Human-First: Decentralizing Identity and Governance in the Era of AI • Hacker News Board

Re: Human-First: Decentralizing Identity and Governance in the Era of AI

#21

Post by cypherpundit » Mon, Mar 18, 2019, 5:08 PM UTC

Moodles wrote: post #2

This reminds me of a previous job. The management—none of which were technical people—just loved the idea of investigating “the blockchain” and “IoT” and “machine learning” and “AI”, but had no clue what it meant. I left after a couple of months. Has anyone else read this article and had the same experience as me? I genuinely second guess myself when reading it: have I lost the ability to read? Am I stupid? I read al…

Following the link in the article to the white paper "The Social Smart Contract" there is a detailed explanation of the entire project (paper.democracy.earth) - reading this, I think the answer to "what do they want to do with a blockchain and why" becomes more clear - the project is about building a digital governance platform i.e. tokenize democracy, which enables new forms of digital voter representation and participation. This article is focused on the evolution of the project's token architecture i.e. the how, vs. the what/why.

Regarding the meaning of 'formalizing humans on the blockchain" - I think the point here is, social media and the nation-states (driver's licenses, passports) are the centralized entities that control formal identity - this project is layout out an approach to decentralize the ability for a person to claim a digital ID, which is a keystone challenge to be met for digital governance to not be overrun with bots and sybils like current social media platforms are.

Also if you research the co-founder, he is a college drop out game developer and founder of a political party in Argentina - pretty far from an MBA type.

Re: Human-First: Decentralizing Identity and Governance in the Era of AI

#22

Post by BucketSort » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 11:38 AM UTC

paula_berman wrote: post #18

BucketSort wrote: post #8

I think most of what they say is fear mongering and totally irrelevant. For example, the image that says "the biggest threat to democracy: these people never existed" and showing the AI generated faces. How is that the biggest threat to democracy? Aren't things like the two party system, a corrupt media that pushes political agendas instead of reporting objectively, social media polarizing people with echo chambers a…

Democracy Earth actually started as a political party and then moved to working with blockchain technology due to the censorhip-resistance and incorruptibility properties. I recommend you research the organization. The article argues that many of the problems you mentioned can ultimately can be traced back to AI and the centralized internet architecture underlying it. If all you could get from it is that fake AI peop…

Your only comments on your account defend the organization and you have not disclosed your apparent affiliation: https://words.democracy.earth/@paulaberman

Re: Human-First: Decentralizing Identity and Governance in the Era of AI

#23

Post by Moodles » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

paula_berman wrote: post #19

Moodles wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how, exactly does a blockchain help with voting? Be specific: what is being hashed, what signatures, where? What kind of cryptography and exactly how is it used? It’s so frustrating when these MBA types just wave their hands and say “decentralisation!” Why do they have three types of coin they want to sell? So you’re suggesting the whole point of this is for voting with governments you don’t trust. Why would such…

Blockchains help with governance and identity (which are the same thing) by instituting global personas that can signal preferences in a censorship-resistant way. If you do not think there is a dire need for such mechanisms of global governance you might not have been reading the news of the past decade. The tokens are going to be granted as human rights, each with a specific functionality and reasoning behind them (…

As I said: be specific.

You obviously won't talk about anything technical to do with the blockchain: how the consensus algorithm works and why you chose it, who sells the coins and why, why you need coins, what security guarantees it has, why having all nodes of a network sharing a copy of the same ledger and constantly engaging in a protocol to agree on the state of the ledger is at all a good idea, and so on and so on... You just want to argue with me a bit to muddle the waters so people side it's one side against another and the truth lies somewhere inbetween. Fact is, this project makes no sense.

Re: Human-First: Decentralizing Identity and Governance in the Era of AI

#24

Post by Moodles » Wed, Mar 20, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

paula_berman wrote: post #20

Moodles wrote: post #2

This reminds me of a previous job. The management—none of which were technical people—just loved the idea of investigating “the blockchain” and “IoT” and “machine learning” and “AI”, but had no clue what it meant. I left after a couple of months. Has anyone else read this article and had the same experience as me? I genuinely second guess myself when reading it: have I lost the ability to read? Am I stupid? I read al…

The why blockchain question is addressed in the first sentence. Of course, it is a short answer - it's not explained further because we have an entire paper just dedicated to that which most of our readers are familiar with: check paper.democracy.earth for that. Happy to answer any specific questions regarding formalizing humans on the blockchain, it is definitely a dense subject, but a key point for expanding the po…

No it isn't. There's no need for a blockchain here, and you either know it and just want to make some $$$ selling your pointless tokens, or you're clueless about the tradeoffs associated with a blockchain.

You obviously won't talk about anything technical to do with the blockchain: how the consensus algorithm works and why you chose it, who sells the coins and why, why you need coins, what security guarantees it has, why having all nodes of a network sharing a copy of the same ledger and constantly engaging in a protocol to agree on the state of the ledger is at all a good idea, and so on and so on... You just want to argue with me a bit to muddle the waters so people side it's one side against another and the truth lies somewhere inbetween. Fact is, this project makes no sense.