Re: Identity Hubs and Agents

There is an interesting (and challenge) taxonomic issue here.

One thing I'd like to say just briefly: software agents cannot act as fiduciaries. 
Only legal persons can do that. I'm not sure the best alternative term,
but data and information fiduciaries are one of the more important
elements of privacy/agency that we are still figuring out. Lawyers,
CPAs, and doctors are all fiduciaries, with an obligation to put their principal's
interest first--and the obligations of each are highly differentiated and
regulated both by law and by practice (enforced by professional code).

It's also worth noting the term user-agent, which is the accepted
term for software, like your web browser, which acts "hand-in-glove"
to execute the direction of the user. These are clearly not autonomous
(although they can run autonomous apps).

I have a feeling what Bill meant by fiduciaries was not user agents, but 
something more subtle.

A few questions for the folks building with agents as we are talking about:

1. In all of these cases, is it correct to say that the "agent" uses some 
 key material to act on behalf of its controller?

2. Do the relevant actions occur "automatically" or autonomously 
 once configured?

3. In some cases, these keys may have attenuated delegation, correct?
 Which is to say that different agents have different privileges.

4. Are there any cases under consideration where the agent (or
 perhaps the firm who created or runs the agent) accepts legal liability
 for its actions?

These appear to be good terms for modifying the generic term
"agent". I'm not sure what those modifying adjectives might be, but we would
do well to find terms that clarify we don't mean other kinds of agents. Key agent?
Escrow agent? Autonomous agents? Empowered Agents? Cryptographic agents?

Delegated Autonomous Cryptographic Agents?


-j


On Tue, Aug 13, 2019, at 9:24 AM, Bill Barnhill wrote:
> I went through the Identity Hubs presentation, and the Medium article.
> 
> Though I'm not as versed in Identity Hubs as many of you, I want to
> comment on a couple of things.
> 
> First, I proposed we talk about two types of agents when we talk
> about identity agents. The first type are the first-class agents that
> act as fiduciaries for their user, have wallet root keys, etc. The
> second type are offline proxy agents, that act on behalf of the user
> when the user is offline, but have more limited privileges. These can
> automatically provide collections managed by a user when that user is
> not online, verify claims on behalf of the user, etc. This second
> type is distinct enough it might warrant a second Hyperledger project,
> but the Hyperledger folks would be a better judge of that than me. If
> so, perhaps a suitable name might be Gemini (i.e., the offline digital
> twin agent).
> 
> Second, I agree Identity Hub use is a useful set of use cases, but I'd
> also like to see a pure agent-based set of use cases allowed. Instead
> of an Identity Hub managing a user's information for offline retrieval
> you could have a proxy agent run by an agent host (think a Digital
> Ocean Aries Agent droplet, for example). We should support the people
> who want to use the simplest solution and might gravitate to using an
> Identity Hub, but I also think we should support the people that want
> full decentralization via interacting agents (i.e., a digital
> community as a collection of people and the the digital mesh of their
> agents acting together).
> 
> 

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Joe Andrieu, PMP joe@legreq.com
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