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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has reportedly raised nearly $100 million for his next big project, a cryptocurrency called Worldcoin that will verify users’ unique identities by scanning their eyes.
After revolutionizing artificial intelligence with ChatGPT, Altman has set his sights on creating an “inclusive” global cryptocurrency that will be available to anyone who verifies their “unique personhood” with the “Orb,” an imaging device that takes a picture of an iris pattern.
Founded by Altman and Alex Blania in 2019, Worldcoin is set to launch in several weeks once Altman has secured the necessary funding. Previous investors in the project include Khosla Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto fund, disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and internet entrepreneur Reid Hoffman, the Financial Times reported.
Worldcoin did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Sam Altman, CEO and co-founder of OpenAI, speaks during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, May 16, 2023. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
The company says its crypto token will be “globally and freely distributed” to users who sign up for a wallet — a sort of universal basic income with crypto. Worldcoin hopes to incentivize people to adopt its currency by giving away free coins, which will, in turn, make the coins more valuable and useful if they become widely adopted, Worldcoin claims.
But free distribution of Worldcoins would create an obvious problem. How would they be fairly distributed if users could sign up for more than one account?
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Worldcoin’s biometric iris scanner, the “Orb,” will be used to verify users’ unique ID and prevent one person from holding multiple World IDs. (Maciej Luczniewski/NurPhoto via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Worldcoin claims to be tackling this issue and other identity verification problems created by emerging artificial intelligence technologies head-on with a unique device called the Orb.
“The Orb checks that an individual is real and is unique or has not previously signed up for Worldcoin. It does this by capturing and processing images of an individual and their unique iris pattern,” Worldcoin explains on its website.
“Since no two people have the same iris pattern and these patterns are very hard to fake, the Orb can accurately tell people apart from one another without having to collect any other information about them — not even their name.”
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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during a keynote address announcing ChatGPT integration for Bing at Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., Feb. 7, 2023. (Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Users who submit to biometric iris scans are assigned a “World ID” that enables them to receive 25 free Worldcoin tokens at launch — provided they are located in a place where Worldcoin token is available.
Worldcoin says individuals who want to receive a world ID are not required to share their name, phone number, email address or home address with the company — only have their irises scanned. Images taken by the Orb are used to generate a unique iris code and then are “immediately deleted,” the company claims.
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As Worldcoin moves out of the beta phase, the company is planning to roll out its blockchain protocol and begin recording transactions in the next six weeks, the report said.
