I noticed how worldcoin pumped recently and it made me think back to some issues I've been thinking about in the past. I think it's no news to people here that the rise of AI is going to make value distribution a bit harder in the future, there may even be many authors here today taking the risk of getting caught using AI to ruin their reputation and potential future author rewards. Needless to say that's only going to get harder and harder to spot in the future.
Imagine once AI becomes so good and personal that I can feed it all of my posts I've written here in the past 9 years, by date, along with info of other languages I know, what I've studied, how old I am, etc, etc, I don't think it'll have a hard time copying me and then I'm off to shitpost daily to make sure I don't lose out on those juicy autovotes waiting for me than some days when I'm too busy to write something worthwhile and I let those go to "waste".
One thing I've been thinking about, and again, I need to note that I'm no coder whatsoever nor am I that technically inclined. I often have to read things blocktrades or other more technical people post twice to think I understand what's being said, not to mention having learned how hive things work even though I don't really know everything on the "atomic level". You know how platforms and services take your info? Let's say exchanges for instance, they need your passport/valid ID, name, security number, proof of residency, etc, all to protect, well, their asses from lawsuits or fines from the government who cares about what people spend their money on, if they're trying to avoid taxes or one more understandable use-case, if the money is used for dangerous/illegal activities that may put others lives at risk, etc. Now okay, exchanges was maybe not the best example, but let's go for it partially for now.
The big risk and what people like myself may want to avoid using exchanges for, is the thing that's never said anywhere but happens ever so often. The exchange, much like most of web2 security, is at risk of getting hacked. Sure they may not steal funds and/or they may have backup funds to make up for what gets stolen, but what often happens is that thieves also steal customers information and you can't put a price on that! Oh wait, yes you can, that info gets often sold on the "black market" to other malicious actors trying to scam, misuse the information such as signing up for things using your passport/ID, phishing attempts and what have you.
Thus, we need a solution for that. Now of course this is way above my paygrade, because a proper solution for this is probably worth its own billions of $, but the way worldcoin goes about it is by scanning your iris. Similar to fingerprints, iris' are unique to humans too. Now I don't really know how you'd go about verifying it over and over since you need a special machine to do it, and from what I hear you only do it once during registration (I haven't researched worldcoin enough, maybe the info is out there), but how do you verify that person that registered that one time is the one using a service today if they're "logged in" with worldcoin authentication? Furthermore, how do we know this registration action wasn't cheated? If you were around when the project launched, in many "3rd world countries", people were being scammed out of their worldcoin airdrop upon registration because people usually are quite desperate for a buck. The people in charge of registering users who'd been handed the iris scanning machines were promising random strangers fiat in exchange for getting their eyes scanned, naturally these people wanted a quick buck for 1min of their time while the registration handler received the real reward which was worldcoin and was valued quite high in its early days. You receive $1 for 1min of your time while I take the airdrop worth $50 was the "scam". So how do we know that person received their login info and that it didn't stay behind with the handler? How do we know it's 1000 unique users logging on with worldcoin auth to this app or is it 1 handler who sold 1000 logins to someone on the dark net?
There's many ways these things get cheated, viewbotting is quite a thriving market these days. Everyone wants to fake it til they make it, or at least fake it along everyone else just to compete/start out their "online business". Aside from viewbots there's also clickfarms, if @holozing tomorrow was giving players $100 to play daily as long as they logged in with an account and started playing, there's for sure going to be a clickfarm of 100 phones all plastered to a wall playing the game and trying to get that now $10,000 per day operated by a couple people who're really quick with their fingers and hands.
Where I'm getting at, is that this issue seems to need more. But what is more? Where does it stop? What can't be faked?
Before we get there, the other thing that may be a solution for part of this, is that we need a way to make sure this information we give these servives can't be misused. We need a way where u can safely hand over a copy of your passport to a service and not have to live in fear that your info may get hacked and leaked and misused. We keep talking about not needing to trust but verify with this blockchain technology but no one I know of is using this tech to make sure people's personal information isn't being stored waiting for a north korean hacker to steal it.
Is there a way to collect this data and prove you've deleted it?
Before you delete it, can you encode it to make sure this same user or iris isn't trying to create another registration with your service? How does that work while making sure this information can't be decoded back?
I'm sure someone reading this may have way more info than I do at this point as they may be following things in this sector more closely, please let me know if you do in the comment section!
Lastly, to avoid "handlers" stealing people's logins, we may even need a service that can check and guarantee that a unique person is in fact using this app currently and not using it on multiple devices/accounts. I.e. it's not that one guy logged in on holozing with 100 cheap smart phones swiping from phone #1 to phone #20 before moving down the next row. How do we accomplish that? Constant iris scans? Taking pictures with the phones camera at random times to verify?
Would you let a service take pictures of you at random times to make sure the ecosystem within isn't being abused? To give you another example compared to web3 games. Imagine a proof of brain token that didn't care about stake but valued 1 account 1 vote instead. To combat some abusers having 10 hive accounts voting on themselves daily with all 10, we'd need to make sure this user can only use 1 and if caught attempting to cheat isn't able to create logins in the future, unless he's going to burn off his fingers or gouge out his eyes.
One thing I can tell you is that, I wouldn't give this information away, unless I knew 100% that the information gets deleted and is unhackable, much like a blockchain. In that case, sure, I'd even send in a dick pic if it helps keep abusers out of my proof of brain tokens and holozing creature farms.
[Images from Pixabay]
First of all, dick pics surely have to be the worst idea to the point it shouldn't even be a thing. Imagine being someone who receives a poorly shot pic of my hog and me being stupid enough to release it permanently to the internet! Srsly dumbasses ;)
I am so torn on this internet/identity theft stuff and AI certainly isn't making me feel better about it. I would have loved to hold accounts on exchanges (for Hive mostly) to trade and invest but simply sending a copy of my picture and all the things that are needed for someone to steal my identity seems so dumb. Especially since we have no idea who we are sending it to.
When I think of a central trusted authority to guard our identity and make it safer to use it to sign up for services, all I can think of is Centralized. Pumping more of my info into a corporation with a board of directors and shareholders to appease with profits at any cost...including my own. Or worse!
I am a little concerned with content on the internet that is all AI generated in order to short cut the time and value of persona, imperfect content. Whenever I see AI (even though I am a big user of it for business content creation to a certain extent) It feels greasy and distracts from the intent of the message. Like margarine. As things progress and the AI gets more sophisticated and able to impersonate the people and social engagement even more, it is going to be so tough to decipher.
I don't have many answers and generally let the smarter people come up with the coding like you. Decentralized should be the key to those who believe in the ethos of Hive (like @theycallmedan and his recent vlog https://hive.blog/hive-181335/@theycallmedan/fkqpmozk) but there are so many other factors and challenges with that.
Thinking and discussing and wondering is how our generation exercised our brains and came up with solutions. Love the discussion that will come of this post and curious to see what others think.
"Proof of P33N" doesn't sound like a compelling protocol.
Every scrotum print is unique! ;)
As I read your article, the term "zero-knowledge proof" kept coming to mind. This allows you to verify information without revealing everything. For example, is Acidyo a person? If so, is he a U.S. citizen? You can continue this line of questioning as far as you like. The special thing about it is that you don't have to reveal all your data. You don't even need to upload your ID. Of course, I'm not that familiar with it either. However, ZKP is already partly used for VPNs. I think this solution is much better for KYC than other options because it's much more secure than giving a company a picture of your ID.
I prefer to remain anonymous online, so I avoid sharing too much personal information. Sadly, much of my data has already been compromised, so I try to be as mysterious as possible on a public blockchain. I want to teach my kids that, too. But right now, I don't have any kids. Privacy is a valuable asset, like time, but most people don't value their anonymity.
Awesome comment and I fully agree with you on privacy. I've read about zkp in the past but not much about it connected to identity, although I'm sure it may be worked on in some ways. It's one of those things I've been hoping would get developed by the time my more important projects are on their way to being launched. I spend way too much of my time on hive unfortunately as there's so much to do here to research what else is going on outside of the space.
For quite a long time we've been fighting off one or a couple abusers trying to multi account our POSH project for instance, they either keep creating new hive accounts or use old ones that have been inactive for a long time or then create new reddit accounts as well trying all methods to earn more than others on limited voting power we can give. Either way, for this a service that can prove you're unique without storing important data would be quite valuable and I'm sure many other ones too.
Unfortunately, I still haven't had the time to research POSH properly. But as far as I understand it, you share your hive link on Reddit and get POSH tokens in return. I don't yet understand how you can abuse this system, but as long as the links get views, that's fine or am I getting something fundamentally wrong?
Actually if you install a llm machine in local, you can already train it with your blogs, writings and such to replicate your writing style, it's not future, it's now already...
I somehow gave up on being secure giving my own data and Id to exchanges and such, simply because the hospital where I've gone has been hacked, all data taken and sold,same for an other clinic, and a betting site so probably my data is well spread in the deep web...
As for how to secure there's a single user, it's a milion dollar question, iris scan I don't like it I'm pretty sure can be faked somehow, check user DNA hashed every time like with saliva would maybe do it, I can hardly see faking saliva
That might be it, a water bottle that checks your dna every now and then and you use it to login to my game to prove you are who you say you are and not running multiple accounts.
Everyone has to drink all the time anyway!
Now if only those bottles were easy to clean! :P
I have a better idea. Every user must have a holozing tattoo on their right arm to play the game. Each tattoo is unique because it has a certain invisible dot matrix. This way it can be guaranteed that only this body with the respective username can play the game. In this way you can combine ZKP with a continuous check of the user as you can check the tattoo every few hours or days using a webcam.
This was just a joke ;)
We got a patent to do here!
Is this the whole Bright ID thing that they are using at airports and stuff now?
Haven't heard of that neither, but if it's used at airports it's most likely "web2" :D
Probably a good way to prevent scam, but processing that much data in large scale won't be easy as well. I was not in favor of giving my iris scan to earn a little, but as you said, many people won't mind giving it, for a small tips.
With AI, we could also regress in the sense of evolving as human beings.
"This really hits the core challenge of our digital age—how do we ensure fairness and trust when AI can mimic us perfectly, and personal data is so vulnerable? The idea of verifiable, yet fully secure identity checks is fascinating. I wonder if a combination of zero-knowledge proofs and blockchain could finally give us a system where we’re recognized as unique humans without ever exposing sensitive info. Truly makes you rethink what 'proof of brain' could actually mean!
Well, I agree that a decentralized way to verify humans without risking personal data would be a game changer. Like if it's private then there should be no risk. Anyway, I don't have much knowledge about it. I hope blockchain tech will evolve to solve this problem before things spiral out of control.
AI is getting better. I have an author friend who is writing fiction with it now. His process is substantially time consuming though. He's trained the particular model with the writer he wants to emulate, and then has the AI write a chapter at a time - but he meticulously plots each chapter with a two or three page prompt.
For generalized topics a lot of AI is still sort of generic platitudes. For people who want to earn rewards from their writing, they are going to have to network and persuade stake holders that their content or they themselves is interesting and worth promoting.
I think voting may grow more careful over time.
This is a very important topic and taking into account some real-life experiences since we belong to the Hive Blockchain, games based on this series such as Splinterlands have relatively addressed this by imposing the purchase of a spellbook for new users and the developers of the Rising Star Game have put a feud on energy and cards to limit fake accounts and bots and since your game project Holozing is on its way to seeing the light of day, it will certainly benefit from these experiences and solutions, perhaps even more effective solutions.
It's really scary if that happens, especially to those who always use apps and don't know what will happen. this is also a serious matter that everyone should be informed about.
In a tech-driven era, reminding ourselves of our humanity is key.
World ID and Worldcoin also runs on blockchain, it's possible to have a version of the game there only for verified humans, maybe with a bridge between Hive and World tokens. I'm also a no coder but with the advance of AI in vibe coding web3 game programming like Remix GG perhaps we can see it happen soon, from third party and players also if not officially.
Instagram has a single-use photo feature. Can't this feature be used for KYC etc.?
This is an important point about the future of identity verification in an AI-driven world. I think it is essential that we discover methods to safeguard personal information while maintaining authenticity.
The surveillance and collection / prediction algorythms are getting to the point it's hard to tell if the damn devices are reading your mind.. Or they've just got you figured out to the point they can predict what you were thinking with scary accuracy..
Palantir is gonna bring a dark social credit system ledger to north america and 5 eyes countries within the next year or two.. :/
Thats a scary thought, Palantir's owner looks like the Antichrist! LOL !
Maybe a DNA scan?
yea, the AI shit post is coming for sure.. :(
Tesla's Optimus looks cool tho..
Any AI would have difficulty mimicking my writing as I am dysgraphic. That means that my writing ability is really clunky with repetitions, missed words, chronic misspellings, along with serious flaws in linear process order over an entire post/article. That means I have to edit and re-edit. Any AI would have to contemplate whether to correct mistakes or leave them with mistakes. If it corrects then it would be a giveaway that an AI were doing it. If it were to create errors I find it unlikely that it would make the "right" type of errors and look like they were considered/artificial.
All types of bio-id are really stupid. You only have one of set of each. If they get compromised then that is your lot - you cannot ask for a new set. I remember laughing my head when fingerprint id came out on phones. What are phones famous for being? Fingerprint magnets. It's like covering your desktop monitor with post-it notes of your password. Either the the silicon valley bros are stupendously dumb or it was a data-collection exercise.
As for Iris scans - well printable contact lenses have been around at least 20 years and smart contact lenses using nfc are under development. Pretty much anything can be projected on them.
With the right computer hardware, this is already possible. You would need a lot of technical know how to perform these tasks, but the Internet becomes useless and an absolute wasteland the moment this happens.
I know that this was not the main focus of your post - but the Internet is already infested with garbage, with trash, and with things that are there with one goal - to extract value - whether it is advertising, referrals, affiliate marketing crap, "genuine blog content" on a company's website which is just SEO trash designed to drive you back to their product, the Internet is a marketing slum, and for the most part, marketing lacks one basic thing - HONESTY.
When we can learn to be more honest , not only with ourselves, but also with others, is the time when we can see true value. But .. I suppose that no one really wants to know that their illustration of a fox roaming in a field, on a Tuesday, along with the flowers growing in their back garden, is worth nothing in the grand context of the global financial system.
And now, because all the marketing, the Internet, etc, is not built on the platform of honesty, and all that money has to flow back to somewhere, the entire eco-system of finance surrounding creativity or endeavour, to me - just seems like a giant, fraudulent pillar (not a pyramid) - on top of which so many people try to find meaning, scraping at its edges, looking for grip.
What I just read is super interesting, and I don't deny that, on the one hand, I love technological advances, but on the other, I fear them. With the use of AI, everything is easier every day, but we are more exposed and vulnerable. It scares me so much that I envy cavemen.
The power of AI is becoming ever greater and more fearsome today; it's chilling to think about the future. Young people have become dependent on its unlimited usefulness, and the information shared on the web can be counterproductive.
What will be real through a screen?
How can we validate or differentiate information as we continue to delve deeper into the digital world?
These questions become even more troubling.
Everything get harder while looking for the easy way, lately this news on IA stuffs are breaking the line.
There's no entirely foolproof way if identifying anyone, or to make systems entirely sybil-resistant. In crypto, there's been a market for KYCd accounts ever since KYC became a thing, e g. for ICOs. So I guess if anyone can pull off a system that's 95-97% okay, it's somebody like Sam Altman, with his access to loads of money. I'm personally not a fan of going to a center to get my eye scanned, it kinda feels like a dystopian future. On the other hand, if you imagined a world in which you know the real name (and can find out the real address) of anybody on the internet, X, Tiktok, YT, Hive, whatever, I guess a lot of people would be a lot more cautious with what they post...