In the midst of the rise of AI and monitoring technologies, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin argues for improved privacy measures to ensure that decentralization remains intact.
The world is changing at a dizzying pace. Artificial intelligence is moving ahead faster than most of us can keep track of, the reform of almost every aspect of life as we know it. Together with this increase in AI there is a growing care: privacy.
When it comes to cryptocurrency, privacy has always been a bit complicated to say the least. It is something that is endlessly debated – sometimes sturdy – and never really solved.
In a recent blog post, Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts about why privacy is more important than ever, which implies that it is about preventing power from getting into the wrong hands.
As Buterin notes, progress rises to the point at which society literally reads about the spirit of AI, implications of this very huge. Society can be confronted with a future where the most personal data of people – thoughts – are analyzed and used against them, he adds.
“AI is strongly increasing possibilities for centralized data collection and analysis, while it considerably expand the scope of data that we voluntarily expand. In the future, newer technologies such as brain computers interfaces will bring further challenges: we may literally talk about AI who reads our minds.”
Vitalik Buterin
‘Defining challenges of our time’
And it’s not just about the technology itself. Buterin emphasizes the risks associated with geopolitics and power dynamics. He pointed out that from payment processors to telecom companies there is no shortage of entities that hold your personal information.
“In general, checking all these entities at a sufficient rigorn level that ensures that they really have a high level of care for user data, so exercise intensive for both the Watcher and the viewing that it is probably incompatible with maintaining a competing free market.”
Vitalik Buterin
To make things still Murkier, governments are not always as reliable as they seem. The founder of Ethereum points out that a regime that seems stable and respectful for privacy today may not be so tomorrow.
In an interview with Crypto.news, Ari Redbord, TRM Global Head of Policy, former Federal Public Prosecutor and Senior American Treasury officer, admitted that the balance between privacy and safety in Crypto “has become one of the determining challenges of our time”.
“After 9/11, that debate took place at airports and public spaces – Today it is happening on block chains. The aim is to protect the rights of legal users to transactions private transactions and at the same time prevent rogue regimes, scammers and cartels to operate pseudonymity to move illegal funds.”
Ari Redbord
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‘No choice between security and privacy’
Despite the risks, Buterin believes that there are already solutions. One of them is zero knowledge of proof of personality, which proves the unique individual of a person without revealing any personal information. Another is privacypools, so that users can prove that their funds are clean without exposing private data. With expenditure, users can prove that their coins did not come from well -known hacks or thefts. Privacypools, such as Railgun, are already in use, Buterin added.
But that’s not all. The Canadian computer programmer also mentions anti-fraud scanning on the devices, which scans incoming messages on scams or incorrect information without endangering privacy.
When asked whether privacy-oriented technology can be abused by cyber criminals, Redboard said that the problem is not about choosing between privacy of security, but rather about ‘building with both in mind’.
“With tools such as blockchain intelligence, zero knowledge lectures, digital ID, privacy protocols and smart contracts, we can do that needle and building a financial system that is both open and safe. In fact, it is not a choice between security and privacy when it comes to block chains, the technology is unique to have both.”
Ari Redbord
Buterin focuses on proof of origin for physical articles and suggests that by using blockchain and zero nuclear tests, customers can follow the production history of a product and reveal the impact of the environment without its entire supply chain, making prices for the environmental external external effects possible without revealing the supply chain.
Buterin thinks that, great image, “the most urgent risk of near-seekomstechnology is that privacy of all time will approach, and in a very unbalanced way where the most powerful individuals and the most powerful countries get a lot of data about everyone, and everyone else will see almost nothing.” That is why, he says, supporting privacy for everyone and making the right tools open source, universal, reliable and safe “is one of the important challenges of our time.”
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