Eyeball-scanning to tell AI from human
How can you tell humans from AI? Sam Altman’s “Worldcoin” aims at creating digital passports that verify you as a real human – by scanning your eyes. Users who were previously without an ID could do business online.
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00:00 Are you sure I'm human? You can't be, really.
00:03 In the age of lifelike AI chatbots and deceptive deepfakes,
00:07 how can we distinguish between real and fake?
00:10 Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT,
00:15 wants to offer a solution.
00:16 Scan people's eyeballs.
00:18 The biometric data of each iris is unique
00:22 and can be used to clearly distinguish between people.
00:25 And no, this is not a new Black Mirror episode.
00:28 It's Altman's latest venture, WorldCoin.
00:31 The project combines the crypto token WLD
00:34 and the digital passport WorldID,
00:36 which aims to verify you're a real human and not an AI bot.
00:40 Both are managed through the World app.
00:42 The project was publicly launched in July
00:45 in different cities around the world.
00:46 Since the testing phase began in May 2021,
00:50 WorldCoin signed up more than 2 million users
00:52 across 35 countries and one planet.
00:56 According to the company,
00:57 most people that have signed up
00:59 are from Europe, India and Southern Africa.
01:02 The World app aims to be easily accessible
01:04 using little mobile data and smartphone capacities.
01:09 Altman says he wants to enable people to ID themselves
01:12 for services who weren't able to so far.
01:15 The procedure of getting verified is free.
01:17 You even get some WLD tokens for it.
01:20 Sounds good?
01:21 Well, you pay with a scan of your eyeballs.
01:24 How WorldCoin wants to verify you're human.
01:28 To get your eyeballs scanned,
01:29 you need to go to a WorldCoin operator.
01:31 You can find them via the World app or on their website.
01:34 On site, the operator will scan your eye using the Orb,
01:39 an imaging device that scans your iris.
01:42 This takes about 10 seconds.
01:43 The AI system will analyze your iris to confirm you're human.
01:47 Then a unique iris code is created.
01:51 This is checked against WorldCoin's database
01:54 to ensure it's the first time you've signed up.
01:56 After that, you receive your World ID in your app.
02:00 According to WorldCoin,
02:01 images of your eye are stored locally on the Orb
02:04 and deleted after the created code
02:06 has been added to the database.
02:08 And the code cannot be converted back
02:11 into your biometrical data.
02:13 All right, now we've got our passport,
02:15 but what is it good for?
02:16 How to use World ID.
02:19 Services like World ID could be used
02:22 anytime you need to prove your identity.
02:25 Think of payment or crypto services, for example.
02:28 Verifying the person you're interacting with
02:30 is actually human reduces the risk of AI-driven fraud.
02:34 It could also be used in voting systems
02:37 to ensure one person gets one vote
02:39 or for verification on social media sites.
02:42 If only humans can sign up, bots will have it much harder.
02:47 Discord, for example, already integrated World ID
02:50 saying they want to prevent spam
02:52 and increased the quality of the community
02:54 by verifying humans.
02:57 The dark side of WorldCoin.
02:59 Privacy experts warn that sensitive biometrical data
03:03 might end up in the wrong hands,
03:05 even though WorldCoin says no such data is stored.
03:08 But fraud is still possible.
03:10 Reports claim China has a black market
03:12 for already verified World IDs.
03:15 That is because WorldCoin's verification service
03:17 is not available in China as of now.
03:20 The IDs are supposedly sold on social media
03:23 and e-commerce sites and often come from other countries
03:26 like Cambodia or Kenya.
03:27 WorldCoin said it only identified
03:29 a few hundred fraudulent World IDs.
03:32 The company is also criticized
03:34 for alleged exploitative practices.
03:36 To train the AI system to recognize irises
03:39 and create the code,
03:40 the company needed large amounts of training data.
03:43 They collected most of that in villages
03:45 in developing countries.
03:47 WorldCoin operators were showing up at markets,
03:50 urban centers or metro stops for one or two days
03:53 and collected biometrical data.
03:56 And according to the MIT Technology Review,
03:59 the company's representatives
04:00 used deceptive marketing practices,
04:03 collected more personal data than it acknowledged,
04:06 and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent.
04:10 In return, the operators supposedly offered everything
04:13 from free cash to airports.
04:15 Experts say that stronger data protection laws
04:18 in Europe and the US keep AI developers
04:21 from getting all the training data they need.
04:23 So they turned to the global South instead.
04:27 What do you think about these tactics
04:29 and would you get a World ID?
04:30 Let us know.