[ExI] The internet bot problem

[Adrian Tymes]

Corporations, which are not people, can already get tax ID numbers.

Also, which "the" government would one have to have a relationship with?
Would, say, the Indian or Brazilian government fully trust the US
government to authenticate their citizens, and to provide personhood
credentials only to its actual human beings?  (Leaving aside the
Russia/China/et al mess.)

And without what amounts to identification, how could personhood
credentials not be trivially forged?  A non-shared password, or something
like that, links to and thus identifies an individual.  If there's nothing
linking the credential to a specific person, a computer (with or without
AI) can simply copy the credentials and use them.

On Sat, Nov 30, 2024 at 10:29 AM BillK via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

> Can humans purge the bots without sacrificing our privacy?
> "Personhood" credentials could cleanse the internet of bots — but are
> the costs worth it?
> By Ross Pomeroy     November 30, 2024
>
> <https://www.freethink.com/the-digital-frontier/personhood-credentials>
> Quotes:
> According to the 2024 Imperva Bad Bot Report, the proportion of
> internet traffic generated by bots hit almost 50% this year, growing
> 2% from the year prior. It’s hard to get a handle on the share of
> essentially fake websites, social media accounts, comments, reviews,
> and emails being churned out by bots, but it is surely vast.
>
> Personhood credentials to the rescue?
> “To get a personhood credential, you are going to have to show up in
> person or have a relationship with the government, like a tax ID
> number,” Tobin South, a graduate student in MIT’s Media Lab and one of
> the report’s authors, told MIT News.
> While a PHC proves your humanity, it would not be identification —
> users would maintain anonymity.
> But there are genuine risks and challenges.
> -------------------
>
> Indeed, proving you are human will become increasingly difficult.
> Even video calls and chats can now be done by bots.
>
> BillK
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20241130/7db089c8/attachment.htm>