Blockchain and Biometric-based Digital Identity Solution

UN Joint Staff Pension Fund Explores Digital Identity and Blockchain Integration for Beneficiary Verification

The United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund (UNJSPF) hosted a session to discuss the role and impact of digital identity within the UN system, with a particular focus on the integration of blockchain technology. The session was led by Dino Cataldo Dell’Accio, the Chief Information Officer of the UNJSPF, who introduced the digital identity solution implemented by the UN Pension Fund in January 2021. This innovative solution was developed to streamline the process of confirming the survival of pension beneficiaries, which was previously a cumbersome and error-prone manual process involving paper forms and postal services.

The digital identity system employs blockchain technology, biometrics, and geolocation to provide an immutable, secure, and efficient method for verifying the existence and location of beneficiaries. Dell’Accio highlighted the system’s success in enhancing accountability and its adaptability to new challenges, such as the risks associated with artificial intelligence and deepfakes. He also noted the introduction of a kiosk mode to accommodate beneficiaries without access to mobile devices, reflecting the Fund’s commitment to inclusivity. The credibility of the solution was further supported by external audits and certifications, including ISO 27001 for information security management.

Dimitra Ralli discussed the UN Digital ID, an initiative that expands upon the UNJSPF’s digital certificate of entitlements. The UN Digital ID acts as a digital wallet on mobile devices, enabling UN personnel to verify and share their personal data with relevant organisations efficiently and securely. Ralli emphasised the programme’s alignment with the Secretary-General’s UN 2.0 vision and its potential to improve data management and quality across the UN system.

Monsignor Lucio Adrian Ruiz provided a philosophical perspective on the interplay between technology and humanity. He argued that technology is inherently non-neutral, reflecting the intentions and biases of its creators. Ruiz stressed the importance of developing technology that serves the common good and does not become a tool for deception. He also highlighted the need for systems that promote human responsibility and commitment, particularly in matters related to personal and social life.

Sandra Rowe, CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council, shared insights on the global implementation of blockchain technology. She highlighted the importance of education, public-private partnerships, and the establishment of standards and best practices for the responsible use of blockchain. Rowe discussed the Global Standards Mapping Initiative, which seeks to provide clarity on the regulatory and policy frameworks surrounding blockchain technology.

Dr. Scott Stornetta, co-inventor of blockchain technology, offered his perspective on the original intent of blockchain as a means to create an immutable record and its potential to serve the common good. He emphasised the importance of aligning technology with human principles and the challenges posed by AI and deepfakes. Stornetta also touched upon the need for a distributed trust framework for universal identity, particularly in the context of social media.

The session concluded without any questions from the audience, suggesting that the presentations were comprehensive and the information provided was clear. The panellists’ commitment to ensuring that technology, particularly digital identity and blockchain, is developed and used to benefit humanity was a central theme throughout the session. The presentations collectively underscored the importance of collaboration, transparency, and ethical considerations in the advancement of digital identity solutions within the UN system and beyond.

Dino Cataldo Dell’Accio:
So, good morning, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us this morning in this session. My name is Dino Cataldo Della Cia. I’m the Chief Information Officer of the United Nations Joint Staff Pension Fund. And this year, for the first time at the UNGSPF, joint WSIS, as well as the UNGIS, the United Nations Group on Information Society. We are really a member of the Internet Governance Forum. So, we are increasing our engagement within the UN system, as well as with stakeholders and multi-stakeholders community, as well as also with a multilateral financial institution. So, we have been given the privilege to present today at the WSIS by sharing with you a specific use case of digital identity that we created at the UN Pension Fund. It was deployed into production in January 2021. So, it’s been already deployed for three years. And also, we’ll be able to share with you the extension of the solution, because after going live with our solution, we gave input to a broader and wider project related to the creation of a digital identity for all the UN staff members of the UN system at large, called the UN Digital ID. So, today, I have the honor and privilege to have here with me a world-renowned subject matter expert. I have Monsignor Lucio Adrian Ruiz, the Secretary of the Digital Stereo Communication of the Vatican City. I have Sandra Rowe, the CEO of the Global Blockchain Visas Council. And I have Dr. Scott Storneda, the co-inventor of the blockchain technology itself, and my colleague, Dimitri Ralli, who is the director in charge of the UN Digital ID. So the way that we will articulate this presentation is that I will make a brief presentation on the UN Pension Fund Digital Inclusion. I’ll then pass the floor to Dimitri to elaborate on the UN Digital ID, how the two solutions are complementing each other. Then I’ll give the floor to Monsignor Ruiz, who will enlighten us on the relationship between technology and human beings. Then I’ll give the floor to Sandra to hear from her privileged perspective of the worldwide knowledge and monitoring of blockchain implementation around the world. And of course, then to Scott Storneda, who will speak about how the creation of this new technology actually introduced a new form of social contract. So we hope to also have some time at the end for questions, although there’s going to be another session immediately after us. So please bear with us. If we don’t have enough time, we will definitely be able and willing to take your questions offline. But we also have a lot of participants connected through Zoom. So we will make sure that we’ll take care. We’ll address any question that will be submitted to us. The remote doesn’t work. Remiote? Sure. Good OK, we’ll say a you name. Let me try, okay, now it’s working. So this is the actual presentation of the internet website that we announced in January 2021 when we went live with the application itself. So there’s the internet webpage of the UNJSPF website that depicted both the, if you will, the web panel as well as the screenshot of the app itself that our user, starting from January 2021, have been able to download on their devices. Just to remind ourselves, this was a collaborative project between us and our police from the United Nations International Computing Center who provided the technical expertise to develop the actual application which, as I alluded to before, is now also being utilized for the UN digital ID. Very brief background data about the UN Pension Fund. We have 24 member organization, pretty much all the entity of the UN system plus additional international organization. We have 24 transfer agreement. We pay around 86,000 benefit. That means that we have more than 86,000 participants that live in more than 190 countries. We make payment in 18 currencies and we have more than 149,000 participants. With as of May 2023, the latest audited financial statement, we had a market value, our asset of 90 billion, which are funded at 117%, fully funded. So this is the problem. This is how we decompose the problem vis-a-vis the issue of the digital identity at the pension fund. It was about to transform a manual process. Basically, the pension fund had this need to ensure that those receiving payment, receiving the benefit payment every month, had to be confirmed to be still alive. But with more than 84,000 individuals across 190 countries, this process was basically conducted twice a year through the mailing of a paper form where the recipient was asked to sign the form and returning it through the postal services of more than 190 countries. So as you can appreciate, this process was often subject with delays, errors, and especially questioning from our governing bodies and from our oversight body as to whether the fund could attest that there was no fraud. And of course, proving a negative is impossible. So the only way that we could try to address this issue was about decomposing again even further the problem and then try to find a solution in a positive form. So the problem was decomposing this term. First and foremost, provide a proof of identity authentication, provide a proof of existence of the beneficiary who was intended to be receiving the benefit, a proof for transaction, and in specific cases, also proof of location because the pension fund allows for the payment of benefit also in local currency in addition to US dollars. And when that process is implemented, there is also the need to confirm the proof of location. So this is the solution, transforming a manual process into a blockchain, a biometric-based solution using a mobile application. This is the how, using a blockchain, using biometrics, and using geolocation. Blockchain, because it provides an immutable and independently auditable and traceable triple entry distributed ledger. As you can see, I put immutable in parenthesis because I’ve been challenged sometimes that, well, it’s not very true that blockchain is immutable because there are faults that occur in several cases. Although the immutability here speaks to the fact that it’s a tamper-proof, meaning that even those instances when something happened, vis-a-vis changing, muting the data on a blockchain, that attempt is evident, is tamper-proof and tamper-evident. Why did we use a blockchain? Because as I alluded to before, we were pressured by our governing bodies, by our stakeholders to provide accountability vis-a-vis the fact that the pension fund who demonstrated indeed the process had integrity and there was no fraud. In so doing, we wanted to make sure that the technology that we were going to utilize, first and foremost, was not based on any form of central control. Because we were aware that by creating a central control, we were going to create a single point of failure vis-a-vis, for example, a database administrator that could have super user access and have access to the database and manipulate data. We wanted to make sure that, although only define a specified individual could write on the blockchain, hence the permission nature of a blockchain. Everybody in a transparent manner could read the transaction, and therefore being able to also audit and monitor. We also wanted to support privacy by utilizing zero-knowledge proof technology that allow for the preservation of privacy. Again, as I alluded to before, providing a mutable record of the transaction. The biometrics, we utilize facial recognition, store exclusively on the device of the user, therefore never store on our server and never transmit it in order to preserve the integrity, to authenticate user with events vis-a-vis the use of the application recorded on the blockchain itself. The GPS, the Global Positioning System, in order to provide the proof of location that I alluded to before for certain specific cases. We did also, as I alluded to before, we went live in 2021. Over the course of the year, however, we have been faced with additional needs, with additional requirement, such as AI. We introduced recently an AI module in order to take into account the new threats or the new risk presented by the use of artificial intelligence and deepfake. We also introduced and implemented a cost model, which was recently implemented in our office in Nairobi, in Yunnan, at the United Nations office in Nairobi. Because although as we can imagine that everybody has a mobile device, there are indeed in our community, in certain parts of the world, individuals that do not possess a mobile device. Therefore, we were called to address that instance, and therefore we introduced this kiosk mode. that allows even those who do not have a mobile device to still benefit from this technology and use the application itself. So one of the areas that is very close to me is because of my background as a former auditor is the assurance. Immediately after going live, I start questioning myself of how can we prove that this solution is credible, is trustworthy, given that we are dealing with emerging technology. That means that we are dealing with emerging standards, best practices that are not yet mature. Nonetheless, I was able actually to find in ITU itself some guidelines and technical specification on the assessment of blockchain, as well as trying to utilize what is still available or readily available, which is standard from the ISO organization, which indeed led to two audits. One is the certification with the ISO standard 27001 for information security management system, and the other one was an algorithmic assessment that was conducted by an external and independent third party. We received some important acknowledgement, the UN award from the Secretary General in 2021, the Government Blockchain Association on social impact, and also we were the subject of a case study from Gartner. And the clicker stopped working. Oh. I have disabled the request for captions. Oh. Whenever this comes up. Always need the human intervention. Try again. Perfect. And with that, I’ll pass the floor briefly to Dimitra. to speak about how the solution introduced by the UN Pension Fund now evolved into a wider project for the UN Digital Aid. Dimitra?

Dimitra Ralli:
Thank you Dino. Good morning to everyone, very pleased to be here with you today and talk about the UN Digital Aid program and I hope to trigger your interest right for this innovative solution for the UN system. Why a digital identity? We want to provide the UN personnel with a digital identity for them to be able to verify their personal data and share the data with the organizations as and when needed. The digital identity is a digital wallet installed on the mobile device of the individual. It really aims at enhancing the current process, as Dino explained, of sharing personal data by providing an efficient, secure and easy way to do so. Some key considerations, the program aligns with the Secretary of State’s UN 2.0 vision, bringing a modern and innovative solution to manage personal data. It leverages existing capabilities and builds on them. As Dino said, the most important one is the digital certificate of entitlements developed by UNGSPF. We can say in one sentence that the UN Digital Aid brings transparency over the records for the individual and improves the management and quality of the data for the organizations. The UN Digital Aid solution is a universal data exchange platform built using open-source technologies. It is a universal platform, which was built to allow expansion to multiple unlimited use cases. For the MVP, we chose to start with the pension use case, building on the knowledge and success of the digital certificate of entitlements. The pension use case is really for staff separating from their organizations in the next six months. It gives them the option to use the digital ID to share their personal data with the fund for the calculation of their benefits. The solution technology we are using permissioned blockchain as for the digital certificate of entitlements. This ensures transparency and auditability. We do not store any personal data on the blockchain. The blockchain stores only credential definitions, schemas and verification data. We have built a distributed identity management based on verifiable credentials that are the foundation to trust exchange data between different parties and enabled by a common shared trust infrastructure using distributed blockchain. This in this trust infrastructure that we store the verifiable data registry that has all these credential definitions, schemas and verification data. The solution consists of two components, the user app, that is the digital wallet used by the individual and the ID manager to extract the data from the ERPs and to give full control to the organizations to manage the credentials, the personal data they share with their users, their staff. Our first MVP, the pension user. use case is released on the 3rd of June, next Monday, next week. We are thrilled about it. This will really give the option to the individuals that are separating, to the staff separating from the participating organizations to use, to receive, verify, and share their personal data, their digital ID, with UNJSPF via their digital wallet, using these verifiable credentials. I would like to mention the participating organizations to date. We have WFP, the UN Secretariat, UNDP, UNICEF, UNHCR, and of course, UNJSPF. UNICC, we are the technology solution and service provider. Thank you very much.

Dino Cataldo Dell’Accio:
Thank you. Thank you, Dimitra. Thank you. First, now the floor to Monsignor Ruiz.

Lucio Adrián Ruiz:
Good morning. I’m very happy to be here and share with you some thoughts about the digital identity solution in the human way. Why it’s important, which is much more than technological issue, not just the question of the truth of the data, and how it is essentially important. I want to share with you four points. The first one is science and technology are not neutral. We are used to thinking that the technology is neutral, like a spoon that can be used for good or evil, depending on how it is used. Nothing could be further from the truth that this statement. Technology is never, ever neutral, because it is used for good or evil. is born with an intention. It has an objective and has consequences, which go beyond what we may wish, but which exist, however. All this means that it can in no way be neutral in itself, leaving only on the use made by the user, forgetting those who create and produce it out of the process. The intentionality of the users adds further moral values, affirming or correcting, changing the initial intention of objectives, but it should always be clear to our eyes that it is not human action that is morally neutral, and therefore neither is technology in any of its expressions. The second point is seeing and hearing are essentially anthropological issues. When we say, I have seen it, I have heard it, we are facing an argument that is one of the most important arguments we face, because it is based on our own personal experience. It is about what our eyes see and what our ears hear. In this case, we ourselves are the witnesses of the veracity of what I see and heard. The anthropological value of this is fundamental, but this is the foundation of the credibility because no one seeks to be inconsistent with himself. If this fundamental source of credibility fails, confidence in the reality fails as well along with our own credibility. To deny the veracity of what our eyes see and what our ears hear is a complicating and humanly dedicated task. Well, the problem is when what we see and what we hear is presented to us with the pretension of truth. Because in that case, they are falsehood with the value of deception. Here lies the urgency to be able to present to our sense the veracity or the fictional clarity of what is perceived as true so that understanding is not falsified and the truth can be known. The third point is trust and objectivity are not the prerogative of machines. This is a second question related to the truth that we perceive. It is a question of not thinking that because the machine or artificial intelligence says it, it is true and deserves all our trust. There is a general tendency to believe that the machine produces objective and true information. However, the fact is that machines are first programmed by human beings and have with them their a priori’s bias, their criteria and ways of seeing and interpreting with their own vision and culture from which the systems are created and produced. Second, they feed on information sources made by the human being and selected and presented according to the discretion of the algorithm. In our world of programming and algorithms, the anonymity of producers prevents us from knowing the procedures of selection and preparation of the information that we consume. This limits the freedom of choice and selection according to our own life choices. For this reason, it is necessary that the system offers security and clarity to identify so that there is no homologation of everything, training and information according to those who produce the system. Finally, the fourth point is technological progress does not necessarily result in progress of humanity. There is a tendency to think, as it was believed at the beginning of the industrial revolution, that everything that is technological is good. And that development of technology is in itself a good thing. good and produce progress both for the person and society. The error of such an opinion is not something to discuss and analyze, but is part of our shared history. Nuclear weapons have already taught us that technological development does not necessarily mean automatically progress of mankind. For there to be progress, the whole person must progress and not just a part of the person. And all people must progress and not just some of us. To think that technology is in itself good, move away from the truth of what the human being is, which is reflected on our job and our action. It is necessary to be aware of the presence of the evil in the world in order to manage the reality in the complexity of what we experience in life, even in ourselves. Conclusion. The identity of what is done on the Internet allows us to develop the digital reality as the whole human reality is built up. This requires our commitment to the whole human person, who cannot be anonymous, but must be committed in a complete and integral way in all processes, especially in what refers to the person and life, both personal and social. That is why we must advance in the research and development of systems that allow us to make human beings more responsible in everything we do. We cannot remain oblivious to the result and the consequences hidden in the good of what could have been in our intention and the size. Thank you.

Dino Cataldo Dell’Accio:
Technology into product perspective makes very humble. Thank you. Thank you so much for your perspective.

Sandra Ro:
Good morning everyone and thank you so much for this opportunity. As Dino kindly introduced, my name is Sandra Rowe and I’m the CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council. We actually launched in Davos back in 2017 and we are a Swiss-based association foundation that is now probably the largest in the world. We have more than 500 institutions in our network, 301 ambassadors across 117 jurisdictions and disciplines and we focus on three things. I’m just going to see if I can get to that. We focus on three things. Education. We started with education and wanting to take very complex, fast-moving, emerging technology as blockchain and be able to explain that and translate that to the world and especially to governments, regulators and C-suite executives. This was our first objective. Our second objective was to actually look at public-private sector partnerships. How do we actually work together? This is a collaborative technology. It is expanding at a rapid rate. It does not respect borders. at least geographically, it does not. And how do we actually work together to build something that is fit for purpose? But Monsignor just said, I feel like we should have a whole discussion for another hour on, because we very much agree that how this is designed and built and who does that will determine whether it is good for humanity or whether in fact it is actually quite awful and exacerbates all the problems we already have on the internet. So the third point that we are focused on is nothing in this world scales properly without standards and best practices, that’s industry standards, as well as well-established institutions that do standards, collaborating and adopting specific standards. So we spend a lot of time on that. These are initiatives that I’ve got listed here. I will only unpack for you in the few minutes that I have today, are just the highlights of some of the work that we are doing. All of our information is open source and completely open access. We have here what we call the GSMI. It’s the Global Standards Mapping Initiative, which began five years ago to answer a very simple question, which actually turned out to be a very complex one, which is what is going on in the world of blockchain technology and digital assets and cryptocurrencies and crypto assets? Who is doing what? And believe it or not, we actually linked up with, in the very first iteration with the World Economic Forum to do this research, just to map what is going on from technical standards and then also from a regulatory and policy framework, standards, how were countries dealing with the regulatory and policy hurdles around particularly digital finance and cryptocurrencies? That work has now mushroomed into about 50 other subtopics, some of which I’ve highlighted here. We are in our fifth iteration. We have launched a fellows program for young people to become fellows. to do research with us from around the world. We’ve had more than 1,000 people actually touch this open access. You can volunteer to actually participate in the research every year. We’ve had very large institutions. We’ve had very small startups. We’ve got NGOs, we’ve got corporates, you name it. Everyone’s pretty much had a hand in it. Every year we do a country highlight. Last year was Brazil. The year before we did China. This year we’ll be doing India. And again, we go deep into very specific topics. Digital ID has been with us since the second year of that iteration. And we actually believe that digital identity in its many forms, from self-sovereign identity, some people have heard, which is you own everything and you control all of your information, all the way through to government-issued ID, going digital. That entire spectrum has been analyzed and reviewed. And we’ve been following very closely the work of DNOs and particularly because it is one of the bright lights of what an organization can do when they actually have a vision, solve a real problem and come forth with a solution that is fit for purpose for not only its problem, but also potentially standard setting for an industry. We have also delved into how do we explain things beyond 70 page reports? How many people here have 70 page reports that come into their inbox? And you say to yourself, well, maybe I’ll get to that this weekend. And then you don’t get to it. Well, that happens to us a lot. And so what have we done? We’ve done what I would call the highlight version, which is visually hopefully appealing, has pulled out statistics that matter, but ultimately behind that is a body of work that you could delve into if you’re actually interested in that topic. And so we’ve adapted with the world as one needs to sometimes to show not only the highlights, especially to executives, legislators, regulators. We’ve started increasingly doing these backgards. So if there is a topic. in the blockchain space, but we do not have a fax card, let me know, we’ll work on it. I’m pretty sure we probably have one. Another area that we’ve started doing a lot of analysis and work and deep thinking is our AI convergence working group. That working group has been looking at blockchain technology use as a trust anchor for data. As was mentioned earlier, fakes, deepfakes, how do you trust things on the internet now, that’s becoming increasingly a question that people are asking and different groups that we are working with who have deep AI, gen AI knowledge, but also those who have deep blockchain technology are also looking at how do we unpack this and then where actually can blockchain help. I’ll be very clear with you, I am not a proponent of putting blockchain everywhere, that is not the right way to look at a problem set. We need to be looking at what is the problem, what tools do we have to actually find solutions to that problem, and does that design and framework work. If it happens to be blockchain, fantastic, but if it isn’t, so be it, it’s a database. There is another initiative that I just want to highlight here, it’s called the Interwork Alliance. We basically took tokenization, things that are going digital, and people are going to turn it into what I call, by the way, I don’t like the word token, but it’s now stuck, so we have to use the word token, token standards on if you turn something digital, and I don’t care whether it’s a carbon credit, or it’s a gold, or a commodity, anything that has a token digital identity needs to now have a framework, and this has been worked on by Microsoft, EY, some very large Web3 companies looking at how do we go about doing this, and they started with the carbon market, so if you go and tokenize voluntary carbon credits, emissions, how do you actually verify and monitor and report that. All of these reports that have recently come out have literally started pushing out to industry how to look at this problem set when you’re going to tokenize these. carbon markets in particular, and what we’ve now found is we’ve got hundreds of implementations around the world and we don’t even know, to be frank with you, how many people are actually using TTF. We occasionally find out and we’re like, oh great, because it’s open source and open access. We have one example here which I will go through quickly, but literally they wanted to figure out how could we look at the different methodologies in the carbon markets, because one of the biggest problems that we have today, it’s not apples to apples. What you say is a carbon credit may not be what you say is a carbon credit, and we can’t agree on that fundamental. How are we going to scale anything? And so one of the participants looked at how do we go and solve for this, and they used blockchain and built a system to do this. And by the way, this is just a graphic to show you that they’ve linked up with the UNFCCC, and this was announced at COP28 last year, that they will be looking at how to embed comparisons of projects under this umbrella to be able to start showing apples to apples. So again, this is just what I would say the beginning of being able to look at how we can use blockchain for that and standards to support this very specific problem set. And again, just showing you here for illustration purposes. I’ve got behind this deck a whole set of other examples. I will tell you this one thing, whether we’re talking about financial markets, digital money, cross-border payments, or healthcare solutions and supply chain, it is very clear that digital identity is a critical component to this, which is why I’m so grateful to the work that Dimitra’s doing, and I’m grateful to the work that Dino has been doing for the number of years, because the standards that we need around this need to advance. It’s already happening through their leadership. Thank you very much.

Scott Stornetta:
I deliberately did not bring slides because I did not want to take away from the other participants, but rather offer some commentary and perspective. I’ve often pointed out that I may not necessarily be the smartest person in the blockchain space, but it is an undeniable fact that I’ve thought about it longer than anyone else. My initial concerns with what led to blockchain again in 1989, and I increasingly meet people that were born after that, so it’s a little humbling, but my initial concern was in a move to fully digital records. How would we have any confidence amongst ourselves what we could trust, we could rely on as being authentic and being what was created at the time and not altered since. So my and my colleagues, Dr. Haber’s work was all about creating an immutable record, and that’s why it is so gratifying to me after attending far too many crypto this speculative kinds of conferences to talk about these use cases that we’re seeing here, which is the blockchain as a universal digital ledger, able to be viewed on a peer-to-peer basis with no one in a privileged position. It’s just very humbling to me to see these kinds of use cases far more than, well, this particular token has a market cap of this. It’s not something you can hold on to. And because 12 months from now, the market cap will probably be one-tenth of what it was when it was having its 15 minutes of fame. So again, seeing applications that build on this universal digital ledger concept is so gratifying to me. And I really just have to celebrate Dino as really pioneering, and then Dimitra in following up and trying to expand and extend the benefits here. Because these implementations are not easy. Someone other than me would say that the devil is in the details, but being a person of faith, I would not like to give that audience. But the details are hard. And these working implementations that provide universal credibility to the examination of the records is just a wonderful thing. If you’ll just allow me a brief, if I had brought slides, this is the slide that I would have put up. Because I really think that blockchain, to Monsignor Ruiz’s point about what technology does not start morally neutral. And what we have is really a commons problem, where we want to create technologies that enhance the global commons and benefit for all, rather than allow the global commons to be degraded or polluted by those that have avaricious at a minimum and evil in a more realistic way intent of how to take advantage of the global commons. To me, what the blockchain really brought and is bringing as we go through these marvelous use case examples is it’s a revolution in trust in the sense that by having the entire world share the stewardship of trust, we can invert the requirements for the trusted third party so that we really can get objectivity about what these records represent. And it’s also a revolution in data in that all the world’s data has the potential to be, I know they say never read your slides, but here I am reading my slide that you can’t see, has to be offered in such a way that is sensor resistant, open, transparent. It is so hard to overemphasize the benefit of transparency for all viewers. And trying to in the asymmetry of information as a course of force, meaning I’ve heard it said before that the cynical application of the golden rule is that the person with the gold rules. And in a similar sense, the person that centrally controls information to the disadvantage of all other participants, it is a recipe for a disaster on a large scale. And so being able to spread out our stewardship for looking out for each other and testing the credibility of the data is something that’s just wonderfully expressed here. I want to turn now, I want to turn now though, if I could to Monsignor Ruiz points, because one of the things that was most challenging for us in the development of the original blockchain was to move it from a mathematical algorithm to something that had the proper what we used to call social embedding, namely there’s a need to give incentives to the real actors on this planet, namely the human. We need to have their incentives aligned so that they’re constantly in a condition of reasserting the trustworthiness of the record. And it’s these common achievements of creating a better commons. I used the word common and commons in the same sentence, probably not the best, but creating this richer commons, this commons that does not get denigrated and depleted, that is really at the heart of making good use of technology. I actually took some points down of what he had to say, so I apologize if I comment in some level of detail on that. Technology is definitely born with intent. It’s tempting to solve a particular problem and that carries with it both good and bad baggage. The seeing and hearing are anthropological issues. The sources and sinks of the world that we conceive of are always going to be people. And I think that some of us have gotten flustered a little bit with the advent of AI. I know this is not an AI session, but it does tie in. It needs to be remembered that AI are really just extensions of people because they are the authors. They are the people that provide the data that affects the, I always like it when people use Latin, the a priori priors. Keeping things grounded in the human experience is just so essential for keeping technology humane. Things do not necessarily result in progress. Amen to that. We have to be very conscious of the decisions that we’re making and just to personalize it very rapidly, it’s really a question of how we spend our discretionary time consuming technology and the information that is ever more available at our fingertips and becoming more discerning individuals of the sources of the information that flows to us. We have to spend more time reflecting on the deeper issues that are presented to us rather than constantly surfing the waves where we only see the day’s exciting events. Technology allows us to go in either direction but I fear, quite frankly, as someone that also still teaches a high school class of students, I fear for a generation that is developing that doesn’t know what to do with a spare moment other than to open their smartphone and try to digest some information that’s been fed to them. It’s a particular concern when we talk about technologies that we understand that much of the information we now receive today is advertising driven and to be aware of the false and often negative incentives that that creates for the information that’s presented to us and how that gets skewed. I could talk a long time about these human issues. but I feel like I still need to say something about Sandra, and that didn’t come out well. Because building to standards is, as you say, the only way that things are really going to scale, and that’s tough work, and someone has to do it, and presumably someone has to even write those 70-page reports, but I’m glad that we can see the graphic summaries, so that we can feel a little less guilty about the reports that we’re reading. I want to just finish by suggesting that there were core principles in formulating the blockchain, human principles, about distributing trust and creating stewardship amongst the broadest base of people possible, that tie into current work that Stuart and I continue to do on identity issues and the issue of getting a step ahead of many of the AI deep fakes that we’re starting to do, because they really are flip sides of the same coin of identity and accountability and being able to trace back to the person that’s involved. We are trying to create, in that regard, a similar distributed trust framework for universal identity, particularly in the social media space, because it’s become such an influential place. We want to tie identity down so that people can trace, and there are many efforts in this area, but it’s our own little two cents that we’re trying to contribute, so that people can trace back to the human streams, the content, and so that we can be ever more discerning about learning to have confidence in certain sources and learning to dismiss, no matter how digitally attractive media content becomes, learning process for us as individuals and educationally for our children is really, I think, the long-term human solution to deal with the enormous explosion of information and media content that we’ve seen and it’s going to get much more volumetrically challenging with AI generation. So again, I’ll go back to where I started. It’s so humbling to see people that are in the trenches working on things not designed to make someone a trillionaire, but rather to work for the common good and create a pool of resources that’s actually improving the human condition. Anyway, aren’t you glad it didn’t bring scientific experience?

Dino Cataldo Dell’Accio:
Thank you. Thank you to all our panellists for their wisdom and for sharing with us their commitment to this discipline. We have probably time for a couple of questions because the next session is already outside the door. So if there are questions from the audience, we also have several users connected online through Zoom. I don’t know whether we can access them, whether there is anyone on the chat. Any questions from the audience here? in Geneva for our panellists? No? All clear? Okay. Can we see the chat or just in case there is a question on the chat? Yeah? Any question on the Zoom chat? No? Okay. So thank you so much for attending this session. Much appreciated both the one in person and online. Thank you.