ZERO TRUST WORLD

We are rapidly moving towards a zero trust world and the days of reliance on the either the testimony or the analysis of an individual is as good as done.

The meteoric rise of the public ledger (popularly referred to as the Blockchain which runs Bitcoin) and the AI in all its forms has given us a glimpse of what is coming. More importantly, it is barreling towards us at warp speed. When one adds to it quantum cryptography (not possible to tamper without leaving a trace) to the mix, the circle of trust is not only completed but reduced to zero. Hence, rendered unnecessary.

The notion of the modern public ledger is rooted in a decentralized and massively distributed digital ledger. Where every new data set is timestamped and linked to the previous block in a secure manner.

We have already seen how knowledge can be collected by systems now that we have given the machines increasing accurate ability to see, hear and read. And of late even smell and touch in ways that humans can’t even begin to match.

This sea of knowledge is not only collected and stored securely but made available to us on our fingertips, literally. The advancement of augmented reality and the Siris and Bixbys of the world is giving us a sense of how knowledge can be made available on tap and away from the knowledge custodians of the past where most were obsessed to be on top. The speed with which the machines can be trained has been reduced to hours from days. And it is not unreasonable to assume that we will be able to train an “expert” custom built to our every needs almost instantly, in the not so far future.

Isn’t it ironic that almost all of this development could have been with us much earlier if people were a bit more focused on the Quran, a master class of AI, cryptography and public ledger all rolled into one. It is only a matter of time when people realize the significance of this and leveraging its wisdom to yet push up a few notches. Where the content of the message is already in an unlocked visible state and yet secured, hence, rendering the need for a public key unnecessary. An improvement on the public-private key system widely used today.

In any case, the nature of AI systems and the manner with machine learning have evolved, it is only a matter of time that verification and validation of the Quranic text will be subjected to Formal Verification. Most software is written informally and gauged on whether it works or not. As opposed to formally verified software which reads like a math equation. Each statement follows logically from the preceding one. The process is akin to testing a math theorem. Once done, all the other so-called alternative sources of our Deen, popular among the sectarians, will be further diluted.

All knowledge, including the Deen-related one, will be available to everyone in a manner that can be relied upon as a certainty. Not only that but people will be able to use the verification and validation tools to make sure what they have is the genuine article without having to trust the human experts. Obviously not good news for the personality-driven sect scene. Even the sieve-like error prone peer review systems run by propriety publication will be a thing of the past.

Trust will become a currency reserved for interpersonal relationships where it belongs.