Did Ai write the prayer you are reading right now? AI created the photograph you just saw online? Was it the stunning and controversial story that inclined a really real choice or erroneous information fed with AI?
These are questions that Clara Tsao has fought for years, from the protection of national security (where it was the CTO of a team focused on counteracting local extremism) to create a better Internet, where she is co -founder of the Professional Association of Trust and Security. (Also in some way finds time to be president of the presidential innovation fellows of the White House and serves as the main advisor of Tech Against Terrorism).
“For me, it has always been treated, how we bring more democracy to the web, because it is an open network that everyone should have the fundamental human right to access,” says Tsao, a founding officer of the Filecoin Foundation, and that will appear on stage at the Summit of AI in Consensus 2025.
Tsao knows that AI, in a sense, is making all these works difficult. Therefore, Filecoin focuses on using blockchain to guarantee digital authenticity and smell falsifications. “The AI will turbochark everything we see today, for better and for evil,” says Tsao. “And at the end of the day, I think everyone wants to know if they are talking with an AI or a human.”
The interview has been condensed and slightly edited for clarity.
How has the mission for an open and reliable internet complicated?
Clara Tsao: So, one of the biggest risks with AI is, how can we know if something is generated by AI or Bot, compared to something we know could be a human in the loop? And when I was working on issues such as counteracting foreign influence operations, how does it show that a bad actor really came from a country that we know could be trying to intervene with us?
Can you give an example?
There was a period, I think that in 2016, when Facebook really demolished a lot of media channels that came from Russia, because it was linked to the Internet Research Agency, which is a group that was definitely trying to boost propaganda during the elections. Therefore, it is about being able to prove the source of information and ensure that people are not victims of erroneous information.
And the falsifications are becoming easier to create, thanks to the AI …
Good. And with images generated by AI and news generated by AI, it could be easy for the very bad actors to use that technology for evil.
Can you connect the points of how Blockchain helps decipher this problem?
One thing that is great of decentralized technologies, and decentralized storage specifically, is that you can really try how data is changed over time, because we store each hash data, not by location.
So, let’s say we have a data set, and we are concerned that the data may be manipulated. Maybe a government is entering and changing something so that it can adapt to its political agenda. There are many reasons why preserving information is more important than ever, and that is something we can do with Filecoin.
Who are you working specifically?
We have worked with tons of incredible non -profit organizations over the years, such as Muckrock, to ensure that we can not only file and preserve critical information, but also make sure it is manipulation proof, make sure it is resistant. For example, if it is information that journalists obtain, we can have resistant copies worldwide. We can also use that same technology to really try that this journalist took a certain photo.
In certain elections, there may be misinformation about whether something really happened or not, and can make photographers use decentralized technologies. And we have a lot of applications of companies that are built at the top of Filecoin today, which help verify that this image was taken from this device at this time.
That is really powerful in terms not only of daily journalism, but also of being able to be admissible in court. In Ukraine, there may be war photos that could be taken out of context. And we can preserve a series of key photographs that one day can be admissible in international criminal courts for human rights situations.
How are you now thinking about Filecoin’s mission?
We can help verify if you are talking to AI or a human. We can help store data to a cost fraction. We can ensure that the data is more precise, because most of the AI data sets are built to train tons of data. And storing data is very expensive. Therefore, our goal is to make data storage affordable for all, and ensure that people also submit to the greatest amount of data as possible, so that the agents of AI not only train from a subset.
And finally, we can have a place where not only monopolies can access tons of data. People can have an option about where to store it, how to store it. Therefore, they are not locked in a walled garden where they can never leave.
I love it. Thanks Clara. See you in Toronto to consensus!
Jeff Wilser will be the host of the AI summit in Consensus 2025, and is the presenter of the AI of the People: the decentralized podcast of AI.
