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Comment by williamcotton | Hacker News Reader

Authentically Human in a World of ChatGPT:

https://williamcotton.com/articles/authentically-human-in-a-...

Argues for public infrastructure for identity verification.

Not sure how this is supposed to prevent a correctly verified, genuinely authentic human from pasting ChatGPT output into a submission box, and claiming it as their own.

Probably the same way a stolen iPhone is rendered useless without the real owner's account password: software, hardware, and servers that work closely together to disallow unauthorized types of use. Even if you found a way, your identifier will be taken off the whitelist once discovered.

It sure as hell slows down the flood of bots doing the same!

Until one of those humans figures out how to write a Chrome extension that automates things... which, sadly, is something a lot of them would rather do than learn how to write.

Only one submission per public key?

You’re right, though, this is not as straightforward as it originally seemed!

Its not so much a problem for the government to be metering out private keys on proof of heartbeat, but rather that it will always want to tie them to an actual identity.

Nobody wants to or has enough trust in telecommunications to present their driver's license in order to participate in an online forum. If DoD really could provide a private key to bypass captcha tests then it could be useful, but there is a zero percent chance that it doesn't get tied back to people with real-world consequences almost immediately.

A persistent, costly ID for online communications and commerce is good and well implemented in an OS like Urbit, but relying on DoD maintaining them is too risky given the current laws around government surveilling, policing, and an ascending domestic 'war on terror'.

My view is that anonymity should always be allowed but that in certain instances people should have the ability to choose to interact in explicitly non-anonymous manner. That does mean with their full identity attached to their online avatar.

I don’t even remotely understand the problems. My real identity is attached to the ownership of my house and so far the government hasn’t put a bag over my head.

But yes, I realize that the tyranny of the anonymous will go on for longer than it really should due to extreme paranoia about the political other.

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