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An Understandable Explanation About Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZPK), Plus More Including Blockchain, AI
Dr. Lance B. Eliot, AI Insider
I recently had an opportunity to attend ZK Day 2019 at the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at the University of California Berkeley, an all-day symposium entitled “Blockchains, Micropayments and Zero Knowledge.” Luminaries of the field were there, and the stellar event was moderated by Dr. Shafi Goldwasser, Director of the Simons Institute and a pioneer and co-founder of the field.
Those of you in the AI field might not be particularly versed in ZKP, perhaps you have heard of it, distantly, faintly, yet you are unsure of what it consists of.
I’ll go ahead and provide you with a layman’s explanation and include some handy references of salient works on the topic. The mathematics of ZKP can be daunting, which if you relish “pure” computer science offers a richness of a high order, while if you are less-so mathematically focused and more-so software engineering inclined, there are ways to make use of ZKP and do so by reviewing open source code and ZKP programs that are available on GitHub.
Let’s start at the beginning. Suppose you want to prove to someone that you know something, a particular something. You could just tell them the something, but in so doing…