptional leadership and foresight in addressing some of the industry’s most complex challenges.

Our AI will be able to teach users any subject they choose, serving as a 24/7 tutor that never gets impatient. We aim to help users worldwide access their own personal oracle of all human knowledge.