The renowned entrepreneur and creator of ChatGPT, sam altman, has become a leading figure in Silicon Valley. While he is known for his contribution to artificial intelligence (AI), his projects transcend those boundaries. Among them is worldcoin.
According to a report from xataka, Worldcoin is a cryptocurrency company that aims to give people tokens simply for being people, for existing.thus establishing a concept similar to a universal basic income. However, everything has its price.
The Worldcoin proposal implies obtaining a unique biometric identification for each individual. In this case, use iris scanning as the method of identity confirmation. To participate in this ecosystem, users must undergo their iris scan at one of the multiple registration points distributed throughout the world by the company.
The Worldcoin initiative has received significant backing, as it recently raised $115 million in a Series C funding round. Although it is currently in beta and the token is not yet available to users in the United States, the company led by Altman has managed to attract almost two million users willing to register their iris in exchange for tokens that could represent economic support in the future.
A controversial proposal
This proposal has generated controversy regarding privacy. Scanning the retina of millions of people is an invasive process and has led criticslike Edward Snowden, to question the associated risks.
Although Worldcoin claims that the scans are destroyed once processed, this has not been enough to convince those concerned about privacy.
It is interesting to note that even Worldcoin advocates have used the dystopian perception as an argument in favor. Spencer Bogart, one of the company’s investors, admits that he initially considered Worldcoin to be “a dystopian Orwellian nightmare”but after extensively evaluating what had been built, he completely changed his opinion.
The basis of the Worldcoin proposal is closely related to the work of OpenAI. More than 50% of the world’s population lacks a verifiable identity, which becomes even more crucial in the age of artificial intelligence, where the line between the real and the artificial is increasingly blurred.
Worldcoin intends to make WorldID a valid digital identification method to carry out financial transactions, vote or interact with the public administration. The battle for identification has become a recurring theme in the technological field.
The “Orb” and privacy
The “Orb”, a hardware device built specifically by Tools for Humanity, is used to scan the iris of those interested in participating in Worldcoin. The company has deployed registration points in several countries, including Spain, and is currently located in cities such as Berlin, Dubai, London, Mexico, New York, Miami, San Francisco and Tokyo.
To build trust, Worldcoin has taken a transparent approach in sharing information about the hardware used in the iris scanning process.
The design files are available for download and all the internal components of the “Orb” are known, from the battery to the cooling system, through the main camera, the Nvidia Jetson Xavier NX chipset, antennas and mirrors.
Privacy is a central concern to Worldcoin, and its privacy policy reflects that approach. The company guarantees that images captured by the “Orb” are quickly deletedunless users expressly request their retention.
By default, the only personal information that is sent from the device is a message that contains a numerical representation of the most relevant characteristics of the image: the iris code, used to validate the uniqueness of each individual.
Sam Altman made ChatGPT and other products successful. Will it achieve the same with Worldcoin?