Passed enough time in San Francisco, looking towards the future Cyberpunk, and it is possible that strange things begin to seem normal. Fleets or autonomous cars? Yawn. A new company that tries to resurrect the gigantic Lanudo? Of course, why not? To invoke a divine artificial intelligence that could eliminate humanity? Ho hum.
You even find yourself, as I did on Wednesday night, standing in a room full of people in the Marina district, looking at a brilliant target known as the orb, who scanned the ocular balloons in exchange for a world.
The event was organized by World, a new company by San Francisco co -founded by Sam Altman de Operai that has come with one of the most ambitious (or spooky technological projects, dependent on his opinion) in recent memory.
The basic launch of the company is this: Internet is about to be invaded with swings of the realistic bots that will make it almost impossible to know if we are interacting with real humans in social networks, dating sites, game platforms and Esther online spaces.
To solve this problem, World has created a program called World ID, it may think it is clear or TSA Precheck for the Internet, which will allow users to verify their humanity online.
To register, users look at an orb, which collects a scan of their iris. Then they follow some instructions in an application for smartphones and collect a unique biometric identifier that is disturbed in your device. There are baked privacy characteristics, and the company is not not that it is not, it is not no, it is not that it is not, it does not safely, only a numerical code that corresponds to them.
In return, users receive a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin, which can spend, send other global holes or trade for other currencies. (Until Wednesday night, the registration bonus was worth approximately $ 40).
In the event, Mr. Altman launched the world as a solution to the problem that he called “confidence in the AGI era” as artificial general intelligence and human AI systems approach, he said, the need for a mechanism that separates and humans are becoming more urgent.
“We wanted a way to make sure that humans remain special and central to a world where the Internet was going to have a lot of content driven by AI,” Altman said.
In all, Mr. Altman and Alex Blania, the world’s executive director, believe that something like Worldcein will be needed to distribute the powerful systems of AI to humans, perhaps in the form of a universal basic income. They discussed several ways to create a “real human network” that combines a humanity test verification scheme with a financial payment system that allowed verified humans to transact with Owher Vrediedans-ALL without the banking system.
“The initial ideas were very crazy,” Altman said. “Then we reduced one who was a little crazy, which became a world.”
The project was launched two years ago internationally, and found much of its early traction in developing countries such as Kenya and Indonesia, where users aligned to obtain their orb scans in exchange for cryptocurrency rewards. The company has raised approximately $ 200 million of investors, including Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures.
There is a leg some hypo. The world’s biometric data collection has faced the opposition of privacy defenders and regulators, and the company has been prohibited or investigated in places like Hong Kong and Spain. There are also reports from scam legs and exploitation of workers linked to the rewards system based on project cryptography.
But it seems to be growing rapidly. Approximately 26 million people have registered in the application of the world since its launch two years ago, said Blania, and more than 12 million have received orb scanns to verify as humans.
The world remained outside the United States at the beginning, partly because of concern that regulators would resist their plans. But the cryptographic policies of the Trump administration have given him an opening.
On Wednesday, World announced that it would be launched in the United States and opened retail stalls in cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Nashville, where new users can scan their eyes and obtain their world identifications. Plan to have 7,500 orbs in the country by the end of the year.
The company also revealed a new version of its orb, the Orb Mini, which is not, in fact, an orb. Instead, it looks like a smartphone with bright eyes, but it has the same purpose as the biggest device. And World announced associations with other companies, including Razer, The Gaming Company and Match Group, the conglomerate of appointment applications, which will soon allow Tinder users in Japan to verify Suity using their World ID.
It is not yet clear how all this will earn money, or if Americans aware of privacy will be so anxious for disburseing their biometric data for some cryptographic tokens such as people in the development of parts of the world have a leg.
Nor is it clear if the world can overcome basic skepticism about how strange and sinister all things can feel.
Personally, I sympathize with the idea that we need a way of saying bots and humans separately. But the World proposition solution, a global biometric record, backed by a volatile cryptocurrency and supervised by a private company, may seem too much an episode of “black mirror” to achieve conventional acceptance. And even Wednesday, in a room full of anxious early adopters, I with many people who were reluctant to look at the orb.
“I did not easily give up my personal data, and I consider my personal data of Eyalls,” a technology worker told me.
The world’s connection with Mr. Altman has also drawn scrutiny. Duration The event, some skeptics pointed out that by virtue of their position on Operai, the problem is promoting in a certain sense, an internet full of hyperconcious bots, that world is trying to solve.
But it is also possible that Mr. Altman’s connection can help the world to climb quickly, if it joins Openi or integrates with its AI as products in some way. Perhaps, according to the reports, the social network that Openai is building will have a fashion of “verified humans”, or perhaps the users who contribute to OpenAi products valuablely will one day be paid in Worldcein.
(The New York Times has sued Openai and his partner, Microsoft, claiming the infringement of copyright of the news content related to the AI systems. OpenAi and Microsoft have denied the statements).
It is also completely possible that privacy standards can change in favor of the world and that what feels strange and sinister today can normalize tomorrow. (Do you remember how strange you felt the first time you saw a clear kiosk at the airport? Did you promise that you would never deliver to your biometric data, then any Vally and accept it as the cost of convenience?)
When it was my turn to take a step to the world, I took off my glasses, opened the application of my world and followed the instructions that cools me. (Look in this way, look like this, go back a bit). The orb cameras sound for a minute, capturing the texture of my iris. A ring around the world shone yellow, and let out a happy countryside.
A few minutes later, he owned a world identification and 39.22 world tokens. (Tokens are worth $ 40.77 at today’s prices, and I will donate them to charity, once I discover how to get them out of my phone).
My orb scan was fast and painless, but I spent the rest of the night feeling vulnerable, as if I had just accepted to participate in a clinical trial for a new risk risky with the reading of wood on the possible side effects. But many attendees seemed not to have such objections.
“What am I hiding, anyway?” He said an influence of social networks called Hannah Stocking, while taking a step forward to take his orb scan. “Who cares? Take everything.”
