Proof of Personhood & the Future of Digital Humanism

Transcript

[Music] Great. Thank you so much. I'm going to sit right here and uh we're going to have a bit of a chat, but we thought we would like to get to know you all a bit better before we kick off. So again, with the magic of the Dublin TechSummit app, we have a poll that should appear on the screens right now. Or if you go into the app and look at this session, have a look for the poll and we have some questions there about your identity. We would love to know what you feel is your identity and we have some options in there. Just look for the session, add it to your schedule and look under the poll tab. So the poll is as follows. What is your identity? Is it country, sports team, gender, culture,

governmentissued ID, digital activity, or all of the above? We would love to know. And we're going to get the results in real time. So please do dive into the app, add the session, and engage in the poll. Bonus points for all the heads down tapping away at your phones. I assume it's not Candy Crush. Excellent. Good stuff. So, listen folks, um, thank you so much for joining us on the stage. This is a fascinating topic. We are going to dive into it, but I wonder, would you mind introducing yourselves and what you do to our wonderful guests here and we'll start with your good self, Dunel. Hey folks, I'm responsible for what's called the intelligent realities lab. And that's all about how we bring the new emerging digital experiences like the web and 3D digital twins. Uh how do we embody these genai

and agentic agents that we're going to create? How do we give them maybe human form or not human form and how do we enable them to be collaborators of ours and bring the digital and the physical together? Fantastic D. Thank you so much. Fascinating work as always. and Atlas tell me a bit about what you do um just in case the folks in the audience haven't met you already. Hi everyone, I am Atalis founding member of Tanill. We developed an authentication technology based on the unique hot signature that we all have. In a few words, the way our heart function, it contracts and expands, generates electricity, translated into an EKG waveform. And we leverage machine learning to enable each

one of you to be able to authenticate online and in physical location by using your realtime heart signature. Absolutely fascinating. I mean, I love it. It's like a heart chain or a blockchain of the heart. I'm sure there's an ABC song in there somewhere. That's brilliant stuff. But Atalas, I would love to stay with your good self. Could you talk to us a bit about this concept of proof of personhood? So, you know, what is it and how does your work relate to proof of personhood? Yes. As we all know, traffic on the internet is mostly made of bots, 50 to 60%. And now with the rise of AI agents, uh we're having more content generated from bots and AI agents. So it is now becoming

very difficult for each one of us to know what is generated from a real human or even let's take a very basic uh example uh with emails which email is truly sent from a real verified human and not from a bot or or or some hackers trying to impersonate other people. So essentially with our technology we enable people to sign to upload content with a hot signature. So that as receiver we can be sure that this content or this email is truly from the person uh that says uh she or he is and that we have proof of humanity that we know that it's something that has been

made by a real human. Right. This email comes from the heart literally. I like it very much. Fantastic. So, Dunel, I'd love to come over to yourself now. We've just heard a great definition there of proof of personhood. So, I would love to know how your work kind of relates to this and maybe looking a bit forward where you kind of see this this area going. So in the not too distant future we might all have a lot of agentic collaborators uh digital employees that we have to work with both digital and physical maybe some robotic uh collaborators as well. This is the vision for where the world is going. the future of work and digital employees and in that future I

might have a a gentic represent representative of mine that reaches out to us and then the question is how do I know that you are you or your digital representative or your agentic representative is you and how do we enable these types of interactions between people to people agents to people and agents to agents and how can that be done at scale and how can that be done in a authentic trustbased way and that that's really challenging in fact and it becomes even more challenging like Athalas said you've all this traffic being generated by AI and the internet today now we've all these agents or digital collaborators or employees that come online working with and for us then what happens at that

intersection of all those different ways of communicating and creating value and doing business together uh and it's quite an interesting question that we all collectively have to ask about where this technology is is moving things in business. Sorry folks. Ah, there we are. Right. Okay. Sometimes our radio mics like to keep us on our toes by just switching off to see how we react. Have we got anything up our sleeve? It's all good. I needed the exercise anyway. It's It's grand. Susan, thank you to everyone who's uh sending in questions via the DTS app, Mothership. They are all

arriving and we will get to as many of them as time allows. So, thank you very much for those. Um, so Duno, that was a really interesting kind of glimpse into the future. We are trying to figure out who's a real person, who is Osheen.AI, and who is the actual ushen in real life? How can you tell? Proof of personhood is kind of the key to unlock this potential and a way for us to coexist with this incredible agentic technology that absolutely is the future. you know, it's the biggest game in town, bar none, according to people who know a lot about this. So, this kind of brings us on to the idea, I think, of digital humanism, you know, and and this kind of overlap between our physical selves and our digital twins, our digital selves are agentic helpers. How do you think, if we could like double

click on employment, say, how do you think this might affect things in the workforce that folks here should know about, Don? Yeah. If I could get a show of hands, anyone that in the room plays or that has family members in your kind of proximity that plays Fortnite, Roblox or Minecraft, can I get a show of hands? Okay, hands up, folks. It's kind of hard to see with the lights, but I think there's quite a few hands up. Yeah, I give that a good like 40% maybe. Yeah. So you, those of you that raised your hands and and others might be aware of those online gaming platforms, you should know that there's a vast majority of the younger generation that are spending a lot of their time within those game platforms. About 85% of Gen Z are playing those online game platforms. And

they have about 1 billion, that's with a B, monthly active users on just those three multiplayer online game platforms alone. And and that's that's just stats. But what's really important is that the younger generation are that's their social network now. That's how they are building community. And when I meet with the younger generation that are very involved in these games, they have their best friends for years that they do not know what they look like in person. They only know what their avatar representation looks like. So they're spending a lot of their money within the game and in-game purchases. This is a gigantic economy and market. Um they're building their community. they're collaborating and it's become the meeting place. So some younger folks are

going into the games not to play the games but just to meet with their friends. The reason I'm sharing that is that that's the way that those younger folks are experiencing the internet. It's all in 3D. They're digitally representing through these avatars. They can create things in these worlds. They can sell things in these worlds and they're building community and friendships. And that's their expectation for how they interact with the internet into the future. So if you're an employer like we are and you're trying to attract the best young talent, you have to understand how they're experiencing the internet, how they're connecting and creating value in their personal lives. And you have to try and understand how you can meet them where they are as best you can in a professional setting. So, we're doing a lot of work on creating environments

that are much more like how they're interacting and socializing and building community in their personal lives, making them very professional, we say enterprisegrade and delivering learning and development, employee engagement, things like that. And giving them the tools that they can kind of show up to work and be themselves as much as they want to be. And for example, what I mean by that is maybe in some context, and not to judge, someone might want to show up digitally as an orb of light or a triangle or maybe an avatar that looks exactly like them or maybe an avatar that looks nothing like them. And this is the world that we're moving into where it's very difficult for those of us in other generations to understand like why would a young person want to

show up as an avatar, as an orb of light. um but they do and we have to try and understand and embrace all of that. So in that context that's like the experience and the interface layer but behind that then you again we're back to authentication security how do you ensure that all of these things are what they they're saying they are how they come together and that there are no malicious actors or intent that happens especially from our perspective as an employer that's of course critically important indeed. So, you come across this pint of Guinness avatar in a virtual world and you're like, "Hey, is that the real Oshene or is it Oshin's agent?" And he's just sent his point here to represent himself. Fascinating.

Okay, if that's the future, I'm all in. That's brilliant. Um, a million years ago, I used to work for this virtual world called Habbo Hotel. We had, you know, 150 million plus members. Uh, we sold more items of virtual furniture than IKEA. And it was sort of a glimpse into this future where digital items actually meant more to a certain demographic than any physical items. It was utterly fascinating and I think you know it kind of mirrors a lot what you're saying there duel. It's it's absolutely spot on. Um so listen I'm sure all of you here have heard about this very exciting news in the world of tech with the partnership between Johnny IV and Sam Alman from OpenAI. They had this lovely Simon and Garfuncle style photograph black and white. It was you know really eye-catching. And this is some big news about a partnership

between two giants of technology. Really two incredible leaders. Um, Ailus, I'd love to get your opinion. Do you think this kind of tells us about anything of the future of how technology and people are going to overlap? I mean, what's your take? What what did you think when you saw that news? I do believe that um by blending hardware with AI, it gives us the possibility to to have true custody of our agent. If our if our agent lives on our own device, then we can control the type of data that we share to train certain models, we can also give approvals to certain organization that

might want to have access to our data set and it gives us essentially self custody of our AI agent. Excellent. Very exciting. But uh Doodle I'm sure you have uh you know I know because of your work you're very involved in things like security things like that authenticity or that sovereignty I mean in this future that has just outlined would you have any tips on how we can protect ourselves and that digital identity? Yeah, I think there's emerging kind of hardware that sits very close to you whether it be your smartphone or not.

And I think it it's a personal thing or it could be a business decision, right? So for me personally, um there's certain information I don't care who has it. I'll happily give it and and I get something in return. The algorithm gives me options that I appreciate, recommendations. Um, but in this new world we're talking about with Gen AI and agents, there's certain things that I do that I think are uniquely value, like create unique value that I don't think very many people can do. And I'll tell you straight out, I would be quite reluctant personally to train one of those algorithms to do some of the stuff that I think I'm very good at doing that is my differentiator. So that that becomes a personal decision. Then you know I have an employer and I create

value for them and whatever I create they own. But there might be a point in time in the notsodistant future where I'm as you know I basically say I want to I'm not willing to give away this value to society that way and I might need to hold it to myself. So I think there's um technologies there's ways understanding what you sign up to how you give away information. Giving away some types of information might be perfectly fine for each of you. Giving away others might be a step too far. And you should probably have a little bit of a think about where your line sits and where your comfort level is on what you give away and what you don't give away.

I know very clearly for me where that line sits, but my line is very different to probably a lot of people in the room as well. That is super interesting. I mean, you've just kind of opened it's kind of two sides of the same coin there. So, on one side, it's like this information is is beneficial. You get services for free. You're trading data. On the other side, the data is really valuable uh to to you personally and potentially to a business. Do you think this opens up any new business models, things like I don't like healthare, that kind of thing? Yeah, um we're really we talked about this a little bit. We're really interested in this is a little bit speculative, but I do think the technology can start enabling this today. It's it's whether the the business model around it makes sense.

But we think about I could have different types of sensors that are on my body that are collecting my health data real time and I have this historical records and real-time data and there might be something unique about my physiology my bi biology my genealogology all theies right um and where whatever wherever I sit in the world that there's something valuable there that the algorithms have learned something for me that could be immensely valuable for someone else somewhere else okay now today how do you collect that data and how might I enable someone else to leverage that data? It's exceptionally complicated. I don't know how you would do it. In fact, but in the world we're talking about with decentralization blockchain web3 whatever paradigm you call it, um you could potentially like upload all of

that data onto a type of a smart contract leveraging blockchain fully authenticated, fully tethered to me. And I can in the smart contract I can write and say I only want this data being used in these ways in these jurisdictions and here's the royalties and here's the revenue and here's the all the ways that this needs to be dealt with commercially. Um, and that's really interesting if you think about it that now all of a sudden, and here's a a wild business, new business model, but I as an individual might enter into a type of joint venture with a large pharmaceutical company because my data could be unique enough that they want to commercialize it, but I'm the one that dictates the terms of commercialization because of the smart contract and how we

do everything we're talking about here. That's a fundamental gigantic shift in health care and how we as individuals might be monetized for the uniqueness that we can provide to humanity. Fabulous. I'd like to come back back to that in in a few minutes because that kind of opens up a whole can of worms around permissions and everything. But uh AAS, I'd love to come over to yourself and thank you to the uh folks sending in questions. This kind of matches with one question I wanted to ask anyway. you know what device is used to read the heartbeat and how could your solution fit into this world where it's very important to have that sovereignty and that provenence and that digital proof of personhood.

Yes. So user experience is very important uh with our view we believe that we should be compatible with all the devices that already exist the wearables. So, our technology can be used with smart watches uh that have an EKG recorder, but we're also developing our own hardware. Uh we started with a basic version that is a handheld sensor that you just hold. It records your EKG 3 seconds generates your private key uh to then generate an access key. Uh but we're also working and this is why I was a bit reluctant to to comment uh and to answer your question about some Altman.

Uh we're also working on a wearable that you can clip onto your clothes uh and that um authenticates you continuously in real time and when you have as Donaldell was saying if you would have a request from an organization to use certain type of data that you would like to share you can then provide consciously approval and then benefit from that data exchange with that organization. So we see a world where we're we're already connected. I see well everyone has smartphones, wearables, smart watches and the transition is now evolving uh where we will be essentially

connected with all kind of wearables. Phenomenal. Okay, I can see that fitting right into a lot of scenarios. Now speaking of which, we kind of want this world of fairness, this world of access and opportunity and technology empowering people. How do we prevent like misuse and how would we prevent a concentration or you know for all the tech to be very centralized? Do you have a kind of opinion on that at how we can kind of make sure it works in the right way to to help people? I believe that it comes from the ethics of the people who run organization um and it's uh something that can be engineered or or brought to the world by design. So essentially our belief is to

give each person self custody of their own data. As a company ourself we do not process nor store uh uh data in localized servers. uh and for us it's very important that we all become become aware of the implication to protect the data that we generate and that we at all times have the right and the capacity to easily uh and consentfully share what we produce in a in a digital economy. Excellent. My goodness, plenty of food for thought right there. So, uh, Don, you kind of mentioned earlier this idea of the proof of personhood existing in metaverse platforms. Do you think

there's a big overlap with things like mixed reality, uh, you know, AI, XR, etc. You know, do you see the proof of personhood being a kind of central unit in some way to these blended digital and physical experiences in the future? Yeah, I think so. You know, I'm sure most people have heard about deep fakes and seen how that technology has just rapidly got scarily good, especially even just in the last few months. It's kind of unbelievable how with just minutes worth of voice recording, you can clone someone's voice perfectly. And um even with just some 2D pictures of someone's face, you can create videos that are exceptionally lifelike. So, we're moving into this world where of course there will be bad actors and they'll leverage that technology for not

so good reasons. Uh, and the question is how do you combat that? And and even in these environments when we talked about Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, where you have the younger generation in them, you know, they're they're supposedly meeting with their friends, right? They're supposedly buying in-game purchases from reputable um suppliers. Um, but the way this technology is moving, you know, how can you guarantee that? How can you guarantee that when they are meeting over some virtual campsite fire with supposedly their best digital friend that they've ever met in their lives, how is it really them? bad actors using them to their benefit and not to ours.

And you really need to understand whether it's centralized technology, you know, the the web of today or whether it's what's called decentralized technology. Um people might call it web three more typically, but blockchain really is the core emerging technology that enables all of that. And decentralization is really all about take the power away from this big centralized platforms and try and give it back to people. Yeah. So that like Athalus said, you get to control where your data is used, how it's used, you get to get you get rewarded for your data if it has value. Um, and you're the one that dictates all of that in commercial or other terms. So I think it's critically important as these technologies evolve more rapidly and

they're being used more and more for good and so not not for good that we have technologies that can just be built as a foundation to make sure that bad actors make we make it very difficult for bad actors to operate. Excellent. I I'm always uh kind of reassured to hear you when you talk about the issues around security and and these virtual spaces as well. So that's fantastic. Now we are going to open it up for the questions. Absolute kudos to all of you for sending in such brilliant questions. We've got tons here. So, um, some of them are similar, so I'm going to combine them into, you know, the the kind of most common themes. Uh, we've got one here from Can Priya Jamwell.

Thank you very much, Canyup Priya. And this question is, how do we ensure agency over an individual's data across platforms? Who'd like to jump in? Is that are you volunteering at this? That's a tough question. It is a tough question. Uh, you can pass. Well, I think I said a little bit earlier. I mean, if you give away your data, it's gone. You're done. Okay, that's it. So, you think about the data you're giving away, its value today. It's potential value in the future. Figure out where your own personal comfort line is for sharing that. Um, but if you if you give it away and you sign up to these things, that's it. Yeah. So, okay. I have a

comment for the sound desk which has come up here. I don't know if this is possible because there is such a thing as feedback and the room uh size is important. And this comment says uh can we increase the volume on the mics? Lots of noise coming from the lobby. Very difficult to hear midback. So thank you for that comment. It has been passed on. I'm not sure if it's possible but uh it's been passed on. So this question our next question if there are many providers of pop then can there be many versions of me online comment? How do you how do you know that the pop is the pop? Is there I mean I guess it's in blockchain. I guess it's in heart authentification. What would you say? Well, when it comes to uh proof of personhood, we have uh three main I

would say uh biometric uh layers. Uh one is proof of personhood based on the iris. Uh the other on the iris, yes, the eye. The other one is proof of personhood based on palm palm vein and the other one is proof of personhood based on the heart. So essentially at the end of the day each one of us will have the the capacity to choose uh which solution we use. Um and um it's all about user experience. It's all about the use and how easy it is to use. And um the winner will be defined shortly. All right. Exciting times. Yes.

Well, uh, in the internet today, you know, when you sign up to a new thing nowadays, you're given options, there's three or four of your existing accounts you might have that you can auto sign up. I mean, I don't see it as being any different. There will be lots of space for different suppliers using different types of technology, but they're offering the same service. And I don't really see much of a difference in how we do business today that way. Yeah, good comment. Thank you. Great question. So, we're going to crack on. um using a heartbeat to prove personhood. Could this create a race of gradually using more and more personal information to outpace AI? So I guess to to outpace uh a fake biometric authentification or or is that even

possible to have fake biometric authentification? What's the view? Well, we know when it comes to face recognition, as Don said, people can easily create deep fakes by just simply googling and finding pictures of of a person online. Uh, when it comes to why we we focused on the heart is because a heart is intrinsic. It's within our body and it's very difficult to steal somebody's heart or heart signals or to regenerate regenerate them artificially. Uh so we do believe that by proving our identity using our heart uh we there is a stamp a proof of humanity that is generated and that gives comfort to the people we are interacting with in the

digital age uh to reassure them that it's truly us and not someone who is trying to impersonate us. Excellent. Excellent. And we have maybe last question here for uh Dunel from Marcus Hmidberger. Thank you very much Marcus. So this question says, "Duno, thanks very much for your thoughts on Gen Z and online gaming communities. Having this in mind, isn't it a wrong direction to bring employees back to the office? Shouldn't we train today's employees in skills to be strong in online communities?" Fascinating take. What say you? Yeah, we I look, I'm in this 3D world. Um, but I'm not a strong advocate of 3D only or remote only or online only. I'm actually deeply invested in human connection and bringing people

together. There are some I think there has to be a blended hybrid model and I think you must have you can have the best of both worlds. Um there's lacking of really good online remote collaboration tools today. They need to be built up but not to replace this. Glad to hear it. Excellent note to end on. My dear friends, please show your appreciation. Verunul and Aris. Thank you. [Music]