It is not a question of "if" but "when" AI voices will dominate public online
spaces. There are many reasons for why AI will become the majority speaker in
public spaces: monetization potential by operators, political motivations by
corporate and state bodies, etc. And there is no question as to whether AI voices
will be indistinguishable from human voices in the future : they already are.
In 10 years or even 5 years from now, I cannot imagine a situation where in any
currently existing online space, it is possible to discern an actual human from
an AI agent posing and operating as a human, for whatever motivations.
If this is a scenario that concerns you, there are two steps you can take now
to "inoculate" yourself from the coming epidemic of AI, as it were:
- Establish a cryptographic identity -- there will be a date in history,
perhaps assigned arbitrarily, that will be called the date at which new "users"
cannot be distinguished between AI and humanity. Creating a public and private
key TODAY and distributing the public key around will serve as a proof of
humanity pre-dating the AI takeover of the internet. One public key should be
created for each online identity -- and despite our side of the internet's
general tendency toward anonymity, a public key for a "real name" should
definitely be created and published as well. When necessary, "online identities"
can and should be cross-referenced against an operator's "real identity" --
given that all communication in a private-key public-key environs is encrypted,
anyway, with "plausibly deniable" text, it should not be a concern what is
addressed in a state of forward secrecy.
Purchasing cryptocurrency remains a viable means to "establish identity" as it
(a) requires a financial stake to occur, and (b) is linked with a cybernetic
identity, with public + private keys, which give people a contact address
and a means of private, personal communication.
- Purchase a domain name that is obvious to the greater community in
identifying you in some way, shape, or form: even if AI agents may dominate
Twitter, Mastadon Network, et al, paying real money to a quasi-governmental
agency is a measure of stability, if not a proof of identity. As with point 1,
this should be done sooner, rather than later.
Even without encryption tools at his disposal, as long as someone is renewing a
domain name, an objective log of ownership of the domain name continues:
a sudden shift in domain name ownership should set off alarm bells in
cautious watchers.
To conform with my principle of vaccination against AI-fication of the WWW,
grab my public key for the email address 52 at 4x13.net here:
https://4x13.net/me/key.txt