This Monday, Worldcoin was launched, a cryptocurrency project founded by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which aims to scan the eyes of every human on Earth. The goal is to prove and register those who are not robots.
The Worldcoin project is actually selling a World ID, which the company describes as a “digital passport” to prove that its holder is a real human and not an AI-managed robot.
To obtain a World ID, the customer signs up to undergo an iris scanning in person using the “orbe” of Worldcoin, a silver ball roughly the size of a bowling ball.
2 million people have accessed the scanner
Once the iris scanner in the orb verifies that the person is a real human, it creates a World ID. The company behind Worldcoin is Tools for Humanity, based in San Francisco and Berlin.
The project already has two million users in its beta phase, and with Monday’s launch, Worldcoin is expanding its operations to 35 cities in 20 countries. As an incentive, those who register in certain countries will receive the Worldcoin cryptocurrency, WLD.
The price of WLD surged in the early Monday trading. On the world’s largest exchange, Binance, it reached a peak of $5.29 from an initial price of $0.15, with a trading volume of $25.1 million.
World IDs can be stored on blockchains to preserve privacy and avoid central control or shutdown by a single entity, the company explains, as there is significant concern about the leakage of such personal and unique data.
The project claims that World IDs will be necessary in the era of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which produce language remarkably similar to human speech.
Exactly, World IDs could be used to distinguish real people from artificial intelligence robots on the Internet in the near future.
As AI “increasingly does the work that people do now,” Altman believes that universal basic income (UBI) can help combat income inequality. Since only real individuals can possess World IDs, it could be used to reduce fraud when implementing UBI in the future.
Some of the links added in the article are part of affiliate campaigns and may represent benefits for Softonic.
