AI & Identity
Table of Contents:
My primary concerns with AI are related to identity; AI makes identity creation, impersonation, and astroturfing trivial. AI is already used in identify theft and to astroturf forums for brand advertisments. I recall a moment during 2024 in which a photo of a burnt Palestinian child was argued to have been AI generated on Twitter. The foundations of consensus reality will continue to be eroded. The default reaction to increased botting (anti-spam measures, human verification, etc.) have an inherent limit. AI will eventually be capable of passing any anti-spam task that a human could do.
Social engineering attacks using real-time voice or video AI ‘deepfakes’. The average person does not have the appropriate epistemology or cognitive security to resist this psyopping. A possible non-privacy-invasive solution is blockchain tech; crytpographically backed proof of identity. This can be achieved through anonymous reputation proofs or gas fee attrition (through wallet balance verification). Reputation becomes more important. Popularity becomes meaningless. Verifications of personhood become meaningless when what is AI and what is human becomes indistinguishable.
A Solution
Signature-Based Wallet Challenge
When users register, they prove ownership of their wallets by signing a server-generated nonce with their private key. The server then verifies the signature, extracts the wallet address, and checks that the wallet hasn’t been used before.
Minimum Wallet Balance Verification
If the wallet is fresh, the server then searches the blockchain to check the wallet’s balance. If the wallet meets a non-trivial balance criteria (e.g., >$15), then the sign-up process is completed and the wallet is recorded in a server-side database as “used” to prevent re-use. This solution discourages bots and spam by imposing an indirect cost on creating multiple accounts through gas fee attrition. It is scalable, simple, and more user-friendly than CAPTCHAs. Alongside signature-based verification, it ensures one wallet == one verified user.