Christine Peterson: Resources to Build Computer Security as Future of Law

Christine Peterson from Foresight Institute talks about protection, defense and other issues. She links these issues to her work at the Foresight Institute towards the end. She doesn't dive into nano, she doesn't immediately dive into AI, as I had expected.

She talks about computer security as future of law. On ground conditions for success, she says that the issue is whether weaker entities can hold onto the resources they need. They need protection from physical coercion and from economic corrosion.

We already have some experience with management of entities more powerful than a typical individual.

Mechanisms for reducing some of these issues include:
--constitutions
--rule of law, contracts, property rights,
--balance of power, checks and balances
--mutual defense mechanisms...

She moves onto property rights....and references examples on both the computational and non-computational side. She says, the "physical world will be largely controlled by computers. Insecure computers will mean an insecure physical world." (regardless of whether we buy into the singularity concept, she adds)

On the computational side, she talks about the operating system and the need to have a secure one, one that has no authority at all. The framework should provide rules for the exercise and transfer of permissions. There should also be a constitutional system of property and contract.

She says that these controls need to be automatically enforced, and they must be vastly easier than the current legal code. Example: typical real estate lease is far too complex. What about every lease and every contract?

In order for this to be successful, she says that the resources brought to bear must be greater than the violators.

What's the connection here? Resources and defense mechanisms to build computer security as the future of law.

Tag: Singularity Summit
Tag: Singularity
Tag: Christine Peterson
Tag: Foresight Institute