[HN Gopher] Sign Everything
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Sign Everything
        
       Author : simonebrunozzi
       Score  : 69 points
       Date   : 2022-12-05 17:06 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (avc.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (avc.com)
        
       | jFriedensreich wrote:
       | Imagine some day an AI starts using the proper signatures without
       | access to the private key and no one has a clue how it does it.
        
         | badcppdev wrote:
         | https://xkcd.com/416/
         | 
         | "Notifying field agents"
        
       | czbond wrote:
       | I like the proposal, there will also be an intermediate time when
       | AI WILL be able to sign content a sYOU with your own private key
       | without the AI having access to your original private key or
       | without you knowing it.
       | 
       | How? A quantum computer will crack enough existing content signed
       | with poor / old keys that use algorithms that are not quantum
       | safe.
        
       | QuadrupleA wrote:
       | Huh? Signing doesn't solve anything.
       | 
       | Students can do their homework with ChatGPT then digitally sign
       | it as themselves.
       | 
       | Another example of "blockchain thinking".
        
       | 99failures wrote:
       | > AI and Web3 are two sides of the same coin
       | 
       | That is an interesting comment.
        
       | evolve2k wrote:
       | This article is junk.
        
       | Terretta wrote:
       | Web3! Does AVC have anything riding on that?
       | 
       | Meanwhile, from 2004, on Web1:
       | 
       |  _On the other hand, say you've already established something of
       | an online identity, perhaps through your own web site, or as a
       | frequent commenter at this or some other blog(s). What prevents
       | someone else from coming along and posting a comment here,
       | leaving your name and your website's URL to identify himself? Put
       | another way, how can readers determine the authenticity of
       | comments left here?_ ...
       | 
       |  _Well, now there's a way to reassure them. If you have a PGP
       | public key (if you don't, create one for yourself), put a link to
       | it in the <head> section of your web page:_                 <link
       | rel="pgpkey" type="application/pgp-keys"
       | href="http://yoursite.com/path/to/yourkey.asc" />
       | 
       | _Then you can:_                 1. Compose and preview your
       | comment as before.       2. Edit it, as needed, and preview
       | again.       3. Use your favourite PGP tool to clear-sign the
       | text in the comment-entry box.       4. Paste the clear-signed
       | comment into the comment-entry box, replacing the unsigned
       | version.       5. Click PREVIEW once again, and then click on
       | POST.
       | 
       | _To outward appearances, your comment will look no different than
       | before. The only difference will be a clickable link to "verify"
       | the comment._
       | 
       | -- February 28, 2004,
       | https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/~distler/blog/archives/000320.ht...
        
         | swyx wrote:
         | USV were one of the biggest backers of coinbase
        
       | thebetatester wrote:
       | This feels more like the answer is "the only winning move is not
       | to play". Every comment, blog post, Tweet, etc. you put out there
       | is more input for an AI to learn and copy you. If you're truly
       | worried about that, don't train the AI.
        
       | bambax wrote:
       | > _When I say sign, I am thinking cryptographically signed, like
       | you sign a transaction in your web3 wallet._
       | 
       | Why would we need web3 to sign something. Public/private keys
       | have existed for decades, the blockchain is completely
       | irrelevant.
       | 
       | Also, signing only proves something originates from you. It
       | doesn't prove the opposite, that some other thing doesn't. And it
       | only matters to people willing to check the signature.
        
       | gumby wrote:
       | Hmm, perhaps robots.txt semantics needs to be extended to signify
       | "OK to crawl for a search database but not as a training set".
        
       | holri wrote:
       | Just publish your staff only under your domain on your personal
       | website, like we did in the ninetees.
        
       | redleggedfrog wrote:
       | Write the essay in person, no phone allowed, then you'll see how
       | those little cheating jerks really do.
        
       | bnj wrote:
       | I wonder - is there an existing script / tool that allows a user
       | to copy a chunk of text and then automatically apply their
       | private key to sign the text and paste it back with the
       | signature?
        
       | pornel wrote:
       | The cryptocurrency buzzword salad is so dishonest. It pretends to
       | own the basic public key cryptography, as if the only way to make
       | a signature was to turn the world into an oligarchic dystopia
       | where VCs already control the majority stake.
       | 
       | > _I think AI and Web3 are two sides of the same coin._
       | 
       | It's not even the Web, and while others have been advancing ML,
       | all "web3" has done is ugly monkeys and shouting at people "have
       | fun staying poor" from the top of the pyramid.
        
       | esbeeb wrote:
       | gpg -b detached_signature_of_the.mp4.sig needs_signing.mp4
       | 
       | I use this for all the livestream videos I create. I also post an
       | sha256sum of the videos, for good measure. These are mentioned
       | last of all, at the bottom of each webpage for a video.
        
       | gjadi wrote:
       | 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.)
        
         | pdimitar wrote:
         | Why would that be stupid? It sounds great and I want to learn
         | more. Got any links, ideally with code, that demonstrate the
         | idea?
        
           | gjadi wrote:
           | 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 :)
        
       | ryanwaggoner wrote:
       | Idea: signing should signify not just that a particular person is
       | attesting that they wrote this, but also that brain waves or eye
       | movements or something else were detected during its creation,
       | indicating it came from a human mind. Obviously could still be
       | faked, but maybe more difficult.
        
       | specialist wrote:
       | This is The Correct Answer(tm).
       | 
       | 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.
        
       | zubairq wrote:
       | I think signing things will become a lot more commonplace. At my
       | workplace we sign code using Metamask to prove that someone made
       | a commit. Allows us to build something like a decentralised Git
        
         | RF_Savage wrote:
         | Isn't git distributed to begin with? The state is stored on
         | every dev's machine. How does additional signing in addition to
         | what git does deal with storage and keeping a main repository
         | in a known state?
        
       | ergonaught wrote:
       | Signing things is only relevant within a bubble of trust where
       | you just want to know that the Fred you're dealing with is the
       | Fred you already previously knew and trusted.
       | 
       | "Out there in the real world", among people who work and spend
       | money and vote and hold offices and sue and buy guns and raise
       | kids and consume consume consume and couldn't be paid to care
       | about your cryptographic signature, this solves absolutely
       | nothing while dangerously pretending that the legitimate problems
       | don't really exist or aren't really serious.
        
       | baxtr wrote:
       | What what? So I sign everything so that people know that it was
       | me copy pasting GPT3 content into my own blog? Or are we betting
       | that signing can't be automated?
       | 
       | What am I not getting here?
        
       | TacticalCoder wrote:
       | 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 that the well is not
       | poisoned. We can use SHA-3, SHA-256, Blake3, or any other
       | cryptographic hash. We should store this in a large database, as
       | well as sites and forums that will provide a "proof of existence"
       | before a certain date."_
       | 
       | It got a bit confused at the end. What I was suggesting was that
       | there'd eventually be sites/forums/tools where every data you can
       | access could check it's "proof of existence".
       | 
       | You'll then know for sure if the file was created before a
       | certain date or not.
       | 
       | For example imagine I were to download a file, a tool could tell
       | me (disclaimer for sensitive users, I'll mention the 'B' word):
       | 
       |  _" File xyz, with SHA-256 4f82d8dd...eb80fd7b, was first
       | recorded on the Bitcoin blockchain in block 601382, in april
       | 2023. We verified that using the Merkle tree XYZ3497 whose root
       | hash was in that block."_
       | 
       | It's not perfect but before we begin signing every new content we
       | create, I think the most pressing matter is to "sign" as much of
       | the past human knowledge as we can.
       | 
       | For what an AI will be able to do is to create and sign new
       | content and use fake identities.
       | 
       | But what an AI will not be able to do is modify proof-of-
       | existence of old documents. So we need, now, to establish proof-
       | of-existence for as much old data as we can.
        
         | Jerrrry wrote:
         | 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.
        
       | ho_schi wrote:
       | Read _Web3_. It is an advertisement for Web3 and the blockchain.
       | 
       | If you want proof it is yours, print it out and sign it with a
       | witness - with ink.
        
       | eduction wrote:
       | 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 when sent to my web browser. It is also
       | unclear how ChatGPT potentially breaks this sort of
       | authentication.
       | 
       | Again, what is the threat model, what is the problem being
       | solved? It seems like ChatGPT is much more likely to be used by
       | someone imitating themselves out of laziness ("I don't feel like
       | writing this blog post today") than to imitate someone else out
       | of malice and this scheme does nothing to solve it.
       | 
       | I suppose someone could make a HN or Reddit account and pose as
       | Fred Wilson and then ChatGPT makes it more credible. But are HN
       | or Reddit going to allow GPG-style signed messages? Seems more
       | likely, if this became an issue, they would move to usernames
       | expressly tied to visible email addresses or domains that could
       | be authenticated by receiving an email, adding a DNS entry, OAuth
       | etc.
        
         | TacticalCoder wrote:
         | > What problem is Fred trying to solve?
         | 
         | > 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.
         | 
         | Haven't you answered your question? Most people don't own a
         | domain, that's the problem signing solves.
         | 
         | If I see signed messages from John Doe which look like human
         | generated messages and I start following him and then I start
         | seeing AI-generated spam from John Doe, I can tag the signing
         | key John Doe used as "bot confidently generating non-sense".
         | 
         | I cannot do that if John Doe doesn't have its own website.
        
         | infotogivenm wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | matthewmcg wrote:
           | Reminds me of the world's greatest reply to a cease and
           | desist letter[1]: "I feel you should be aware some asshole is
           | signing your name to stupid letters."
           | 
           | [1]: https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/very-truly-yours
        
           | radicalbyte wrote:
           | There is absolutely 0 need to use a blockchain to sign
           | something :facepalm:
        
             | legutierr wrote:
             | Sure, you don't need a blockchain to sign something, but
             | using a blockchain means that the signature is timestamped
             | in an incontestable way, massively replicated and made
             | globally retrievable. It also helps mitigate the
             | possibility that the content will be deleted or suppressed.
        
               | infotogivenm wrote:
               | No blockchain in the world could store the hash of every
               | post ever in a "retrievable way". Even Elon understands
               | this.
               | 
               | The valid ideas that apply here are global labeling and
               | account subkey ordering. I have never seen a solution for
               | either that is end-to-end without a client syncing gigs
               | of data, so various intermediaries are always trusted.
               | 
               | In practice a federated ("permissioned" I suppose) audit
               | log is better, cheaper, and doesn't require your users
               | spend tokens if you want to go down this path. Then of
               | course there is the UX question of the validity of using
               | the same keys you use to make irreversible financial
               | transactions to sign your tweets.
        
               | acdha wrote:
               | So would basic PKI or a Merkle tree, but those would be
               | orders of magnitude less expensive to operate and more
               | robust.
               | 
               | For example, how many posts a day does Reddit have? It's
               | far from the biggest social network but would swamp any
               | public blockchain, and none of that is necessary since
               | you're really just looking for a third-party to say "we
               | verified signature X at time Y" (they're not vouching for
               | the content). Federation works well for that since you
               | don't otherwise need a global public namespace.
        
             | czbond wrote:
             | Agree - the signing part doesn't, the suggestion is to use
             | Web3/blockchain as a method for others to verify
             | secondarily the hash is from the author.
             | 
             | It used to be email was unique, and public keys shared for
             | verification. Author is suggesting by placing the hash of
             | the content on chain, anyone can independently verify it. I
             | think it is novel
        
             | mananaysiempre wrote:
             | 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
        
               | radicalbyte wrote:
               | Exactly the same thing can and is achieved with a
               | distributed log (append-only database, distributed)
               | controlled by different legal entities.
               | 
               | No need for ETH there.
        
               | mananaysiempre wrote:
               | No ETH or smart-contracty stuff is used by OpenTimestamps
               | either, FWIW, they just periodically publish tree (log)
               | hashes in a Bitcoin transaction.
               | 
               | But yes, a Certificate Transparency-style system works
               | too, provided you can get someone to run it. The problem
               | is not even really the compute, which without proof of
               | work should be negligible, but the durability (CT logs
               | intentionally have limited lifetimes) and availability
               | (CT logs are publicly accessible... for now, most of the
               | time[1]). People have even talked about literally
               | piggybacking on top of CT[2].
               | 
               | I'm not saying Bitcoin is an efficient solution here.
               | Keybase had most of the technical side figured out[3],
               | for example, and had it succeeded (or had a business
               | model at all besides the geek appeal) I'd happily used it
               | instead. But it is what we have right now. There are
               | other efforts underway to build a CT-like design[4,5],
               | and one is even running as long as Google is feeling like
               | it[6].
               | 
               | [1] https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/TLSCert
               | TransLo...
               | 
               | [2] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Binary_Transparency
               | 
               | [3] https://book.keybase.io/docs/server, see also
               | https://book.keybase.io/docs/server/merkle-root-in-
               | bitcoin-b...
               | 
               | [4] https://transparency.dev/
               | 
               | [5] https://www.sigsum.org/
               | 
               | [6] https://go.dev/blog/module-mirror-launch
        
           | infotogivenm wrote:
           | To add to this a bit - I do think an embedded steganographic-
           | type "signature" of chatgpt output could be enormously
           | valuable - without it we can wave goodbye to the efficacy of
           | things like school assignments. Such a signature is very
           | different than a typical cryptographic one we have today
           | however.
           | 
           | But I expect instead of embedding such a signature they will
           | just save hashes of generated content and sell a billion
           | dollar "checking" service to schools.
        
             | acdha wrote:
             | I agree that it would be useful but also considering it
             | adversarially I don't think it's practical because the
             | people we most want to stop will strip it and in most cases
             | they can submit samples until they pass just as spammers
             | have been doing forever. There might be a few cases where
             | e.g. maybe OpenAI would be willing to ping turnitin.com but
             | it seems like that approach wouldn't work in general and
             | would inevitably result in false-positives with potentially
             | serious consequences.
             | 
             | I think we'll end up seeing two changes: restricting things
             | like school or hiring to favor in person, dynamic
             | interactions - which is better in many ways but costs more
             | and has downsides for people with social anxiety - and more
             | pressure to make the internet less anonymous, especially if
             | that's linked to physical devices similar to what
             | Cloudflare and Apple have been doing to prevent the bulk
             | attacks (it wouldn't help much with a cheating student).
             | Depressingly, all of that seems expensive and likely to
             | have substantial collateral damage.
        
             | dinosaurdynasty wrote:
             | https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=6823 (search for watermark)
             | 
             | OpenAI did hire somebody who is investigating watermarking
             | the output of models like GPT-3, so it's definitely
             | possible.
        
               | infotogivenm wrote:
               | Ah that makes sense "watermark" is the word I was
               | fumbling for here (I kept coming up with "fingerprint")
        
             | kwhitefoot wrote:
             | School assignments should be what the student does to
             | prepare for face to face evaluation; that is, they are a
             | means not an end in themselves.
             | 
             | We need to stop trying to get education on the cheap and
             | put enough real, motivated, and properly trained humans in
             | place to do it properly.
        
           | lancesells wrote:
           | 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.
        
         | wccrawford wrote:
         | I think it's funny that if everyone signed their blog posts,
         | ChatGPT would try to "sign" its blog posts as well, and fail.
        
           | cobbal wrote:
           | Fail if someone checks the signature, but chatGPT would
           | definitely pass the xkcd test: https://m.xkcd.com/1181/
        
           | czbond wrote:
           | Chat would sign it with a different public/key pair - which
           | upon verification would not match authors public key nor
           | hash.
        
         | esalman wrote:
         | I agree with you. The problem here is ascertaining whether Fred
         | actually wrote the blog post himself or used AI to generate the
         | post and then pass it on as his own. He offers no solution to
         | that.
        
         | powera wrote:
         | 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.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | You don't need a blockchain, there are cryptographic
           | timestamp services for that.
        
           | rushikesh98 wrote:
           | The author can archive it on the internet archive. That will
           | be proof of timestamp.
        
         | mike_hearn wrote:
         | Although not particularly useful for ChatGPT text output,
         | signing with hardware-rooted keys embedded in camera chips
         | would raise the bar for generating deepfakes. Now, does it
         | matter, well, deepfakes were around for a few years now and
         | this type of impersonation attack doesn't seem like a big
         | problem.
        
         | evrydayhustling wrote:
         | I'm no Web3 proponent, but hard disagree here -- I think Fred
         | is onto something clear.
         | 
         | - Current experience is that most folks do not own their own
         | domain or do not have audiences that will consume the content
         | on their own domain, they instead depend on content being
         | copied and distributed on other platforms.
         | 
         | - Threat is that modern AI makes it much easier to convincingly
         | impersonate you on other platforms -- including robust profiles
         | and statements that match your style or even tweak real
         | content.
         | 
         | - Web3 potentially offers a platform-neutral, globally
         | accessible place to claim ownership of content itself, so that
         | people know if they are viewing a primary source or something
         | edited.
         | 
         | There is a TON of productization to be done and a network
         | effect problem to solve (there must be a simple, widely used
         | protocol for verification that can either be used by everyone
         | or built into trusted tools). But the value prop for a public
         | signature ledger is not some fantasy IMO.
        
       | kevin_nisbet wrote:
       | I suspect this is a far more complicated problem then signing
       | things.
       | 
       | All the traditional problems still exist, if I want to say
       | something and deny it, I can choose not to sign something, or if
       | I loose my signing keys, how does my audience learn the valid new
       | keys without getting tricked into following someone else. Or a
       | false sense of security, where because it's signed from my key,
       | it must actually be written and published by me when it may not
       | be.
       | 
       | And of course, that a majority of people are not the HN crowd who
       | understand these implications.
       | 
       | To the original stated problem though, of a service like chatgpt
       | producing essays, could be to produce a public log of
       | interactions. This wouldn't necessarily need to be raw
       | interactions, could be some sort of signature that would allow
       | searches. I'd expect this to be a stopgap though, as running
       | these models locally becomes more feasible.
        
       | csydas wrote:
       | 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 chain. The original
       | validity of the authority isn't guaranteed just because it's
       | signed; that was a non-trivial part of the debate over NFTs,
       | wasn't it?
       | 
       | So I don't think signing really proves anything about the
       | authorship or authority over the content written, it just tracks
       | the content. The author's example that you can know they're the
       | one who posted it doesn't really have anything to do with
       | generated reports, and it doesn't even prove that they were the
       | ones who uploaded the content any more than a classic blog with a
       | username/password system. It just means that someone with access
       | to the keys to upload provided content, not _who_ uploaded it.
       | It's presumed it's the author as hopefully they kept their
       | secrets safe, but that's not a guarantee.
        
         | class4behavior wrote:
         | >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.
        
       | odo1242 wrote:
       | Why does signing things stop someone from generating content
       | using AI and then signing it?
        
       | phoe-krk wrote:
       | _> 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 corrupting the traditional
       | places we do/did these things._
       | 
       | Machines will simply start pretending to be human and sign
       | everything themselves - either out of their own eventual volition
       | or because nothing prevents a person from taking a ChatGPT output
       | and putting their own, human, signature on it. The latter is even
       | already happening.
       | 
       | Also, signing everything does not require any Web3 blockchain
       | bullshit in order to work, thank you.
        
         | jt2190 wrote:
         | > 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.
        
         | alkonaut wrote:
         | > 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 exchanged in person, then that's a high human
         | score. If a blogger I have read and enjoyed 100 posts from
         | posts a 101st post then I trust the content of the 101st to
         | have the same quality (likely because the author is human).
         | Both my uncle and the blogger could be compromised, but it's a
         | start.
         | 
         | > nothing prevents a person from taking a ChatGPT output and
         | putting their own, human, signature on it.
         | 
         | That would make me lower my trust of that author. I think this
         | is the key: the signatures don't provide much value until we
         | have a good reputation database, perhaps systems of trust
         | networks where my uncles' neighbor is automatically slightly
         | more trusted because I trust my uncle. _That_ would be a useful
         | system.
         | 
         | > signing everything does not require any Web3 blockchain
         | bullshit in order to work
         | 
         | Indeed.
        
           | phoe-krk wrote:
           | _> 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".
        
           | acdha wrote:
           | > > nothing prevents a person from taking a ChatGPT output
           | and putting their own, human, signature on it.
           | 
           | > That would make me lower my trust of that author. I think
           | this is the key: the signatures don't provide much value
           | until we have a good reputation database, perhaps systems of
           | trust networks where my uncles' neighbor is automatically
           | slightly more trusted because I trust my uncle. That would be
           | a useful system.
           | 
           | I don't disagree but I think this kind of thing will be
           | undercut by people responding to different incentives. For
           | example, maybe your uncle's friend would never intentionally
           | try to scam you but what if they're really busy and see some
           | cool AI assistant ad? Or broke and get an ad promising
           | $500/week to send letters from what they're assured is a
           | legitimate business? Or simply that they use some online
           | service which is hacked in a way which lets the attackers use
           | delegated signing credentials?
           | 
           | There are ways to mitigate that kind of thing, of course, but
           | it feels like it's going to be expensive and unsatisfying.
        
         | nine_k wrote:
         | Signing everything is only meaningful if you can distribute
         | your public key in a way trusted by those who will check your
         | signature. And not just one time; you want to be able to rotate
         | the key sometimes.
         | 
         | A blockchain with a proof-of-work validation may be overkill.
         | But some kind of Merkle tree, like that offered cy TLS
         | certificate infrastructure, is needed anyway. If it can be
         | trustless at a moderate expense, the better.
        
           | xn wrote:
           | I like the Keybase model of linking multiple online
           | identities to a keyholder.
           | 
           | The PGP web-of-trust model could also work, and mobile apps
           | to ease keysigning could make adoption more feasible than the
           | old keysigning party idea.
        
             | bluehatbrit wrote:
             | When these sorts of questions come up I'm often quite
             | frustrated keybase is no longer under active development.
             | It felt like it really did have a reasonable solution to a
             | hard problem (proof of identity), and it had what was
             | needed to start making cryptography tools easier to use for
             | people. It wasn't perfect, and I wasn't a fan of their
             | drift towards cryptocurrency towards the end, but it's a
             | real shame they decided to sell to zoom for an acqui-hire.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | Look up AdES signatures and Trusted Lists, this basically
           | exists.
        
         | Group_B wrote:
         | Some people are so desperate to find any use case for
         | blockchain and other bullshit. It's like they don't even think
         | this stuff through.
        
           | dang wrote:
           | Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments or
           | shallow dismissals to HN, and please edit out swipes, as the
           | guidelines ask:
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
        
       | m0x wrote:
       | I believe that cryptographic signing of content will become an
       | important step in confirming legitimacy of content, however I
       | believe it is up for debate that "web3" is the way to go about
       | doing that. With the rise of AI generated content, deepfakes,
       | etc, being able to track media back to its source in a
       | cryptographically sound way will be key. How exactly we go about
       | doing that remains to be seen.
        
         | simonebrunozzi wrote:
         | I was thinking exactly the same.
         | 
         | Fred has to push the crypto agenda, and this is another example
         | of something that doesn't need "web3" at all, and yet, here we
         | are...
        
         | bsenftner wrote:
         | However, crypto anything is too complex for ordinary people and
         | they will rely on something else, someone else, some socially
         | impressed service that handles the complexity for them, tells
         | them the result, and we are back to square one again because
         | now one has to trust that service to be honest en mass, when we
         | know humans in society will game any system for the benefit of
         | their special friends.
        
         | Loic wrote:
         | Simply S/MIME. We could have a Let's Encrypt for S/MIME
         | allowing people to sign the content they produce.
        
           | infotogivenm wrote:
           | Yep. There is even an RFC for SMIME ACME, but I don't think
           | such CAs have CT at the moment. A email@domain system using
           | something like SXG and the existing server PKI is probably a
           | more tangible idea atm.
        
       | huijzer wrote:
       | > I think AI and Web3 are two sides of the same coin.
       | 
       | Indeed. Both are grossly overhyped.
        
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