Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, launched on Monday.
The project's main offering is its World ID, which the company describes as a "digital passport" to prove its holder is a real human, not an AI bot. To obtain a worldwide ID, a customer signs up to perform an iris scan in person using the Worldcoin 'orb', a silver ball about the size of a bowling ball. Once the orb's iris scan verifies that the person is a real human, it creates a world ID.
The company behind Worldcoin is Tools for Humanity, based in San Francisco and Berlin.
The project has 2 million users since its beta period, and with Monday's launch, Worldcoin is expanding "orbeo" operations to 35 cities in 20 countries. As an incentive, those who sign up in certain countries will receive Worldcoin's WLD cryptocurrency token.
WLD price rose in early trading on Monday. On the world's largest exchange, Binance, it peaked at $5.29 and at 1000 GMT was at $2.49 from an initial price of $0.15, having seen a trading volume of $25.1 million, according to the Binance website.
Blockchains can store the world's IDs in a way that preserves privacy and cannot be controlled or shut down by a single entity, co-founder Alex Blania told Reuters.
The project says that global IDs will be needed in the age of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which produce remarkably human-like language. Global IDs could be used to differentiate between real people and online AI bots.
Altman told Reuters that Worldcoin can also help address how generative AI will reshape the economy.
โAI will empower people, which will have massive economic implications,โ he said.
An example Altman likes is universal basic income, or UBI, a social benefit program usually run by governments where every individual is entitled to receive payments. Because AI "will do more and more of the work that people now do," Altman believes UBI can help combat income inequality. Since only real people can have World IDs, it could be used to reduce fraud when implementing UBI.
Altman said he thought a world with UBI would be "very far in the future" and that he had no clear idea of โโwhich entity might dole out money, but that Worldcoin lays the groundwork for it to become a reality.
โWe think we have to start experimenting with things so we can figure out what to do,โ he said.
