Re: Personhood credentials: Artificial intelligence and the value of privacy-preserving tools to distinguish who is real online

This is an interesting use of the web of trust and it would definitely help
if there was a way of knowing if you're dealing with a bot or a person when
communicating online.

On Thu, Aug 15, 2024 at 9:26 PM Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
wrote:

> Hey CCG'ers,
>
> I'm thrilled to announce a new research paper that's been in the
> making for many months now about Personhood Credentials (PHCs),
> artificial intelligence, and the value of privacy-preserving solutions
> to online disinformation. A quick excerpt from the executive summary
> of the paper:
>
> Malicious actors have long used misleading identities to deceive
> others online. They carry out fraud, cyberattacks, and disinformation
> campaigns from multiple online aliases, email addresses, and phone
> numbers. Historically, such deception has sometimes seemed an
> unfortunate but necessary cost of preserving the Internet’s
> commitments to privacy and unrestricted access. But highly capable AI
> systems may change the landscape: There is a substantial risk that,
> without further mitigations, deceptive AI-powered activity could
> overwhelm the Internet. To uphold user privacy while protecting
> against AI-powered deception, new countermeasures are needed.
>
> A few of us from this community (KimHD, WayneC, WendyS, HeatherF) have
> been working with researchers from OpenAI, Harvard, MIT, Oxford,
> Microsoft, OpenMined, Berkman Klein, and 20+ other organizations
> involved in frontier Artificial Intelligence to determine how we (the
> digital credentials community) might address some of the more
> concerning aspects of how AI systems will interact with the Web and
> the Internet, but in a way that will continue to protect individual
> privacy and civil liberties that remain at the foundation of the Web
> we want.
>
> A huge shout out to Steven Adler, Zoë Hitzig, and Shrey Jain who led
> this work and put together an amazing group of people to work with --
> it was a pleasure and honor to work with them as they did the
> lionshare of the cat herding and drafting, re-drafting, and
> re-re-re-re-drafting of the paper. It's rare to be a part of such a
> high energy and velocity collaboration, so thanks to each of them for
> making this happen!
>
> For those of you that are on social media, Steven has done a great
> visual summary of the paper here:
>
> https://x.com/sjgadler/status/1824245211322568903
>
> The paper itself is really well written and reasoned. If you don't
> have a ton of time, you can come away with a good idea of what the
> paper is about by just reading the 3 page Executive Summary:
>
> https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.07892
>
> The TL;DR is: This community is well positioned to do something about
> online deception, defense against AI amplification attacks, and proof
> of personhood credentials. So the question is -- should we? What could
> be the benefits to society? What are the dangers to privacy and civil
> liberties? As always, interested in your thoughts... :)
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> https://www.digitalbazaar.com/
>
>