The cryptocurrency project Worldcoin, founded by the CEO of OpenAI, launches on Monday.
The main offering of the project is World ID, an account that only real people can get. To get a World ID, a customer registers and undergoes an iris scan with a Worldcoin “sphere” – a silver ball about the size of a bowling ball. Once the iris scan confirms that the person is real, a World ID is created.
The company creating Worldcoin is Tools for Humanity, based in San Francisco and Berlin.
The project has 2 million users during its beta testing period, and with Monday’s launch, Worldcoin is expanding its “orbiting” operations to 35 cities in 20 countries. As an incentive, those who sign up in certain countries will receive a Worldcoin WLD cryptocurrency token.
The cryptocurrency aspect of World IDs is important because cryptocurrency blockchains can store World IDs in a way that preserves privacy and is not controlled or locked down by any one organization.
According to the project, World IDs will be necessary in the era of generative chatbots with artificial intelligence, such as ChatGPT, which create remarkably similar speech to human speech. Peace identifiers will be able to be used to distinguish real people from artificial intelligence bots on the Internet.
Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, said it will list Worldcoin, with a preliminary opening of trading expected at 09:00 GMT on Monday.
Worldcoin could also help address the question of how the economy will change under the influence of generative AI.
One example is universal basic income, or UBI, a social benefits program typically run by governments where everyone is eligible for payments. Since AI “will do more and more of the work that humans are now doing,” that UBI could help combat income inequality. Since only real people can have World IDs, this can be used to reduce fraud when implementing UBI.
A world with UBI will be “very far in the future,” and he doesn’t have a clear idea of what kind of organization could dispense the money, but Worldcoin is laying the groundwork for it to become a reality.