OpenAI CEO raises $115M for crypto company that scans people’s eyeballs

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/05/openai-ceo-raises-115m-for-crypto-company-that-scans-peoples-eyeballs/

by jackalo • 3 years ago

42 52 3 years ago

This kind of headline would normally be torn apart by HN for being somewhat uncharitable for its word choice. But in this case, I'm sure the crypto angle will inspire a knee-jerk negative reaction.

Instead, here are a few links for the curious, which explain how the techniques Worldcoin employs may be one of the only viable methods to generate a totally privacy-preserving form of internet native identification and Sybil resistance.

The result is that no images of irises ever need to be saved, unlike CLEAR or other surveillance state friendly techniques that create dangerous repositories of private information.

1. Humanness in the Age of AI: https://worldcoin.org/blog/engineering/humanness-in-the-age-...

This piece explains other techniques to identify personhood and why they've fallen short.

2. Proof of Personhood and Why It's Needed: https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/proof-of-personhood-wha...

And outline of the general motivation.

3. Privacy at Worldcoin: https://worldcoin.org/blog/developers/privacy-deep-dive

Some of the extreme lengths they've gone to make it impossible to reconstruct who is behind the unique identifier.

arcticbull3• 3 years ago

I can't stress how much I'm not going to scan my eyeballs for magic beans that live in my computer. I suspect I'm not alone in this.

lazzlazzlazz2• 3 years ago

Then you will likely end up with your eyes being scanned by a state and profit-seeking corporations — along with your private data. We need methods to identify who is a real person in the internet of the future, and it should be privacy-preserving and independent of the state.

rchaud3• 3 years ago

You're not, which is why they've had to set up shop in the poorest countries in the world to recruit willing guinea pigs.

colesantiago2• 3 years ago

Please stop trying to justify a dystopian ponzi scheme.

bb884• 3 years ago

I'm not going to tear it apart. They have done a good job doing it themselves:

"Worldcoin is not a dystopian nightmare."

Only in SV would someone pay $115M for new tech only to have to defend it with statements like this.

rchaud3• 3 years ago

Next week on the A16z blog: "Adam Neumann is not a fraud"

wmf2• 3 years ago

methods to generate a totally privacy-preserving form of internet native identification and Sybil resistance

I thought Stefan Brands solved this over 20 years ago without scanning people's eyes.

convolvatron• 3 years ago

Stefan Brands, Frédéric Légaré: Digital Identity Management based on Digital Credentials. GI Jahrestagung 2002: 120-126

is that a good place to start?

antonyt• 3 years ago

The headline doesn't seem uncharitable to me - it's literally true and phrased neutrally. What would an acceptable headline look like to you, short of regurgitating the company's own press release wording?

siliconc0w• 3 years ago

It's kinda brilliant to both build the problem and the solution

mise_en_place3• 3 years ago

Crypto will always be a solution in search of a problem.

bb884• 3 years ago

Crypto will always be a problem that can only be fixed with more crypto.

siftrics2• 3 years ago

In the past 24 hours, close to 1 trillion dollars worth of payments have been settled on blockchains.

They eschew the need for intermediaries, like the numerous banks that recently imploded and locked depositors' funds away for who knows how long.

They eschew credit risk. Creditors cannot take your funds on an L1, even if they maliciously try.

colesantiago2• 3 years ago

Sam’s strategy here is to create the sickness (ai) and sell the cure (worldcoin).

This is a complete grifting double hedging scam.

version_five2• 3 years ago

I can imagine this being true, but I think supervillain schemes like this don't actually work in real life. Both will just up becoming irrelevant, and the public internet will get a little shittier

carpet_wheel• 3 years ago

Remember when these guys were the young upstarts, disrupting big business and scoring points for the little guy?

How bravely they have transitioned into collecting our eyeball scans and courageously hoarding billions of dollars while the planet withers away. Technology has changed the world.

notfried• 3 years ago

What I find even more dystopian is that there's already a black market for those digital eyeball credentials:

Meanwhile, a black market emerged on Chinese social media and ecommerce sites. Sellers were offering KYC verifications for the World App, which offers wallet and ID services. The credentials often come from developing countries like Cambodia and Kenya, according to social media posts. [1]

[1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...

bb884• 3 years ago

Why, that's not a dystopian hellscape at all! /s

peyton• 3 years ago

I actually think it’s better than the current situation where the state can freeze your ability to transact at any time.

cpeterso• 3 years ago

Just a reminder that biometric data (like iris or fingerprint scans) are "usernames", not passwords. If a site's password database is leaked, you can change your password. If a site's iris scan database is leaked, you're out of luck.

jon_richards• 3 years ago

I think eventually we’ll have to move to a model where the government issues you private keys via a notary-like biometric verification process. Even if someone steals your biometrics, they can’t fake them to an in-person notary. Rotate your keys by visiting another notary.

ilrwbwrkhv• 3 years ago

I'm sure a16z invested in them. I don't even need to check.

boeingUH60• 3 years ago

I hope this dystopian surveillance project cum get-rich-quick crypto scheme fails woefully. Tools for Humanity my a*…Wolf in sheep’s clothing.

simonw2• 3 years ago

What is there to discourage desperate or ill-informed (or both) people from selling their World ID credentials to bad actors?

Alex3917• 3 years ago

There are only 8 billion people on earth, so even if every single account were fake that's still a huge improvement over the status quo where someone can spin up 8 billion fake accounts in an hour.

ok_dad• 3 years ago

Where in hell can you create 8 billion accounts on any service in an hour!?

simonw2• 3 years ago

Got an answer to this question here: https://twitter.com/sproule_/status/1661836717970563088

One reason is that they can’t credible commit to the fact that they won’t also sell it to someone else (can’t prove that you deleted ur local key) or nullify the world ID by re-scanning.

mise_en_place3• 3 years ago

Looks like he’s dumping his bags on some gullible investors. Even Sam Altman has a shitcoin

christkv• 3 years ago

Sam Altman more and more seems like a potential Bond villain.

theduder99• 3 years ago

technologies setting the stage for the mark of the beast

Yizahi2• 3 years ago

Well, about half of the Bond villains were insane libertarians so this check out :)

cs702• 3 years ago

The OP quotes one of the investors:

"Worldcoin has a unique opportunity to establish and scale a new privacy-preserving primitive for the Internet...", etc.

I'm not going to quote the rest because everyone here is tired of corporate-speak.

Translation from corporate-speak:

"We're high as a kite on the vision of managing identification credentials for everyone everywhere."

---

PS. Let me add: I believe Sam and his team genuinely have good intentions. But good intentions do not guarantee a good outcome.

quantified4• 3 years ago

This future was foretold in 1993: [https://youtu.be/XoGkp7PPEfI]

rchaud3• 3 years ago

I have to imagine that movie night at Stanford CS consists of Demolition Man, Judge Dredd and Robocop, followed by a hackathon where they try to build imitations of what they saw.

quantified4• 3 years ago

There's a good lecture on AI ethics.

It's good to have screenwriters on staff to flesh out consequences of your decisions. Plus maybe a Wall Street trader or two to figure out all the ways to game the system.

nrtlyc• 3 years ago

I guess if you don't have any real ideas, you scan other people's retinas ("World"-Coin), appropriate other people's creations ("Open"-AI), insert yourself in the process and sell everything back to them.

In the end, you will have created nothing of value. A single Renoir painting is worth more than all this nonsense.

I wonder how the world worked in the 1990s without such luminaries. The answer is: better!

outside1234• 3 years ago

Create a problem with one company you found, then create a solution with another company you found.

What a nightmare this Sam Altman dude is

Barrin92• 3 years ago

What I don't understand about this at all, and it's alluded to in the article mentioning black market orbs, how can some decentralized system with Iris scans prevent fraud?

Can't someone just get their hands on one of these orbs and start uploading fake unique ids to their network? Surely it can't be impossible to generate a fake iris scan.

The only way to make sure nobody is abusing this would be to have trusted employees verify you're a real person, in which case why don't just start a non-profit in Switzerland or wherever that just runs a database of scans, what do you need this coin for?

Yizahi2• 3 years ago

This is one of the most blatant MLM token projects. Inviting new marks and getting benefits from the number of people you've brought into the scam, conferences, targeting of the vulnerable populations, all the hallmarks of a typical pyramid scheme.

quantified4• 3 years ago

As of 2021, there were going to be only 10 billion coins, 1 for each human and 2 billion for the founders and investors. Nothing shady or profiteering there. [https://www.coindesk.com/business/2021/10/21/worldcoin-now-v...].

We should read how they plan to increase the supply only for births and retire coins for deaths. And if you don't have a clear cornea, no goodies for you.

Meanwhile, from the article:

Blania told CoinDesk that Worldcoin has partnered with a “very big international manufacturer” with a plant in Germany, which will pump out about 50,000 Orbs per year. Though Blania declined to name the company or say where the company was from, when CoinDesk asked if the manufacturer was Chinese, Blania responded: “Definitely not, for many reasons, and one of them is actually security. The Orb itself has private keys and signs every message it sends so we know it’s actually a real Orb. And that means we need to lock this whole supply chain totally up so we know it’s not compromised,” Blania said.

And how do you know that I didn't claim this is a real Orb, and just steal your retina print?

OpenAI CEO raises $115M for crypto company that scans people’s eyeballs

Related Stories