Is the father of ChatGPT’s ambition to solve AI threats with cryptocurrency by airdropping to one billion people grand or is he just trying to make a quick buck?

Is ChatGPT's founder's ambition to solve AI threats with cryptocurrency grand or just a quick money-making scheme?

Author: Zelda

ChatGPT has sparked an AI frenzy, as well as concerns about the blurring of boundaries between humans and machines. The rise of large language models (LLMs) has enabled artificial intelligence to mimic human expression in remarkable ways, making it increasingly difficult for us to discern whether a piece of text or conversation was generated by a human or a machine. In this situation, it has become important to prove that you are human rather than a robot.

Recently, the United States held its first major hearing on artificial intelligence, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, called for regulation of AI, welcoming legislation in this field, and expressed concerns about the damage that artificial intelligence could do to the labor market.

Interestingly, Sam Altman is attempting to address the problems posed by artificial intelligence through cryptocurrency and blockchain. WorldCoin, a company he co-founded, launched its World App ecological wallet in May this year, attracting widespread attention. The company is committed to addressing a series of challenges posed by artificial intelligence, and by integrating biometric iris scanning and distributed ledger technology, creating a better, fairer, and more just world, becoming the infrastructure for implementing universal basic income and contributing to solving the problem of job loss caused by artificial intelligence.

It is clear that Altman has set a grand vision for WorldCoin, with ambitious plans to reach the milestone of 1 billion users by 2023, but the official website currently shows only 1.7 million users. So, will WorldCoin bring users a beautiful utopian world or just a short-lived money-grabbing project? This article will explore the importance of identity proof in the age of artificial intelligence, and examine the solutions offered by WorldCoin, as well as explain how interested users can participate in WorldCoin’s airdrop.

Why is it important to prove you are human in the AI era?

There is a famous saying in the Internet world, “You never know if the other side of the network is a person or a dog,” and now this problem will become even more serious. Imagine that we spend more than 10 hours a day online, but we don’t know if we’ve been talking to different forms of neural networks for five or six hours, which is very scary.

Since the invention of the Internet, digital identity has been a hanging issue. McKinsey Global Institute’s report “Digital Identity Verification: The Key to Inclusive Growth” shows that more than 4.4 billion people worldwide do not have a legal identity or cannot have a digital identity verified, which is also a major obstacle to people obtaining financial services.

And now, the performance of deep learning models is continuously improving, surpassing human levels at faster and faster rates in various benchmarks. Large language models (LLMs) have also made significant progress recently, with their performance reaching the top 20% of human ability in most traditional evaluations, and the progress of GPT-4 is particularly significant compared to the evolution of GPT-3.5.

We are moving towards a new era of artificial intelligence, and solving the problem of identity verification is more important than ever. On the one hand, we need to ensure that the benefits generated by future systems are fairly distributed, ensuring the economic benefits and rights of every individual in the Web3.0 and AI era. Sybil Attack can create multiple fake accounts to gain undue advantage or influence, so restricting the number of accounts each person can create is crucial for digital and decentralized governance, and also helps to fairly distribute scarce resources, such as universal basic income, social welfare, and subsidies. On the other hand, we need to clarify who and what information can be trusted on the network to prevent the spread of artificially generated content that may lead to large-scale deception or dissemination of false information.

Currently, there are Turing tests or face videos and other ways to verify humans, but Altman believes that this is far from enough to distinguish between AI and humans. With the rapid development of technology, artificial intelligence has already passed the Turing test, and the phenomenon of deepfake technology bringing about face replacement has also proved that using videos to verify identity is becoming more and more unreliable.

Worldcoin is not only a cryptocurrency, but also wants to become an “identity card” for the AI era

So, how to ensure that registered users are real humans and have only one account?

WorldCoin launched the open identity protocol World ID and developed the Orb device, which can scan a person’s iris to verify their uniqueness and humanity, and assign them a “World ID” that can be used as a global digital passport. WorldCoin’s research team believes that in the context of biometrics, the higher the entropy, the more unique and unpredictable the biometric features are, and the iris has higher entropy than fingerprint and face recognition. They are less likely to change due to external factors and less susceptible to demographic biases, making iris more suitable for identity verification than face and fingerprint.

Through the Proof of Personhood (PoP) credential, the World ID protocol enables anyone to prove their humanity online without relying on third-party institutions. This innovative identity verification method leverages zero-knowledge proofs to protect user privacy to the greatest extent possible, and achieves identity security through World IDs managed by users themselves.

WorldApp not only becomes the “ID card” of the AI era, but also makes it easier for the general public to enter the encryption field.

The rise of cryptocurrency has led to huge changes in the global economy. However, current cryptocurrency users account for only 3% of the world’s population. One of the main obstacles is the lack of accessibility, and the general public often finds it difficult to integrate into this field.

The founders of WorldCoin are keenly aware of this problem. In early 2020, Alex Blania teamed up with Sam Altman and Max Novendstern. “What if there was a way to distribute shares of digital tokens for free to everyone on earth?” The three founders believe that the more people who hold the currency, the easier it is to send and receive payments with it. They hope to expand the popularity of cryptocurrency by building user-friendly tools and systems, making it easy for everyone to access digital assets, regardless of their location, income level, or background, with just a few clicks to facilitate the easy purchase, sale, and management of digital assets.

WorldCoin is committed to building the world’s largest and fairest digital identity and digital currency system, and as a public utility, giving everyone ownership. Its design is decentralized, which means that its regulation and decision-making will ultimately be borne by its user community. It consists of three parts:

  • World ID – a digital identity that emphasizes privacy protection and proves the unique identity of individuals.
  • Worldcoin Token – the first token distributed globally for free to unique individuals, for practical and future governance.
  • World App – using Worldcoin tokens, digital assets, stablecoins, and traditional currencies to achieve global payment, purchase, and transfer functions.

Since its initial release, 1.5 million people have joined the World App pre-release version, with over 500,000 people using it each month. On average, the app processes about 60,000 transactions and 25,000 World ID checks per day. The WorldCoin team believes that if successful, World ID will become the largest real human network on the Internet, as a public product that can be used by everyone.

From the token distribution, the Worldcoin token is named $WLD and has a total supply of 10 billion.

  • 8 billion are provided to the community.
  • 1 billion is used for long-term funding of the Worldcoin protocol (including giving to developers).
  • 1 billion is provided to contributors and investors of the Worldcoin protocol and tools. (One hundred million dollars in tokens were given to the first round of financing institutions.)

Furthermore, the WorldCoin team has announced that 80% of the tokens are Grants and will not be sold to the public. The Worldcoin token is expected to be launched in the first half of this year.

So, how do you get tokens?

  • Download the World App
  • Find the nearest Worldcoin operator in the World App
  • Complete the Orb QR code scan and verification process with the help of the Worldcoin operator
  • Obtain a unique and fully functional World ID

The WorldCoin team specifically states that the World ID is intended to verify the uniqueness of users, not their personal identities. Since this involves biometric technology, privacy is kept to the highest standards. Images are processed locally on the Orb and then deleted. The output is simply an iris code, a method of representing iris texture with numbers. Users can choose to opt-in to backup their images.

Once verified, users can hold their World ID in the World App or in wallets developed by WorldCoin protocol partners in the future and use it to seamlessly log in to websites, mobile apps, and encrypted dapps. Users can also earn small amounts of free digital currency through the “Learn and Earn” feature in the World App.

Altman Created a Utopia in Web3

The capital strength behind WorldCoin should not be underestimated. Last year, Worldcoin’s total token supply valuation reached $3 billion through a $100 million token sale, with a16z and Khosla Ventures participating in the financing round. According to the Financial Times, Altman recently plans to raise another $100 million for Worldcoin.

The reason why investment institutions value it, of course, is due to the founder, but specifically, what is the value of this project? In fact, one of the reasons why the cryptocurrency industry has not become a global virtual economy is that the crypto world lacks a credit system and arbitration mechanism. Bad actors can use multiple identities to commit fraud, and this chaotic state hinders the development of cryptocurrencies. Therefore, to ensure that the cryptocurrency industry can develop into a global Web3 economy, it is necessary to ensure that everyone can obtain confirmation of a unique identity on the blockchain, which can reduce fraud and bad behavior, increase trust, and is also the reason why DID projects are often referred to as a high-quality track with broad market prospects. WorldCoin solves the problem of unique real identity authentication through iris recognition. By establishing a reliable digital identity authentication system, it can reduce bad behavior, increase trust, and make DeFi more inclusive and innovative.

Altman’s utopian vision is based on a single true identity authentication. Due to the generative AI model, many fields have shown a significant loss of jobs. However, Altman predicted that AI would create enough wealth to pay a certain amount of money to every adult. To achieve this vision, Worldcoin firmly believes in decentralization from the beginning to cope with future currency devaluation and makes universal basic income a core component of its vision to offset the loss of jobs caused by artificial intelligence. WorldCoin aims to create a utopia and hopes to become the infrastructure for implementing universal basic income, contributing to solving the problem of job loss caused by artificial intelligence.

In addition, WorldCoin also aims to achieve global governance and digital collective decision-making. Many Web3 projects adopt a token-based governance model, where each token has one vote. Although this model achieves decentralization and democratization to some extent, it may also exclude some individuals and favor those with greater economic power. To solve this problem, a reliable mechanism that can resist Sybil Attack is needed to simplify the implementation of autonomous governance models based on unique human identities.

In this regard, WorldCoin’s Proof of Personality (PoP) credential system plays a crucial role. By leveraging Proof of Personality (PoP), WorldCoin achieves the goal of protocol governance by people and ensures that everyone can benefit from it. This mechanism emphasizes the principle of “one person, one vote,” enabling everyone to participate equally in the decision-making process without interference from duplicate identities.

Conclusion

Realizing WorldCoin’s grand goals still faces a series of challenges. First is the feasibility and sustainability of universal basic income. Although the vision of providing universal basic income to everyone is attractive, how to raise and distribute funds is a complex issue, and WorldCoin needs to develop a sustainable economic model to ensure that the source and use of funds are properly managed. At the same time, user privacy and data security are also important considerations. As the foundation of digital identity verification, World ID needs to ensure the privacy and data security of users. They need to protect users’ personal information and comply with relevant data protection regulations. In addition, Worldcoin also needs to face challenges from traditional financial institutions and governments.

Despite facing various challenges, the utopian world built by WorldCoin is still very much worth looking forward to. R3PO believes that the development of Web3 needs to go beyond the surface prosperity of simple fundraising and ICOs. The real Web3 revolution requires more visionary, innovative, and long-term adherence to the beliefs of Web3. WorldCoin, through the possibility of providing more equal and inclusive economic opportunities for people around the world, is expected to one day emerge like Open AI and become a force to drive industry change, providing huge assistance for a fairer and better world.

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