Identity Assurance in an Era of Digital Disruption

This paper endeavors to make the case that we should begin a controlled transition towards widespread online identity assurance over the next decade. While pressure building in this direction over the past five years, the democratization of generative AI tools has altered the risk-benefit balance of the ‘anonymous’ Internet. AI-powered services will soon perfectly replicate online human speech, text, appearance, and activity so that they are indistinguishable from humans. These capabilities will potentially empower a wave of harms such as misinformation and disinformation, manipulation of elections, security hacks, fraud, hate speech, shaming, blackmail, etc. These harms will undermine trust and damage the online social and economic fabric if not mitigated.