Sure, in theory you could use cryptography to protect uploads from tampering, at the cost of slowdown by a factor of N. But in practice the economic advantages of running uploads more cheaply, in centralized server farms that’ll claim to be secure, will outweigh that. And then (again, in practice, as opposed to theory) it’ll be about as secure as people’s personal data and credit card numbers today: there’ll be regular large-scale leaks and they’ll be swept under the rug.
To be honest, these points seem so obvious that MIRI’s support of uploading makes me more skeptical of MIRI. The correct position is the one described by Frank Herbert: don’t put intelligence in computers, full stop.
It is tricky, but there might be some ways for data to defend itself.
Sure, in theory you could use cryptography to protect uploads from tampering, at the cost of slowdown by a factor of N. But in practice the economic advantages of running uploads more cheaply, in centralized server farms that’ll claim to be secure, will outweigh that. And then (again, in practice, as opposed to theory) it’ll be about as secure as people’s personal data and credit card numbers today: there’ll be regular large-scale leaks and they’ll be swept under the rug.
To be honest, these points seem so obvious that MIRI’s support of uploading makes me more skeptical of MIRI. The correct position is the one described by Frank Herbert: don’t put intelligence in computers, full stop.