The Worldcoin Orb scans people's eyes to create a digital record of «proof of identity». every person in the world to help distinguish real people from complex machines.
Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, launched his Worldcoin project in the UK and 34 other countries on Monday.
The project aims to scan billions of eyeballs using a ball the size of a soccer ball that weighs about six pounds.
The spheres scan people's eyes to create a unique digital record that Worldcoin calls World ID, or «proof of identity.»
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Mr. Altman claims that this will allow people to prove online that they are not robots or scammers.
The entrepreneur said such verification is necessary to counter the growing threat posed by AI, a technology he himself is at the forefront of development.
OpenAI boss Sam Altman has warned of the threat posed by artificial intelligence despite his company being a ChatGPT pioneer. Credit: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
Announcing the launch of Worldcoin in the UK, the company said, “Increasingly powerful AI models will make it even harder to tell humans from bots.”
The company has around 150 workspaces and has deployed them around the world, including two in London. About 2 million people have signed up to it so far, a tiny fraction of the roughly 8 billion it hopes to reach.
Privacy advocates have raised concerns about the potential risks associated with a startup collecting vast amounts of sensitive biometric data.
Worldcoin insists that its technology «preserves privacy.» The company claims that its balloons delete the biometric data it collects by default.
However, in an interview with the Financial Times, Mr. Altman acknowledged that the balloons have a «clear nuisance factor».
On Monday, he appeared to downplay the prospects for an unusual venture. He said: «It may work, it may not, but it's these attempts that make progress.»
What it's like to be scanned by the Worldcoin sphere
«I hope Worldcoin can contribute to the discussion of how we share access, benefits and governance of future AI systems.»
Mr. Altman officially launched the enterprise on Monday, although the project has been running since 2019.
The startup has also faced criticism for focusing its first registrations on low-income countries, including Sudan and Malaysia.
MIT Technology Review reported that some people who signed up for the project believed the project was government-run or had official backing. Worldcoin called these incidents «isolated».
The enterprise is backed by the cryptocurrency of the same name. The face scanning realms are run by local contractors who are rewarded in Worldcoin cryptocurrency for signing up new users.
Telegraph tech correspondent Matthew Field with the Worldcoin realm Photo: Jamie Lorre male who submit an identity verification scan will also receive 25 free Worldcoin tokens. The tokens began trading at $1.70 on Monday, jumping to a high of $3.53.
The project has raised almost $250 million from cryptocurrency investors, including U.S. fund Andreessen Horowitz and disgraced FTX digital currency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried.
However, the company is facing regulatory hurdles in the U.S. and its digital coins will not be available in America at launch amid increased focus on cryptocurrencies.
Altman, 38, also leads OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company that revolutionized Silicon Valley with the launch of ChatGPT.
This chatbot answers questions based on text prompts and has skyrocketed in popularity as people use it to write emails, essays, and code.
Those who submit an identity scan will receive 25 free World Tokens coin, a form of cryptocurrency. Photo: Jamie Lorriman
Competitors, including Google, are racing to launch competing products, while OpenAI has received billions of dollars in funding from Microsoft.
The advent of ChatGPT and other powerful AI tools has also raised concerns that the technology could spiral out of control. Mr. Altman has previously said his «worst fear» is that AI will one day cause «significant harm to the world.»
Worldcoin has suggested that its digital coin could someday provide a form of international universal basic income (UBI) as AI causes hundreds of millions of jobs to become unnecessary.
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