Paladins Librarians of The New Dark Age
Preface
This post came across my feed:
Periodic self-repetition: As a data librarian I can say that "AI" is not a matter of personal preference -- whether you like it or not, or whether you have found some use that you think is useful. It actively destroys organized knowledge, and therefore it actively destroys civilization.
Whenever someone looks for a human written text and can't find it because statistical near variants have been created and indexed, whenever "AI" "hallucinates" a reference, knowledge has been destroyed.
It stuck a chord. I mentioned an idea that's been in my head about trust chainstrust as a way to push back against AI slopslop. I goofed and used the term "Central Authorities"central instead of "Certificate Authorities"cert in my post. I got really good responses from Irenes (many) which you can read in the thread.
I started a reply. It grew into an exercise in writing-to-clarify-my-thinking. I love that, but it got really long and there's a better than even chance I ended up in Reply Guy™ territory.
So, I'm posting this here and will link to it over there to take up less space.
With that backstory out of the way...
My Reply
welp... I said the wrong thing. I was thinking of Certificate Authorities. My brain fuzzed and it came out Central Authorities instead. Sorry to add confusion there.
I'm totally with you that social connections are the foundation of what we need. What was in my head is something I heard in collegecollege. It was about tribes that base what they believe off three criteria:
- You saw it yourself (and for purposes of this conversation you have enough expertise to validation the thing)
- A friend or family member you trust saw it (same expertise criteria applies)
- Someone a family member knew and trusted saw it
An important point being that the third level doesn't extend to friends. Only a familial connection counts. If you have a buddy who has a buddy who saw something you disregard it.
Increasing Scope
Capping at two degrees of separation can work for smaller circles. Of course, internet scale is a whole other ballgame. How do I decide who I can trust when I'm looking up details?
That's where my head went with trust chains. The idea being to extend the reach of, well, trust, with some level on confidence. For example, if I don't know who made a site or have a family member who knows who made it, I ignore it. (And, I'm thinking here of a social family. Not a biological one.)
So, if you've become part of my social family and you trust a site, then I trust it through your proxy.
If the topic is underwater basket weaving and neither of us have a direct connection someone in that game, we start to draw connections from another step away. Rinse, repeat until we find someone with a connection. But, the degree of trust is degraded with each jump.
Enter the Keepers
That's where librarians come into play. Professional defenders of knowledge. We'd all include some in our circlescoin. I'd have very high confidence in sites/articles/videos/content... a librarian in my circle gave their blessing to.
I'd have pretty high confidence in the validations of a librarian from your circle. Everything outside of that, I'm gonna be super on my guardlinks.
The Bozo Nightmare
And yeah, those bent on hate and manipulation will work to infiltrate the circles. They'll have success too. It'll be a never ending game defense. But, with the smaller circles they'll have to put in way more work to reach people in aggregate.
There would also be an aspect of revoking trust and how that would cascade. Conflict resolution would have be a thing, etc..., but this is an early stage idea for me.
The Problem Domain
Of course, this is thinking about a social problem on a technical level. I'm not really thinking about creating a protocol. I'm more using the technical map to help me think about the social connections.
That said, I'd offer we're at a point where pulling tech in to help defend ourselves is a worthy endeavor.
The Plot Thickens
This is one of those ideas that has the feeling of sense at the top level. But, it's a huge generalization on dozens of fronts. Half of which are blind spots I don't even know exist.
Worst case, the idea at least holds the bones of a good cyberpunk story.
-a
Endnotes
There's nothing practical I can do with this idea. If there's any validity to it, other folks with the expertise to pull it off are already working on it.
My contribution to trying to make the web and the world a better place is building bitty. It's an open-source web component designed to make it easier for folks to make stuff on the web.
I almost used "The New Dark AIge" in the title. I like it, but it felt just a bit too cute.
I love the concept of Paladin Librarians. The names a little long though. Some iteration of "Libraridans" would probably work in a full on story. But, it's too much of a jump for a single post.
Circles would also have experts. Same principals as librarians but focused on narrower fields.
Footnotes
"In computer security, a chain of trust is established by validating each component of hardware and software from the end entity up to the root certificate. It is intended to ensure that only trusted software and hardware can be used while still retaining flexibility."
"Low-quality media made with generative artificial intelligence. It is characterized by an inherent lack of effort and is currently being generated at an overwhelming volume."
"A Central Authority is an agency or organization that is designated to play a key facilitating role in the implementation and operation of an international treaty in public and private international law."
"A Certificate Authority acts as a trusted third party—trusted both by the subject (owner) of the certificate and by the party relying upon the certificate."
I heard this from a professor in college, but don't have resources to back it up. Regardless of if it's a apocryphal or not, I find the framing useful.
I don't know how payment would work since you'd want everyone to have access, but the gig should be well rewarded.
TBD on how connections between librarians would work. Probably the same way? Though, I could see a world in which you don't link out from one librarian to another one in their chain. The idea being that that would allow them to more directly support themselves and help support each other through recommendations.