Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, unveiled the cryptocurrency Worldcoin on Monday.
The project’s main product is its World ID, which the business refers to as a “digital passport” to demonstrate that the person using it is a genuine person, not an AI robot. The Worldcoin “orb,” a silver ball about the size of a bowling ball, is used for in-person iris scanning to obtain a World ID. The orb develops a World ID once the iris scan confirms the user is a real human.
Worldcoin is created by Tools for Humanity, a firm with offices in Berlin and San Francisco.
With Monday’s debut, Worldcoin is expanding its “orbing” activities to 35 locations in 20 nations, bringing the project’s 2 million users total to the initiative. Worldcoin’s cryptocurrency token, WLD, will be given away to participants in some nations as an incentive.
On Monday morning, WLD’s price increased. According to Binance’s website, it peaked at $5.29 on the biggest market in the world and, at 1000 GMT, was trading at $2.49 from a starting price of $0.15. Trading volume on the exchange totaled $25.1 million.
According to co-founder Alex Blania, blockchains can store the World IDs in a way that protects privacy and can’t be manipulated or shut down by a single party.
According to the initiative, World IDs will be required in the era of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which produce surprisingly human-like language. Online, actual individuals and AI bots could be distinguished from each other using World IDs.
Altman said that Worldcoin can also assist in addressing how generative AI will change the economy.
AI “will supercharge people, which will have enormous economic implications,” he claimed.
Universal Basic Income, or UBI, a social benefits program that is often operated by governments and under which everyone person is entitled to payments, is one model Altman likes. Altman thinks UBI can help address income inequality since AI “will do more and more of the work that people now do.” It could be used to reduce fraud when implementing UBI because only actual people can have World IDs.
Altman stated that he believed a world with UBI would be “very far in the future” and that he was unsure of the organization that could distribute money, but that Worldcoin sets the foundation for it to happen.
We believe that in order to decide what to do, we must begin experimenting with many options.
