Sam Altman is famous globally for leading the AI project Chat GPT which grew from zero to more than 100M users in a few months. While Chat GPT and its related AI apps have been spectacular to say the least, they have also spawned a host of social issues related to whether AI may be a threat to humans. Already there have been many news reports of AI replacing several types of jobs. The recent Hollywood writers and actors strikes are just an example that highlights the fear of many people about AI taking away their jobs. There are many.
Altman, along with a new partner named Alex Blania, have started a new cryptocurrency project called Worldcoin. While there are literally thousands of cryptotokens out there, Worldcoin is unique in the sense that it wants to use eyeball iris scans using a gadget called an Orb as the way to do KYC. This Orb is designed to prove if someone is human and not an AI bot, and will issue the person who underwent the iris scan a unique World ID.[1]
Both Altman and Blania want to provide the rest of humanity who are unbanked with economic opportunity, provide a way to distinguish humans from AI bots without sacrificing privacy, and eventually lead towards some sort of AI-funded Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all. A digital wallet called World App is also available for download by everyone so they can participate in the digital world.
Altman and Blania founded Worldcoin more than three years ago to create a new identity and financial network owned by everyone. It started to roll out in late July 2023. Take note that there are millions of people around the world who remain unbanked and cannot participate in global economic activities because they are poor and do not have government issued ID for KYC.
Worldcoin attempts to bypass that identification requirement by using the unique blood vessel patterns of the eyeball iris of each individual as the basis for KYC. Once the Orb determines that a person is indeed human (and not an AI bot) it will issue a World ID, in coordination with the Worldcoin global network. The Worldcoin token itself will run on the Optimism Layer 2 network that runs atop the Ethereum network for scalability and security.[2]
For people in poor and undeveloped countries this might be an attractive proposition since they are getting a significant amount of money in Worldcoin tokens (less than a hundred dollars) by scanning their iris and getting a World ID. But for people in more sophisticated societies, the idea of entering your personal biometric data into a system may constitute an invasion of privacy for them. Worldcoin however clarifies that it is only the Orb that looks at a person’s iris, determines if that person is human, and issues the World ID. It does not keep or store the iris biometric info in the Worldcoin system.
Given that Elon Musk has also rebranded and pivoted Twitter into X to convert it from a purely social media app to one that also has financial capabilities for sending and storing money like his earlier PayPal venture, it remains to be seen who will be dominant in the end.
Altman and Blania’s goals are noble especially in reaching out to the unbanked, but there are many powerful players who are also going after that goal. Altman has his reputation from Chat GPT going for him, but at this point whether he succeeds or not is too early to tell.
Author’s note: The technical and commercial issues surrounding how a network can prove that a user is human and not an AI bot are multiple and complex. These are beyond the scope of this opinion piece but Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin does a good deep dive in his recent article at https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html
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