Proof-of-Being: Ontological Cryptography and the HISPU Protocol

Abstract

This preprint introduces Proof-of-Being (PoB) and ontological cryptography — the first cryptographic paradigm explicitly designed for the post-AGI era. As frontier language models, autonomous agents, and embodied robots increasingly generate outputs indistinguishable from human actions, classical authentication mechanisms (public-key cryptography, biometrics, CAPTCHAs, proof-of-personhood systems) no longer answer the central security question of the 2025 digital environment: “Was this action performed by a conscious human being?” Proof-of-Being addresses this foundational problem through HISPU (Human Intention Semantic Proof Unit) — a probabilistically unforgeable, fully anonymous attestation of human presence based on ontological randomness and multi-layered semantic–physiological–contextual proofs. HISPU verifies being rather than identity, enabling anonymous but provably human actions across digital systems. Key contributions of this work: · Introduction of ontological randomness as a fourth fundamental source of cryptographic unpredictability (beyond mathematical, physical, and hybrid entropy sources). · Formal definition of the HISPU primitive and seven foundational axioms of ontological cryptography. · Demonstration that no computational system — including superintelligent AGI — can forge a valid HISPU under the Ontological Security Assumption. · Clear conceptual separation between proving human being (ontological presence) and proving identity (social personhood). Applications include: · AGI safety and human-in-the-loop supervisory gates · Sybil-resistant DAO voting and decentralized governance · Intention-based economic systems · Bot-resistant democratic systems, legal smart contracts, and high-stakes authentication · Verifiable human authorship in generative AI ecosystems · Neurotechnology consent verification and BCI safety · Web4 / Noospheric Web intention-layer protocols This work positions Proof-of-Being as a foundational infrastructure for safe human–AI coexistence and represents the first major shift in digital trust since Diffie–Hellman (1976) and zero-knowledge proofs (1985). Keywords: proof-of-being, ontological cryptography, HISPU, proof of intention, ontological randomness, human verification, AGI safety, human-in-the-loop verification, post-AGI trust, intention-based economy, sybil resistance, digital ontology, privacy-preserving verification, human-AI coexistence, consciousness proof, non-simulatable proofs, machine unforgeability.