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I get that this solution is distasteful. But verifying humanity on the Internet is a real problem that is getting harder and more important very quickly. CAPTCH

I get that this solution is distasteful. But verifying humanity on the Internet is a real problem that is getting harder and more important very quickly. CAPTCHAs aren't going to work much longer. What is a solution that people can live with?

lolinder 2y ago
Playing devil's advocate: why is it important? Why do we need to know if an agent on the internet is human or robot? Generally what we actually need to know is if a given agent is engaging in manipulative behavior, illegal activities, or otherwise causing harm to us or our customers. Those behaviors are often correlated with robot agents, which has allowed us to use "is this a robot" as an imperfect proxy for "is this agent up to no good". But for most use cases the humanity isn't actually what we're interested in, it's whether the agent is abusive. In a world where we can't verify humanity as easily, maybe we just need to find different proxies for abuse detection?
- modeless 2y ago
  I'm sympathetic to this viewpoint. There will be applications that need human verification, but maybe in most cases it doesn't matter. It does seem to me like the endgame of this would be that everyone interacts mostly with AIs online rather than other humans, as AIs will be (at least superficially) more helpful, patient, pleasant, whatever you want. Check out this social network of AI sycophants and imagine that they start populating all the regular social networks too: https://x.com/michaelsayman/status/1835841675584811239 https://x.com/michaelsayman/status/1835841675584811239
A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago
<< What is a solution that people can live with? Dropping a good portion of digital life seems like a good start.
cedws 2y ago
Agreed, the internet is already in desperate need of a way to authenticate real humans, and we'll need it even more in 5-10 years. But it can't simply be verification via government-issued ID. The solution needs to be private, and ideally as decentralised as possible.
jazzyjackson 2y ago
If Ticketmaster wants to know I'm not a bot, I guess I would be OK signing a challenge with my government issued identity card [0] - for message boards that need to avoid spam and griefers, IMO an invite only system with revokable access to everyone a bad actor handed an invite code could be sufficient Also scanning my eyeballs to have a private corporation give the thumbs up or thumbs down on whether I can access a particular service isnt merely distasteful but dystopian in a "we already lost" kind of way [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card
m1guelpf 2y ago
no need to reverse-engineer anything, both hardware[1] and software[2] are up on GitHub [1]: https://github.com/worldcoin/orb-hardware https://github.com/worldcoin/orb-hardware [2]: https://github.com/worldcoin/orb-software https://github.com/worldcoin/orb-software
wbobeirne 2y ago
I think this is a totally valid question. My answer would probably be to have people actually pay for more things. I think a huge proponent of something like World is advertisers, who want to make sure that real human eyeballs are seeing your ads. But if you pay me money, I don't care if you're a rogue AI botnet running amok, I'm happy to serve your request.
- modeless 2y ago
  So Twitter Blue/X Premium is the model of the future?
PolieBotics 2y ago
A real solution is to create privacy-preserving proofs regarding the state of a timestamped cryptographic feedback loop in projector-camera systems. It's trivial to add incoming image hashes and timestamps to a Merkle tree and to derive the output hashes of projector emissions as they come, while providing an output hash to one's interlocutor (or BFT network) periodically. This proves the beginning time, end time, and sequentiality of all emissions. Correspondence between emissions and recordings is proven by training autoencoders on concatenated projection images and returned camera images. These autoencoders are transformed using privacy preservation techniques. Thus, human relationships and trust can be modeled and secured.
JohnFen 2y ago
This is a solution I could put up with as long as it wasn't being run by a company (and especially not an SV-type company, and doubly so with Worldcoin specifically). That requires me to have a ton more trust in them than I can summon. If we have to have something like this, I want it to be run by governments instead. Governments already have our identity information anyway, so I wouldn't be leaking any data to a new entity, and if the government is remotely democratic in nature, the citizenry has more say in how things are done than they do with companies.

lolinder 2y ago

Playing devil's advocate: why is it important? Why do we need to know if an agent on the internet is human or robot? Generally what we actually need to know is if a given agent is engaging in manipulative behavior, illegal activities, or otherwise causing harm to us or our customers. Those behaviors are often correlated with robot agents, which has allowed us to use "is this a robot" as an imperfect proxy for "is this agent up to no good". But for most use cases the humanity isn't actually what we're interested in, it's whether the agent is abusive. In a world where we can't verify humanity as easily, maybe we just need to find different proxies for abuse detection?

modeless 2y ago
I'm sympathetic to this viewpoint. There will be applications that need human verification, but maybe in most cases it doesn't matter. It does seem to me like the endgame of this would be that everyone interacts mostly with AIs online rather than other humans, as AIs will be (at least superficially) more helpful, patient, pleasant, whatever you want. Check out this social network of AI sycophants and imagine that they start populating all the regular social networks too: https://x.com/michaelsayman/status/1835841675584811239 https://x.com/michaelsayman/status/1835841675584811239

A4ET8a8uTh0 2y ago

<< What is a solution that people can live with? Dropping a good portion of digital life seems like a good start.

cedws 2y ago

Agreed, the internet is already in desperate need of a way to authenticate real humans, and we'll need it even more in 5-10 years. But it can't simply be verification via government-issued ID. The solution needs to be private, and ideally as decentralised as possible.

jazzyjackson 2y ago

If Ticketmaster wants to know I'm not a bot, I guess I would be OK signing a challenge with my government issued identity card [0] - for message boards that need to avoid spam and griefers, IMO an invite only system with revokable access to everyone a bad actor handed an invite code could be sufficient Also scanning my eyeballs to have a private corporation give the thumbs up or thumbs down on whether I can access a particular service isnt merely distasteful but dystopian in a "we already lost" kind of way [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estonian_identity_card

m1guelpf 2y ago

no need to reverse-engineer anything, both hardware[1] and software[2] are up on GitHub [1]: https://github.com/worldcoin/orb-hardware https://github.com/worldcoin/orb-hardware [2]: https://github.com/worldcoin/orb-software https://github.com/worldcoin/orb-software

wbobeirne 2y ago

I think this is a totally valid question. My answer would probably be to have people actually pay for more things. I think a huge proponent of something like World is advertisers, who want to make sure that real human eyeballs are seeing your ads. But if you pay me money, I don't care if you're a rogue AI botnet running amok, I'm happy to serve your request.

modeless 2y ago
So Twitter Blue/X Premium is the model of the future?

PolieBotics 2y ago

A real solution is to create privacy-preserving proofs regarding the state of a timestamped cryptographic feedback loop in projector-camera systems. It's trivial to add incoming image hashes and timestamps to a Merkle tree and to derive the output hashes of projector emissions as they come, while providing an output hash to one's interlocutor (or BFT network) periodically. This proves the beginning time, end time, and sequentiality of all emissions. Correspondence between emissions and recordings is proven by training autoencoders on concatenated projection images and returned camera images. These autoencoders are transformed using privacy preservation techniques. Thus, human relationships and trust can be modeled and secured.

JohnFen 2y ago

This is a solution I could put up with as long as it wasn't being run by a company (and especially not an SV-type company, and doubly so with Worldcoin specifically). That requires me to have a ton more trust in them than I can summon. If we have to have something like this, I want it to be run by governments instead. Governments already have our identity information anyway, so I wouldn't be leaking any data to a new entity, and if the government is remotely democratic in nature, the citizenry has more say in how things are done than they do with companies.