Worldcoin CEO Interview: What is the reality of the bold project aiming for a UBI for 8 billion people? | CoinDesk JAPAN

Some Web3 projects are trying to make better cryptocurrencies. Some address the issue of self-sovereign identity (ID). Others try to discern the difference between AI-generated fakes and the truth. Some are developing systems to improve governance. Some seek to improve AI development through the principle of decentralization. Some seek to reduce global inequality.

Worldcoin is working on all of the above.

big plan

The goal is simple and modest. Ultimately, creating a system that freely distributes tokens to all 8 billion people living on the planet as Universal Basic Income (UBI). However, the rise of AI makes it difficult to tell who is human and who is a digital fake, so Worldcoin first needs to create a system where everyone in the world can prove that they are really human.

For that reason, Worldcoin invented a device “The Orb” that scans the eyeball. The ultimate goal is to have The Orb scan the eyeballs of every person on Earth. If all goes well, at some point everyone will have access to open-source, decentralized financial tools.

If Worldcoin was the brainchild of some random crypto enthusiast, it would be laughably dismissed as megalomania. But there is a real intellectual challenge to this project. The co-founder is Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, which works on ChatGPT, which can be said to be the most central person in AI development.

Altman believes that the world will change forever if AI evolves to artificial general intelligence (AGI) that truly surpasses human capabilities.

Such a world may be a terrifying dystopia that could wipe out humanity, like the AI ​​”Skynet” in the movie “Terminator”. But AGI has the potential to deliver incredible productivity gains and economic benefits to the world.

As software developer and investor Marc Andreessen recently argued in a highly bullish op-ed on AI, “productivity growth across the economy could accelerate dramatically, facilitating the creation of new industries, new jobs and higher wages, ushering in a new era of heightened material prosperity around the world.”

If AGI could do all the work, we humans might be able to write poetry, sing songs, or, more realistically, spend time debating on social media and enjoying our leisure time. If AGI does indeed benefit society in a meaningful way, how do we ensure that its benefits are distributed fairly among citizens?

That’s where Silicon Valley’s favorite UBI and then Worldcoin come in as an idea to deal with an automating world.

Worldcoin is not only the most ambitious startup in the crypto world, but one of the most daring projects in history. It’s like a fantasy story told in a college dorm. “It sounded really stupid,” admitted Alex Blania, then 25 and studying theoretical physics, when he first heard the idea in 2019.

Altman emailed Branier to find out if he would be interested in joining the project. “Honestly, I haven’t taken it seriously for a while,” Brania said. However, he traveled to San Francisco for an interview, where he co-founded and is CEO of Worldcoin.

In the first year of Worldcoin’s launch, Branier and team focused on research. and develop a prototype. In 2021, The Orb was announced and rolled out. The Worldcoin project currently has 1.8 million people signed up. The ultimate goal is 8 billion (CoinDesk’s David Z. Morris considers this goal genuinely alarming).

Related article: Serious questions about Worldcoin by the founder of Open AI[Column]

What if it does? What if we could succeed in this far-fetched plan and provide self-sovereign ID and universal basic income for everyone on the planet?

When I posed this question to Branier in a Zoom interview recently, I was nearly speechless as I thought the moment would be “one of the most profound technological shifts that has ever happened.”

*The interview below has been summarized and edited.

Background of participating in the project

──What was your reaction when Sam Altman approached you with the idea of ​​Worldcoin?

Alex Branier: I haven’t taken it seriously for a while, to be honest. that’s the honest answer. Max Novendstern (another co-founder) and Sam had a two- or three-page document outlining some ideas. It was still at that stage.

──What is the point of that document?

To explain the flow of thinking, first, AGI is realized. It was written that it would disrupt society in a meaningful way. Sam was convinced that a UBI would eventually need to be implemented and would be one of the most important things for society.

Second, Sam is very skeptical about a lot of what happened in the industry last year, but he’s actually a big believer in crypto as a whole. One of the things he’s seen is that people routinely underestimate the importance of network effects, and how intense and significant they can be once they do. Much of what we need (such as cryptocurrencies) already exists and just needs to be scaled for a much larger number of people to get adoption on track.

──It seems like a very simple story.

Pretty simple, right? And the final paragraph of the document was about what would happen if we could launch a token for everyone (Editor’s note: Worldcoin is not currently planned for the US due to regulatory concerns).

Just to live humanly, and to align the incentives to grow the network very quickly, the result is a self-made, truly open identity and financial network that is not government-sponsored.

It sounded utterly stupid. But at the time, I thought I could always go back to my hometown and find another job (even if it ended in failure), so I thought I should give it a try.

Worldcoin basics

──How would you describe Worldcoin’s goal?

Worldcoin’s goal is to issue a currency by giving ownership to everyone. The result is to give everyone a global identity and access to decentralized financial tools.

──How does that work?

When you sign up as a user, you currently download a non-custodial wallet app called World App. Download the app and stand in front of your device. The device issues a World ID that can be used for anonymous authentication on various services.

After that, you will (in the future) be able to receive real token ownership each week just by participating. In other words, it consists of three elements. World ID, World App, and Worldcoin.

──Why does proving identity play such a central role in everything?

The problem is very simple. The problem is that we need to ensure that everyone has a unique ID that is completely private. That’s the challenge. A government-issued ID is useless. It may work well in the US and Europe, but in most parts of the world there is no real digital ID that can be authenticated.

──surely. Let’s move on to “The Orb”. Users actually said they had to go to the device to scan their eyeballs, but why?

At first, I didn’t want to tackle identity resolution. The idea itself is too ambitious. But he realized that there was no way around this problem. There are three big concepts when thinking about methods of proof of identity. It has a trusted network and, of course, government KYC (verify your identity), as well as various biometrics.

We have developed a prototype that can cover these three. Developed in the first year.

──What made you decide to use biometrics in the end?

Many of the systems currently in operation will face considerable challenges in a (improved AI) world. Forgery on the Internet becomes extremely easy. CAPTCHAs, or more complex forms of CAPTCHAs, that ask you to complete a specific task will eventually stop working. Fundamentally, we need to build a bridge to the real world and measure what it means to be human. Hence The Orb.

──The Orb, especially in the world of crypto-twitter, has been, to put it mildly, “controversial”?

I think that’s one of the biggest points of contention about this project. There are people in the crypto industry who just don’t like this and are saying, “I can’t believe this. This is so bad. Why is it called The Orb?” But on the other hand, everyone’s talking about it, and it’s kind of sticking around, right?

──At the very least, it certainly provides some great content for the Twitter world. I appreciate that.

One of my favorite quotes Sam said about Worldcoin at our first meeting. Worldcoin’s biggest risk is that no one cares.

against concerns

──People care! And of course people are concerned about what “The Orb” means in terms of surveillance and privacy. How do you respond to such concerns?

The short answer to that is that something like World ID will eventually exist. So, like it or not, you’ll have to prove yourself on the internet. I think that will definitely happen as AI advances. Perhaps in the next few years.

At the moment, I think Worldcoin is the only way to reach a level of acceptance by powerful institutions, while at the same time being completely private and not relying on government infrastructure. Plus, it’s all open source. It’s all about what the crypto world should theoretically love.

── Why is facial recognition like the iPhone no good?

FaceID on the iPhone can only prove that you’re showing your face again. It is proof that the same person is using the mobile phone. This is fairly easy to prove. Because it’s very difficult for me to look exactly like you. It’s a one-to-one comparison.

However, in the case of Worldcoin, the problem is the opposite. When one user signs up for Worldcoin, that user needs to be matched against all the users who have already signed up.

So the question is not “Do I look exactly like you?” but “Am I new to the network?” From a computational point of view, solving the problem requires much more information about each user. Without information about each user, comparisons cannot be made after tens of millions of people have signed up. I hit a wall there.

Attempting to solve this “Proof of Personhood” problem of being a unique person in a billion people with something like a face camera or Face ID will fail once thousands of people sign up. But the iris is extremely unique. Counterfeiting is also extremely difficult. Very stable over time. It has many features that are perfect for solving this problem.

Only two things: being human and being unique

Here, Rebecca Hahn, chief communications officer at Tools for Humanity, Worldcoin’s parent company, joined the interview to explain what The Orb “isn’t” collecting.

Rebecca Hahn: The Orb captures an image of the iris and generates a code that is a unique identifier. This identifier identifies you as a human and unique person. It does not indicate whether you are Rebecca, Jeff, male, female, or any other characteristics. There are only two points: to be human and to be a unique person.

— Currently, 1.8 million people have signed up. Like you just said about what The Orb captures, does it know nothing about people who sign up, other than being unique and human? Do you have to know that 30% are European and 55% are male?

Brania: You can count things like how many signups Orb (in different regions) have handled. Metadata from the actual signup process. However, the most important thing is that the user appears in front of The Orb. And the first thing to do is verify that you are actually human.

It has many sensors. There is also a thermal camera. There is also a ToF camera (a camera that measures distance). They make sure you’re a real person, not a display. From there, imaging is performed and the iris code is calculated as described by Rebecca.

The Orb signs it and the uniqueness check is performed in the cloud. This is where the cool thing is, the uniqueness check is separate from the user’s proof of knowledge. Basically, users just prove that they are included in a set of other unique users without actually disclosing their information, keys, etc.

You will have an anonymous, unique identifier that can be used across different platforms. By the way, it is not a global identifier. It’s all up to you. Users can choose how much information they want to share with each platform.

Mr. Hahn: In other words, the future may be a world where the economic benefits generated by AI are shared. But as it stands, even though it may seem very basic, World ID can be integrated into Twitter to solve a lot of problems.

──You don’t use the term self-sovereign identity (SSID), but are you trying to solve that problem?

Mr. Brania: Yes.

future forecast

──Also, it’s simple! Finally, imagine a future where Worldcoin is a success. Suppose you succeed perfectly in whatever you are trying to develop. Suppose you have solved a difficult problem. World ID and Worldcoin are everywhere. A universal basic income is distributed to everyone on the planet. what would that world look like?

(silence)

(longer silence)

Branier: Honestly, isn’t it extremely difficult to make predictions that far ahead? As soon as we hit 3 billion signups, it will be one of the most profound technological shifts that has ever happened.

Because it will be a much deeper shift than social networks, Facebook, etc. It is a network that has an identity and an underlying currency. It’s a profound shift. So I think it’s pretty difficult to make predictions.

But let me tell you some things that are exciting to me and that I think will happen.

──please.

Mr. Brania: First, from crypto assets. I got involved with crypto assets early on. I read the Bitcoin whitepaper a few weeks after it was announced. It was very exciting. The idea is a decentralized financial network.

At that time, peer-to-peer currencies were the focus. We call it a store of value now, but back then it was different.

One of the really exciting things to happen with Worldcoin is (in the future) that we will see real peer-to-peer usage when we get there. It may not be Worldcoin.

The user actually has a public key, a private key, and an identity. And start using crypto assets in your daily life. Just as Tesla has accelerated its transition to electric vehicles, we believe Worldcoin will accelerate the transition to such products quite dramatically. That in itself is stimulating and exciting.

I think whatever happens around[AI development and]Worldcoin is going to be pretty cool. In other words, if all goes well, Worldcoin users will be able to influence the development of some of the largest AI systems deployed in the world.

Once you reach 8 billion users, you will be able to log in and actually receive UBI through your World ID.

So deep, what can I say… what do you think will happen?

—You’re the expert, I’m just following along, but I can’t wait to see what happens.

｜Translation and editing: Akiko Yamaguchi, Takayuki Masuda
｜Image: Worldcoin co-founders Alex Branier (left) and Sam Altman (Marc Olivier/Worldcoin)
｜ Original: An Orb, a Token and Money for Everyone: Worldcoin’s CEO on Crypto’s Most Daring Project