Designing for Authenticity

Catalog description

The Internet is at an inflection point. As AI and synthetic media explode, the world's digital knowledge faces unprecedented threats. At the same time, a new generation of web technologies known as "Web3" offer new opportunities to protect the security and integrity of data. Our class jumps into this high-stakes moment and equips students with a new framework to understand and deploy methods to restore trust in digital content whether it's news and information, legally admissible evidence, or tamper-proof archives. Open to students of all experience levels, this class will provide an introduction to how advances in cryptography and the decentralized web can allow users to establish the provenance and veracity of data as it moves online. Students will create end-to-end technical prototypes and emerge with a new understanding that authenticity isn't a guaranteed part of information systems. You have to design for authenticity. Open to PhD, MS, and advanced undergraduate students.