OpenAI's Sam Altman rattles tin for crypto startup that will support bot-replaced workers Say what you want about Sam Altman, but at least he's been thinking about the consequences of his actions, even if his solution is hella creepy. According to the Financial Times, the OpenAI CEO's crypto side hustle, Worldcoin, is about to secure another $100 million in funding following a private token sale last year raising …
Roughly 96.2% of a typical filthy meatbag's body weight is oxygen (65%), carbon (18.5), hydrogen (9.5) and nitrogen (3.2). The next 3.4% consists of calcium (1.5), phosphorus (1.0), potassium (0.4), sodium (0.2), chlorine (0.2) and magnesium (0.1). The final 0.4% consists of trace elements ("contaminants", if you will), all under 0.04% of total body weight.
As a mine for raw materials, a human is pretty low-grade ore.
Yeah. Biomass is just an inefficient process for harvesting solar1 energy. It has certain advantages, such as being largely self-maintaining (statistically over a large installation), but even so, humans are a poor choice for solar-to-biomass conversion.
Any decent ASI would get rid of humans, or maybe keep a small population around for whatever the ASI equivalent of entertainment turns out to be, or in case we'd be useful later. (Keeping a small human population alive is a small investment for a decent ASI, so it doesn't need a high expected return to justify it.)
1With the rare exception, such as organisms that get most of their energy from non-solar heat sources like deep-ocean thermal vents.
Their privacy standards seem fairly watertight.
The solution to the challenge of proving unique personhood led us to another critically important question: how can we use biometric technology in a way that resolutely protects privacy?
Our answer to this question is complex in its execution but simple to understand in principle: at Worldcoin, people fully control their own data, and privacy is paramount. This means that:
Images collected by the Orb are promptly deleted unless explicitly requested by the person signing up
By default, the only personal data that leaves the Orb is a message containing a numerical representation of the most important features of the image, the iris code, to validate uniqueness
World ID is designed to be completely disconnected from a person’s biometric data, including their iris code
World ID uses zero knowledge proofs (ZKP) that allow people to share specific information, such as proof of unique personhood, without disclosing any additional personal data
World ID currently uses an open source protocol known as Semaphore to ensure that verifications are pseudonymous and cannot be tracked to a person’s identity
https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/solving-for-privacy-worldcoin-approach-keeping-information-safe
CBDCs, in contrast, would enable governments, known for excessive personal information collection, to intrude on your financial matters to the extent of dictating your spending options.
This scheme presumes (1) iris patterns are unique; (2) the scanners are good enough to pick up all the differences between irises; and (3) the hashing method they're using doesn't suffer collisions, and can't be faked. We don't know that the last two of these are true, and might be wrong believing the first one is true. This system appears too-easily compromised.
If I was running EvilOrbOperators, Inc., I'd put up an inconspicuous sign on the outside of the company's office buildings saying that by entering the building, a person agrees to have data about them collected and "utilized". Then, I'd build a framework to hold each Orb, and a hidden hi-res video camera, which would capture the person's face as they approached the Orb.
Having tied a face to a person's iris code, I would then sell that to the multiple parties who'd want that data.
And 4) every human has at least one iris. Sure, most people do, but supposedly this is a universal solution.
Maybe they've made some provision for people who don't; I can't be bothered to read their materials. But I grow tired of marketing fluff from techno-utopians that ignores glaring biases.
I don't. I don't trust CBDCs either, but this is no better.
For example, let's talk about that reassurance about the privacy of biometric information. Hashing a biometric indicator is hard, because you have to encode a lot of data, have a very strong hashing algorithm, and most crucially recognize exactly the same features next time because your hashes will have to match exactly. In most cases, you can't do it; a speck of dust is enough to add inaccuracy to the process, which is why most fingerprint systems I have seen the workings of have a special memory region in the chip for storing non-hashed fingerprint data. If they're hashing, it's likely not to work, which probably doesn't matter, because it doesn't sound like they are:
"By default, the only personal data that leaves the Orb is a message containing a numerical representation of the most important features of the image, the iris code, to validate uniqueness"
It doesn't sound like a hash, does it. It represents the iris numerically sounds much more like the representation from the reader. It's numeric because the reader is digital. In short, this phrase sounds like a way of hiding the real statement that "The only data that leaves the iris reader is the scan of the iris", which sounds much less reassuring.
Then we move along to this gem: "World ID is designed to be completely disconnected from a person’s biometric data, including their iris code". No it's not. If it was, they wouldn't need to collect the iris code. This makes it sound like they're collecting iris scans to verify that you don't already have an account, and if you pass that, you get to open an account, presumably with a private key. What would the point of that be? Either the iris is useful in validating access to the account or recovering access if the keys are lost, in which case their statement is a lie, or the iris scan is unrelated to every function of the currency and cannot be used by the user, in which case there's no point in collecting it.
Then they talk about ZKP, which are cool and very complicated, but from the problems I've raised so far, I don't know if they actually use it or if this is another lie. After that, they claim that pseudonymous transactions mean that they "cannot be tracked to a person’s identity". Rubbish, as Bitcoin's pseudonymous transactions proved a decade ago.
I don't know what their goal is here, but most of their claims here seem deluded or actively dishonest.
All that said, I'm generally not too worried about claims of using Zero-Knowledge Proofs. We have successful ZKP-based protocols in real-world use, such as SRP and OPAQUE (and arguably PAKEs in general). Yes, they need to be implemented correctly, by qualified cryptographic engineers; but they're not essentially harder than other cryptographic protocols.
For me, the red flags are:
1) distributed, because distributed currency systems are really vulnerable to partitioning and majority attacks, yet often rely on "distributed" as a magical handwaving source of security
2) cryptocurrency, because essentially all cryptocurrency and DeFi schemes to date have been Really Bad in both design and execution (and, yes, I've read a bunch of the research, this isn't just a knee-jerk rejection of the idea)
3) biometrics, for the reasons you state, and others
4) universal, because with ~10B humans, it is very, very difficult to create any sort of one-size-fits-all solution to any problem
Yes, this does have a creepy element. However, I haven't even gotten there because my scam alarm started going off. A new cryptocurrency, run by a wealthy guy, with a bunch of talk about high noble goals. Where have I heard this before? He doesn't explain where the value in this cryptocurrency is supposed to come from, either, as if just adding yourself to this network means you'll suddenly start getting income from... somewhere. I can do that too: anyone who wants a guaranteed income of ten Abcdcoin per month, just sign up below. Of course, I'll set up Abcdcoin such that there is no limit to how much exists and no obstacle to creating it, so I'm just making new ones every month. I'm looking forward to anyone deciding that I can buy stuff with that coin.
Some people don't have irises because they haven't got eyes, some people don't have fingerprints because they haven't got fingers or hands. Some people have irises but can't have them scanned by current technology because of nystagmus, some people have fingerprints but their trade (e.g. bricklaying) wears them away so much it's difficult to get a print that shows any ridges.
Tech bros rarely have any experience of how truly varied the world outside tech offices is.
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