There's a deep and growing need for human beings to have ways to digitally identify themselves and communicate with each other in a way that is impossible for AI to fake. If you're already bought into this idea, great! Is there anything you can do to help? Yes, there very well may be!
Here's a basic proof-of-concept for a digital signature-stamping algorithm enabling a new method for self-identification that's complementary to and cheaper than existing methods like biometrics and secure video-recording hardware:
https://wordsig.org/
A nice feature of the WordSig protocol even in its current form is that it would be relatively easy to build and open source as a standard, that's also really cheap to re-implement and doesn't need to be owned by a big company in order to work.
As you can see, the website says "Seeking Cofounders" because I don't have time to build it :) I'm pouring my full-time work-energy right now into a startup, which isn't going to build WordSig for reasons of not being very thematically related (which I endorse). However, during the 1 day/week I'm continuing to spend working for UC Berkeley, I'd like to find ways to promote the WordSig concept as a way to help humans stay connected, and funding is available to build it and/or cofound it as a long-term project.
Also, there are lots of ways the protocol could be improved, e.g., with signal processing optimization in the QR codes, or hardware that adds the codes automatically to recorded videos, or other tricks. That's great, and something I'd like to see as the responsibility of a (not-me) founding team :)
Please apply and/or share with your friends!
