2025‐08‐8 Minutes

• Attendees

  • Dean H. Saxe
  • Alex B Chalmers
  • George Fletcher
  • Tim
  • Victor Lu
  • Mike Kiser
  • Robert Friedman
  • Sean Miller

• Note taker:

  • Mike Kiser

• Welcome

  • Note Well
  • Anti-Trust Policy

• Upcoming meetings

  • August 20, 2025 3:00 PM PDT (GMT-7)
  • September 5, 2025 7:00 AM PDT (GMT-7)
  • September 17, 2025 3:00 PM PDT (GMT-7)

• Agenda bashing?

• Review recent articles / links posted in Slack

  • https://gizmodo.com/the-disturbing-ai-interview-that-has-everyone-fuming-2000640205

  • Dean: Jim Acosta did an interview with an avatar of a Parkland shooting victim. *Blowback has come in two forms: 1) it's an argument in favor gun control 2) The use of AI to reanimate a minor (putting words in the mouth of the 17 year old) Thoughts?

  • George: The inability to verify that is what the person would have said is troublesome. The eight year time gap means that lots of things can change in that timeframe. the ethical framework from particular culture.

    • attribution of truth is implied and also problematic.

  • Dean: mandella effect is real - collective memory defines truth, problematically

    • well, it's still the perception of truth and not objective truth.

  • Alex: a couple of approaches relate here.

    • Rodeberry, who did the voice for computers on star trek - she recorded her voice so that it could be resused for the show long term (and post death).
    • if I commission it for my voice / image /etc, then that's a different class than a representation of an "other" - especially a minor

  • George: even if you intentionally set this up, the AI could do something that you didnt' intend or desire. Even trained with your beliefs, etc - it may not have actually happened. also, truth is sensory (seeing / hearing)

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/08/03/ai-obituaries-funeral-homes/

  • Dean: this is funeral homes who are using AI to write eulogies. What do we think about the ethical approach here?

  • George: I just worked on this for my father; conversion for word count, etc. Using it to write an obituary may be a gray area...not sure that it can get a sense of who that person actually was.

  • Dean: glad you said that - the image online are projections of "success", etc.

    • I've been reading a book by Chris Hayes called "Siren's call"- all about wanting to create a legacy
    • What if the funeral director offers to write the obituary

  • George: as long as it's prompted by human input -

  • https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/how-to-disappear-from-the-internet/

  • Dean: this is an article about how information about you is fairly impossible to remove from the internet

    • Do they work? (spoiler, not likely)

  • George: how can I document stories about our ancestors, etc

    • there are services that prompt stories from one question / week, etc

  • Dean: my grandfather was a great storyteller, and we captured stories about the past - and I'm also working on geneaology for immmigration purposes

    • "the victors write history" - rage against the machine

  • Victor : https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.09674

    • authenticated delegation paper ("on behalf of")
    • also the Dick Hardt piece on OAuth not being appropriate for AI
    • There's no centralized identity, so decentralized identity people are thinking about this as well

  • Dean: there are a lot of actors and initiaves in play (MCP/ A2A, etc) - and they all need to start talking to each other if they want to solve some of these problems

  • Dean: we need better protocols for delegated authority (a formalized process, especially related to DADE)

    • This would need to be implemented on the service providers / major repos (Google, Apple, etc.)
    • How do we know who it's been delegated to? How does it expire? How do you know when the human is no longer alive?
      • Feels like a service that is authoritative for "state of being," so to speak
      • Also could be a location to register estate managers
      • This is an independent registry for notificaiton rather than AuthZ

  • George: some digital mechanism for managing estate / revocable living trusts would fit into this well

    • could be different than the executor of a will
    • appropriate triggers / actions would be valuable

  • DADE resources wiki: https://github.com/openid/death-and-the-digital-estate/wiki/Resources

    • Eve did a clean up/reorganization effort on the resources, she will update the wiki regularly with new content.
    • File issues if you want something added to the wiki.

• Personas

  • Following our last meeting, Eve has created a doc on HackMD to capture more thoughts on the use of Personas within DADE. https://hackmd.io/idXlbE-dSueCI1Fr0c8Jlg?view

• What to do when the revocable living trust becomed irrevocable? (USA)

• Planning Guide for Cyber Security Awareness Month - Next Steps

  • Draft planning guide document is available in Google Docs
    • Various authors have started to contribute to the doc, we will continue to iterate on this over the next few weeks
    • Want to write? Tag a section or section(s) with your name and start writing!
    • We should wrap the content creation by late August!
    • Audience: "real humans"

• White paper being spearheaded by Dean, Mike, and Heather

  • We are currently working on an early preview for DADE CG members who've signed the participation agreement, more to come soon!
  • Public review period to begin August 25
  • Publication around October 1, 2025

• AOB