Angus Berwick
Appearances
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
Yeah, unfortunately, I have not seen one physically, and I have not yet scanned my iris. So currently, there is no way to be assured that I am the real Angus Barak.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
I think he saw that we were going to reach a point in the future where AI and technology would be so advanced that we wouldn't really be able to distinguish it from humans, you know, and particularly kind of in an online setting. So, you know, that could apply to bots on social media or deepfake people on video calls, etc.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
I think what's most surprised me is how quickly this kind of Terminator-esque world is sort of arriving. Well, you know, we don't have the Terminator walking around, fortunately. But yeah, the internet is a kind of drastically different place to how it was a couple of years ago.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
And I think this issue of kind of distinguishing man from machine is just becoming kind of very pressing across so many different parts of our society and economy.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
I think the point was made recently that for gamers, it used to be really easy to spot a bot because they would probably be like jerky and probably just weren't playing as well as a human. But now their abilities have kind of far outstripped even the nerdiest of human players.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
I think the sophistication of deep fakes now has reached a point that they can bypass like a bank or kind of financial firms, like customer checks, which typically rely on comparing your passport photo with like a scan of your face.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
Obviously, the irony was that he was probably the foremost figure driving us toward this future as well. You know, I think people have said that he has the virus on one hand and the antidote on the other.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
So there's an ultra high definition camera kind of loaded inside one of this orb, a shiny object about the size of a kind of basketball. Then you would stare into the orb's camera. It would capture this image of your iris. And then what the orb then does is that it converts that image into an immutable code. And that code is then kind of unique to you as an individual.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
So I think what they say is that the problem with, you know, for instance, like a passport or your kind of social security number is that that's kind of bound to the kind of confines of your nation. And I think that, you know, they want a global solution that can be recreated anywhere around the world.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
So you would be tagged, for instance, on Reddit or on a dating site or on a shopping site or a social media site, and you would then be tagged as a verified... Verified human. A verified human, exactly. And if I'm speaking with you and your world ID, I can be confident that you're not a bot who is out to trick me.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
For a lot of people, staring into this orb and allowing it to scan my eye isn't the most enticing prospect.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
When the project was launching, one WLD token was worth around $10. And I think so that people were receiving potentially up to about $100 just to participate in this.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
I think there was an infamous case in which thousands of people swarmed this WorldCoin site at this convention center in Nairobi. These huge queues of people spilling out onto the roads. And I think there was a huge degree of intrigue.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
There was also quite a lot of excitement about it, in part because people were able to receive these payouts of the cryptocurrency, which they could then swap for actual cash.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
They were kind of caught off guard and were learning that there were troops of orb operators heading through their communities with the orbs in tow.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
The main concerns has been that, you know, effectively you could potentially have a private company collecting very kind of sensitive biometric data of people all around the world. And if a database like that could ever be compromised, that would expose a lot of very sensitive data. biometric data.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
And I think the problem with biometric data, unlike, you know, for instance, like a passport is, you know, once an image of my iris, once that that's been kind of released publicly, I can't like get another one. You can't change your iris. So you're kind of now perpetually vulnerable to identity theft.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
What's changed in the United States is the return of Donald Trump and his full-throated embrace of crypto. So I think they now feel that they're not exposed to the legal dangers that they could have faced under the Biden administration. And they can now start scanning irises and issuing WLD cryptocurrency, confident that they won't be obstructed. I think that they plan to expand in the U.S.
The Journal.
Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
very aggressively. And, you know, they plan to deploy several thousand orbs all around the country. But I think ultimately, I guess it will depend on the public's appetite to participate in this project.