W3C

Web Commerce Interest Group

28 Jan 2019

Agenda

Attendees

Present
Ian Jacobs (W3C), Manu Sporny (Digital Bazaar), Linda Toth (Conexxus), Mark Tiggas, David Ezell (Conexxus), Phil Archer (GS1), Laura Townsend (MAG), Todd Albers (US Federal Reserve), Tony Nadalin (Microsoft), Ken Mealey (American Express)
Chair
dezell
Scribe
Ian

Contents


<scribe> Scribe: Ian

News from CES

Linda presentation

ltoth: I am director of standards of Conexxus
... I attended CES and these observations are about how CES news affects our industry and retail specifically (notably convenience)
... first off CES is enormous
... they use multiple convention centers....~180K attendees
... around 4500 exhibits, plus education, plus specialized tracks
... AI was a big theme this year.
... I attended an AI session and a "high tech retailing" session
... the three Ps of AI: Perception, Prediction, Planning
... we heard a lot about ethics in AI
... data bias was one ethics topic
... we also heard from stitch fix...they send you an outfit per month...they learn what you like over time
... interesting story because they balance AI with some human interaction...they've found that humans are better in some scenarios, machines in others
... different weighting factors (e.g., "higher margins for a given product")
... also a sense that if you are going to make a life-altering decision, having human oversight should be considered
... John Deere was on a panel..they've been using autonomous large machinery since the early 2000s
... they said 90% of their equipment is driverless
... they have precise GPS...within a few centimeters of precision
... Another big topic was 5G
... verizon has ruled out 5G in four cities
... they have a model of home->street->city->factories->stadia
... if you take a 4G device on 5G there's not much benefit
... you get real benefit from 5G devices
... Qualcomm and others touting 5G
... Likely mobile phones first, then tablets and other computers
... but people were talking about 5G all over the show
... for retailers, this could enable a number of new applications.
... combining AI and 5G:

* personalization and customization (customer recognition, digital signage, AR+VR, customized shelf tags, narrow omni-channel gap)

scribe: if an adult male walks into the store..and you have an ad up for a prom dress, that may not do anything, but teen female maybe
... so age + gender might allow on-the-fly digital signage to target people walking in the shop
... interest in AR (seeing how furniture looks in the house)
... also interesting to have customized tags (e.g., customized prices)
... allowing users to use phone (5G) to get more information about a product on the shelf
... brick and mortar stores are lagging behind online stores in terms of data and analytics
... but now there are opportunities for in-store learning - someone who picks up product A might be interested in product B

Another topic: ROBOTICS

scribe: medical, elder care in home
... e.g., detect that someone has fallen
... other applications include education (e.g., reading), early programming skills
... addressing social isolation
... inventory management
... don't want to be promoting something where you don't have the inventory
... deployment of tech is one thing ("the easy part") but education and social acceptance are tricky (e.g., nervousness about robots taking over jobs, etc.)

[We look at some photos]

scribe: first one shows a facial recognition tool, identifying people by gender + age
... photo shows smart tags with rating, QR code, dynamic price
... third photo showed a machine to bake bread and to distribute baked loaves in a vending machine
... you pick a loaf, the machine bags it, and dispenses it
... another setup shows automation of checkout including "whole fruit" (which is harder to determine than a package of sliced fruit)

[photos on smart displays]

scribe: picture of a hat with a screen, and a handbag with a screen
... these are programmable displays
... some interesting TV displays
... "bezel free, scalable to any dimension"
... LG showed a tunnel of TVs
... saw a lot of 8K TVs
... we saw some screens that are TVs when they are on, and Art when off.
... instead of a black screen
... there was a lot in the way of pet products (e.g., monitor pet health, AI to manage feeding...e.g., which pet ate from which bowl)
... there's also a lot in the realm of games and virtual reality in gaming
... there was a suitcase that was following a person around (they did not carry or pull it)
... there was a lot of emphasis on education and learning to code (e.g., Harry Potter wand, Kano build your own tablet)

dezell: Thank you Linda!

<Zakim> dezell, you wanted to ask about current related W3C work

dezell: What is going on at W3C in some of these areas?

https://www.w3.org/2018/09/immersive-web-wg-charter.html

IJ: Immersive web
... 5G

<manu> IJ: There have been a number of discussions around these themes...

https://www.w3.org/2017/11/web5g-workshop/

<manu> ... Jeff has spoken about Web 5G

<manu> ... There is a whitepaper from Dom on what the Web needs from 5G and how to take advantage of 5G on the Web, that's an interesting piece.

<manu> ... as far as AI in the browser, my gut is to say "AI, that's something that's server side", but it turns out that browsers are becoming platforms that are performing sufficiently quick (via Web Assembly) AI in the browser experiments.

<manu> ... happy to put folks in touch w/ people, both in terms of Data activities, browser capabilities, in looking into these areas.

<Zakim> manu, you wanted to ask about privacy - don't expect many to have actually done research on that.

Manu: Linda, at the beginning of your deck you talked about image recognition, etc.
... my question has to do with privacy...was there a discussion about privacy? do customers want to be identified that way?
... we are working on these sorts of things in VCWG...all of those technologies at CES seemed to be privacy-eroding
... was there discussion about how people might leave stores (where there are cameras looking at them) and return to the web for enhanced privacy.

ltoth: There was definitely conversation about that in the education track
... especially with regulatory requirements internationally (e.g., GDPR)
... there were definitely some conversations
... less so in the exhibitions, but I didn't really have time to speak with tech providers
... but I would say it's top of mind.

Authentication Workshop Review

Tony: Let me start by saying the official report from the Workshop is not yet available

Workshop agenda

Tony: December Workshop...I believe there was a mismatch regarding "what the workshop was about or should have been about"
... some people came to the workshop wanting to solve the decentralized ID issue...others wanted to solve the strong identity and authentication aspects
... I think some people were upset in a variety of directions
... but I believe that we accomplished trying to understand what people were thinking about
... we did some voting regarding hot topics
... as far as strong authentication and identity, one theme that was raised during the meeting related to derived credentials.
... we seem to be moving towards a strong authentication (on the Web) we have a legacy of PKI infrastructure in some jurisdictions
... how does that tie into some of W3C's work regarding WebAuthn
... how do we link the two? Some jurisdictions have a requirement that you cannot authenticate unless you've been identified by the CAT card / PKI card
... so we have that issue to try to resolve
... how to tie PKI work into strong authentication
... I would say that there was little talk about strong identity, that is proofing aspects --- verification of a (digital) identity
... there was discussion about claim methodologies, but those are "after the fact" of proofing process
... there was little on the actual proofing aspects during the workshop
... I would think that there would be a follow-up to this workshop (e.g., another workshop, or ongoing discussion on a list or in a group)
... I think there are a lot of unanswered questions still around decentralized identifiers
... I think the feedback was mixed; some people wanted to solve it, others not, or in-between
... I think Manu participated by phone and I welcome his perspective here as well

<Zakim> manu, you wanted to provide some take aways.

manu: A snow storm presented travel, so I attended by phone
... tony is right in his assessment that there were different goals. There was a pretty strong decentralized ID contingent (looking to get a a WG started; that process is ongoing)
... there seemed to be strong support for the WebAuthn work, and the potential follow-on work for derived credentials
... we would have liked to have seen more identity proofing discussions at the workshop
... as an outcome, I would expect the report to be completed over the next month
... my personal expectation is that there will be follow-on DID work in the form of a charter discussion
... as Tony said, we still have some hurdles there
... so as far as outcomes, I would think WebAuthn would pick up some of the topics
... a second would be a potential DID WG (launched in 2019 perhaps)
... and clearly some things not yet ready like DID-based authentication
... Also some slide decks will be linked from the report

Tony: We saw progress in this particular area. I think there needs to be more progress at least as far as strong identity
... I think these issues can be worked through ... the one lacking is the strong identity piece that needs to be brought through
... we have deployments of strong authentication (WebAuthn)

<manu> +1 to that.

Tony: we deliberately did not tie the identity piece into WebAuthn
... so that's the piece that needs the most follow-up
... The Workshop was valuable for hearing where people's minds were at the time
... there were good contributions and that will be available from the report

IJ: Is "strong identity" binding between digital identity and real-world identity?

Tony: We can do the strong authentication piece with crypto
... proof of possession is one thing
... breeder documents is the next thing...some countries have them, others don't
... "breeder docs" include birth certificates or some form of legalized proof of who you really are.
... some of the work in the VC claims involve claims and who made them,
... but whether the claim is true is another question
... for strong identity you need the proof of how the claim was actually obtained; ISO has done a lot in this particular area.

IJ: Web browsing is (for many) best anonymized by default. How do you square that with strong identity?

Tony: Some through zero-knowledge proofs. But you still need some methodology for acquiring the data.
... you may, for example, believe some passport-issuing countries over others based on proofing mechanisms.
... you can then put privacy protecting pieces (or anonymity pieces) on top

<Zakim> manu, you wanted to note that Verifiable Claims WG is working on expressing those things... but not the process... evidence, process, etc.

manu: The VCWG is looking at some of these processes
... but what Tony said is correct - processes exist e.g., at ISO and we don't yet have a way to express that in claims
... there are proofs of concept and pilot projects around these topics, using W3C VC work
... using JWT representations
... the VCWG has put in placeholders for this information in a VC but we still don't have the data model(s) used to express this information
... good news is that this stuff is being incubated..I think we will revisit this later this year or in 2020

Next meeting

By default 25 February, but still to be confirmed

dezell: I have reached out to some people re: 25 Feb so then we'll let people know shortly after that
... we also welcome suggestions from the participants here. Contact Ian or the chairs
... Thanks Tony and Linda (and Manu)

Summary of Action Items

Summary of Resolutions

[End of minutes]

Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by David Booth's scribe.perl version 1.154 (CVS log)
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