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Sign Everything

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Re: Sign Everything

#51

Post by phoe-krk »

alkonaut wrote: post #49
phoe-krk wrote: post #5

>I think AI and Web3 are two sides of the same coin. As machines increasingly do the work that humans used to do, we will need tools to manage our identity and our humanity. Web3 is producing those tools and some of us are already using them to write, tweet/cast, make and collect art, and do a host of other things that machines can also do. Web3 will be the human place to do these things when machines start corruptin…

> Machines will simply start pretending to be human and sign everything themselves The signature has to be trusted though. Just signing it with a signature that has no meaning to me doesn't change anything apart from perhaps proving it has the same origin as something else. The key function is the humanness or repotuation/trust score of the signature. If I read something signed by my uncle with a key we recently exch…

> That would make me lower my trust of that author.

Would it? How would you tell? How can you prove that a piece of text was not written by an artificial intelligence?

> (likely because the author is human)

I think that's the real problem we're facing right now - humans are no longer the only plausibly intelligent beings on the planet, to the point where the meme-ish line between artificial intelligence and natural stupidity begins to blur. The only way in which you can tell these two apart at the moment is via approximation, just as you've used the word "likely".

Re: Sign Everything

#53

Post by lancesells »

infotogivenm wrote: post #25
eduction wrote: post #15

Great example of the danger of talking about a solution before you’ve truly defined the problem. What problem is Fred trying to solve? The example he gives of writing he would sign is a blog post. The blog post is already authenticated because it’s on avc.com. Fred Wilson has the tokens, social authority etc to ensure what shows up there under his name is from him. Technically speaking, it was already signed via TLS…

Signing everything is not terrible advice. But here the problem Fred is trying to solve is very simple. He is an investor in mirror.xyz and needs to make his money back. This is the only reason someone interested in signing something would also ask you to go through the hassle of using a blockchain.

How about all ChatGPT output gets signed instead so humanity doesn't take on the burden? But no, let's use Web3 and add something else to our workload because someone scraped humanity and turned it into a business.

Re: Sign Everything

#54

Post by Jerrrry »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #31

I do believe this "sign everything" issue can be dealt with later on. For new data/knowledge/posts. There's a much more pressing issue. I just asked ChatGPT to explain it, here's what it spouted: "We need to securely record the knowledge created by humans up to this date using cryptographic hashes and a Merkle tree. This includes text, pictures, videos, and sound. This is vital for training future AIs and will ensure…

The only proof of existence that would work is one that relies on a communal, unmodifiable, continuous chain of information.

that is why everyone pegs it to a bitcoin block, because its the digital equivalent of holding up a Polaroid with the current News headline on it.

Re: Sign Everything

#55

Post by rushikesh98 »

powera wrote: post #38
eduction wrote: post #15

Great example of the danger of talking about a solution before you’ve truly defined the problem. What problem is Fred trying to solve? The example he gives of writing he would sign is a blog post. The blog post is already authenticated because it’s on avc.com. Fred Wilson has the tokens, social authority etc to ensure what shows up there under his name is from him. Technically speaking, it was already signed via TLS…

The blockchain proves that the post was made when he says it was. Being on avc.com doesn't prove that; he could back-date posts.

The author can archive it on the internet archive. That will be proof of timestamp.

Re: Sign Everything

#56

Post by class4behavior »

csydas wrote: post #20

I actually don't see how signing everything solves the problem of AI generated essays unless you build a submission system that doesn't allow copy/pasting over a certain amount or that somehow assesses whether or not the 2000 words it just received were actually written by the user holding the keys or not. Signing just is a means of asserting an authority over an item and then tracking that item once it's in the chai…

>The original validity of the authority isn't guaranteed just because it's signed;

Nor should that be the intention. You don't want to break anonymity, you want to maintain non-repudiation, not authenticate the origin.

Re: Sign Everything

#57

Post by mananaysiempre »

radicalbyte wrote: post #34
infotogivenm wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signing everything is not terrible advice. But here the problem Fred is trying to solve is very simple. He is an investor in mirror.xyz and needs to make his money back. This is the only reason someone interested in signing something would also ask you to go through the hassle of using a blockchain.

There is absolutely 0 need to use a blockchain to sign something :facepalm:

Timestamping, so that people can know whether the signature that claims to have been made before revocation actually was, is one reason you might want to. Happily, that idea has been implemented on the Bitcoin mainnet and available as a free service for several years[1,2].

[1] https://opentimestamps.org/

[2] https://petertodd.org/2016/opentimestamps-announcement

Re: Sign Everything

#58

Post by jt2190 »

phoe-krk wrote: post #5

>I think AI and Web3 are two sides of the same coin. As machines increasingly do the work that humans used to do, we will need tools to manage our identity and our humanity. Web3 is producing those tools and some of us are already using them to write, tweet/cast, make and collect art, and do a host of other things that machines can also do. Web3 will be the human place to do these things when machines start corruptin…

> Machines will simply start pretending to be human…

Let’s be clear here: Humans are currently pretending to be computers, because we have to step in and “drive” them, rather than have them act autonomously. We’re currently trying to unpack the black box that is a computer and determine if it’s being driven by a human (e.g. “Was this quote from an actual person or was it generated by AI?”) which will become harder and harder to do as computers become more capable.

Re: Sign Everything

#59

Post by gjadi »

pdimitar wrote: post #28
gjadi wrote: post #22

Stupid idea for signing: use invisible characters to embed GPG signature (or signify(1) or whatever) inside any text you publish. This way, when the text is copy/pasted, your signature is still attached. You can even make browser and text editor plugins to make it ubiquitous. (yes you can make a screenshot, remove invisible chars, etc.)

Why would that be stupid? It sounds great and I want to learn more. Got any links, ideally with code, that demonstrate the idea?

Nope, I just thought of it because I stumbled on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33855950 yesterday.

So stupid idea because I didn't put a lot of thought in it :)

Re: Sign Everything

#60

Post by specialist »

This is The Correct Answer™.

Share your work. Cite your sources. Sign your name.

Bonus points for errata and retractions.

Signatures can be for nyms, anons, IRL persons, organizations, horses, whatever. Just so long as the trust chain checks out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_authority

--

As for implementation, assuming the author's public key is posted, public missives will have something like GnuPG short codes. Maybe Base64.

Extra points for registering (logging) these short codes somewhere? A rolling hash log (sorry, spacing the actual name) is probably sufficient. Like a git repo for one's blog.

Since a16z and other usual suspects are hyping Web3, I haven't bothered to learn about it. I just assume it's probably overkill, vapor, some kind of grift.

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