Friday, July 28, 2023

"Are you going to let Sam Altman’s crypto project scan your eyeballs or not?"

Well, when you put it like that...

From TechCrunch, July 27:

Worldcoin's Orb tour has spread across North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia

Earlier this week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s audacious eyeball-scanning crypto startup Tools for Humanity started the global rollout of its Worldcoin product. The company wants to help build a reliable solution for “distinguishing humans from AI online,” enable “global democratic processes” and “drastically increase economic opportunity” the company said in a release.

The startup, which raised about $250 million altogether from backers like Andreessen Horowitz, Khosla Ventures and Reid Hoffman, said it’s rolling out its identity technology as well as its token internationally.

The project gives eligible participants 25 Worldcoin (WLD) tokens, currently worth about $55, for onboarding. During its trial phase, more than 2 million people signed up and scanned their eyes for the startup’s biometric database.

With that said, not everyone is excited about this endeavor and find the 25 tokens a nominal tradeoff for some of their biological data. Some people are also arguing that Worldcoin is exploitative for initially recruiting participants through poorer countries.

In an interview with MIT Technology Review, Worldcoin CEO Alex Blania acknowledged there was some “friction,” with the startup, but attributed it to the fact that the company was still in its early phases....

....MUCH MORE

The Technology Review link is the "through poorer countries" hyperlink:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/06/1048981/worldcoin-cryptocurrency-biometrics-web3/  

Which includes:

Worldcoin's full 25-page response to MIT Technology Review questions, provided on Mar 31, 2022. As noted in email, "responses in this pdf document are on the record and can be attributed to a Worldcoin spokesperson."