Prathamesh Basagare, Pune
On Monday, 24 July 2023, Sam Altman, the chief executive officer of OpenAI, introduced Worldcoin. The main feature of the initiative is its World ID, an account that can only be created by actual people. A consumer registers to perform an in-person iris scan using the Worldcoin “orb,” a silver ball about the size of a bowling ball, in order to obtain a World ID. A World ID is generated once the orb’s iris scan confirms the user is a real human.
During the Worldcoin beta test, more than 2 million users registered. Worldcoin announced on Monday that it would scale its eyeball-scanning activities across 20 nations. The project said that the cryptocurrency token has also been distributed to qualified beta testers and is now marketable. The project’s white paper states that the initial supply of the coin has been limited to 10 billion tokens.
Worldcoin co-founder Alex Blania said the project aims to provide a “privacy-first, decentralized and maximally inclusive” way of addressing the need to prove a person is real, which is “no longer a topic of serious debate” in the era of artificial intelligence.
Altman spoke to Reuters. Worldcoin can also assist in addressing how generative AI will alter the economy. “People will be supercharged by AI, which will have massive economic implications,” he stated. One illustration that Altman favors is universal basic income, or UBI, a social benefits program that is typically operated by governments and provides payments to every person. Altman thinks that UBI can aid in the fight against income inequality since AI “will do more and more of the work that people now do.” World IDs could be used to reduce fraud when implementing UBI because only actual people are permitted to have them.