Interview│Dr. David Chaum - xx network│ETHDam 2024

laid out even in the Scientific American article which appeared 1992 solution to personal privacy in the information age for consumers but the thing that's I believe has impeded its widespread adoption it's hard to use it that's where AI could help welcome to eem meet David CH the creator of digital cash what does he see for the future of privacy let's find out my name is Dave charm and I am an inventor of principally uh privacy Technologies well I wanted people that are sort of early stage in their career I think which you know the vast majority of those in the audience uh to understand that instead of privacy being something that's really you know an aspirational battle that's going to be ongoing and we may not uh win uh in fact now it's it's transition because of artificial intelligence some new breakthroughs into a an opportunity to Prevail in a competitive business environment with systems which are have tremendous disruptive capability I'm not exactly sure how to define it but you know like this like the Supreme Court says I know it when I see it it's um you know it's to me the the the essential uh important aspects of whatever you know fits the this name is that it empowers individuals to uh operate with uh enhanced autonomy [Music] and yet to be able to influence the direction of society well [Music] eash is quite a good system but it did not lend itself to running autonomously in a decentralized manner even though I readit it with inventing the blockchain in the first place eash was not something that could could operate there because it requires the issuance of signatures and in a blockchain environment um there's not really a an easy way to uh uh to generate those efficiently at least back in in those days so um however most of the clean and effective privacy payments systems or p p systems that have a privacy aspect use the original blind signature concept to to attain it um so you know it it basically it gave the essential tool through which the nicest privacy and payment systems uh to this day uh are can be built so I'm was that the question how what survives it from it yeah that that's what survives it I mean it survives the basic idea of blind signature and so on is just prevalent in all kinds of privacy Technology Solutions it's not the only way to do it in all cases uh but it is um still dominant I didn't really receive push back on the desirability of the privacy but I did uh get a lot of feedback about how difficult it might be to actually you know Implement and affect the these kind of changes and um that's that turned out to be true it wasn't easy because you know you're trying to sell like a really kind of like a nice to have aspirational kind of um you know sort of liberal value uh into a marketplace where people are trying to make a living and trying to make money and you know it's it it's just an extra uh distraction cost and um it its value wasn't widely appreciated by the general public part because it was never really offered to them so they were sort of unaware of it of it as an alternative that makes sense you other words if you don't know that you could get uh uh a car that has uh whatever brightly colored paint uh you'll be happy buying a a black model te that effect right I mean obviously the most of the public mostly only is aware of those things which are are offered to them they're not thinking about uh aspects of features that that aren't made available to them because they're not actionable Alternatives as I try to argue uh I thought I was pretty clear it that I have laid out even in the Scientific American article which appeared you like 92 that uh a more or less a comprehensive solution to personal privacy and the information age for consumers and that involves the use of digital pseudonyms and untraceable cash and untraceable electronic mail or communication more generally um so how to do it technically has been known for quite some time but the thing that's I believe has impeded its widespread adoption is that it's hard to use it at the uh level of sophistication that's really necessary to gain significant advantage and that's where AI could help right by making it easy to use so the AI can manage all these different pseudonyms and who knows what about you and what would be enough to convince so and so about this and that and and all that sort of thing with without bothering you with the detail that I have addressed this public before I just say that uh you know it's pretty widely known that children of quite a range of Ages are um very sensitive to very aware of and appreciate the power of secrecy it's hid and go see peekaboo is a cultural Universal this apparently all cultures infants fight this like the first most amusing thing um and you know this kind of appreciation of the power of secrecy uh you know develops as they grow you know because as you know that it gives them an asymmetric advantage over adults I mean you know a little kid even though the adults are much more you know powerful clever whatever bigger uh you know whatever it is they know if the kid knows it and the adult doesn't I mean that's the kids's still winning so I was appreciating the power of secrecy and growing up in an era when you know anyone had a kind of liberal set of values wasn't really wor really unhappy with the way the government was pursuing the war in Vietnam in that in those days and yeah there was there was growing economic prosperity and so with that that sort of inherently leads to a kind of freewheeling youth culture because kids aren't really afraid that if they step out of line that they're going to have they're really going to be consequences to pay later and they you know they could youth culture could Dominate and that's what happened and uh you know you can add in several other ingredients that and uh anyway so um uh it was it was pretty clear that the kind of conventional approach to privacy was very constrained and kind of um Limited in its uh the kind of Technology of uh you know uh Evolution stage that it that would be applicable to so you know those days we had these things like uh oecd principles and there was the know privacy protection study commission report byan big big fat phone book and all this stuff where basically well you have to have the right to know the what records will be maintained about you and revise them review them if they're errors you have the right to correct them those were the big principles so the presumption was that everything was being kept and and you know you just maybe had the right to I don't know correct it which is hardly threatening to an institution I guess um because just gives a better data right so it's like you know that uh so the whole privacy uh issue was kind of channeled into this um pretty useless um uh you know constrained environment where uh s obvious to me that you know much broader issues and much bigger implications and so that fit very well with the sort of countercultural uh you know the cultural right orientation right so you say well the government's all wrong they're trying to tell us the Privacy about this but really it's about these more fundamental things so I guess that's that's a part of it and the other part of it is that I was you know interested in and studied uh cryptographic techniques and I was aware of their utility in you know in this context and that gave me a bit of a you know unique Advantage most people you know didn't think of things that way um no it's kind of the opposite in the sense that uh like I dedicated my dissertation to my PhD advisor I guess the chairman of the department this big deal guy uh know Manuel Blum he was you know obviously he was a genius when he was younger and uh you know but he um you know he told me in the UNC terms that uh not only a waste of time but almost wrong for me to work on technology with you know a kind of social uh objective in mind because it was impossible to be certain what the impact of your technology would be and this is a bit of you know conventional wisdom but it it it's not really applicable to privacy technology because privacy technology arguably mainly really only helps protect the individual so I took issue with that so it it just you know it was the rejection of this principle that inspired this work you know so I also read stuff from like scientists that ran Corporation other people you know talking about all this you know the military approach to security and stuff and it was also you know a bit of a rejection of of the kind of mechanisms that they were proposing saying I mean you know this sort of generally uh regard as a good operating principle will uh you know we say in English follow the money right now that doesn't mean be a sellout it but I think to me in this context it's significance is that if you want to try to affect sign ific change you had better not sort of dismiss ignore underestimate the importance money could play in the you know which which solution prevails yeah you know like say mind the gap mind the money David do you have any last words to your audience oh thank thanks says a pleasure I've never been interviewed by an AI before it's interesting I think that AI wasn't aware of everything I've said publicly which is it's comforting but I guess it's only a matter of time right