In retrospect it will seem clear that we lost something essential during this "AI moment"—that nebulous quality of truly knowing what is real. The morning I first went online and saw my own face speaking words I had never said, I understood that we had entered a time of necessary redefinition. My mannerisms were reproduced perfectly: the slight tilt of my head, the California drawl I never quite shed. Only it wasn't me. It was a simulation, a ghost in the machine, speaking with my borrowed authority.
The term "digital sovereignty" appeared in my notes again and again during those months, though its meaning remained elusive. We threw around phrases like "cryptographic verification" and "authentication protocols," as if technical solutions could shore up the collapsing boundaries between truth and fabrication. In a sense, they can. Digital signatures provide a mathematical certainty: this is mine, this is not, this happened, this did not. But the necessity for such proof reveals a deeper anxiety about our place in this new world.
What haunts me is not the technology itself but what it tells us about ourselves, about what we will imminently become. A society that requires mathematical proof of human identity is a society that has lost something fundamental. I believe that digital signatures are the only answer—that by signing my creations, my statements, my very presence in the digital, I can maintain some control over my narratives. Perhaps. But what I am really signing is a social contract, one that acknowledges that truth now requires proof, that identity must be mathematically verified, that my word alone is no longer enough. The irony doesn't escape me: that in an age where machines can create anything, the most human thing we can do is mathematically sign our names.