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People keep forgetting we're talking about Sam Altman, someone who believed that scanning the world's population retinas in exchange for some crappy digital coi

People keep forgetting we're talking about Sam Altman, someone who believed that scanning the world's population retinas in exchange for some crappy digital coin was a great idea and not a creepy spinoff of a shoddy sci-fi novel.

Loughla 4y ago
Oh wow. I forgot that was even a thing. Is that project dead? I assume it is, but would love to be surprised that it still exists, just for the novelty of the entire thing.
- zer0tonin 4y ago
  It's still around afaik
- oneng 4y ago
  It's not merely still around, they're still actively hiring for it on LinkedIn.
- shrimpx 4y ago
  Here it is: https://worldcoin.org/ https://worldcoin.org/
  - donnowhy 4y ago
    [flagged]
- mt360 4y ago
  They've been present with their strange shiny orb at my local shopping mall in Portugal for the last year or two, and are often at a busy train station nearby too.
pedalpete 4y ago
I believe you mean "believes", not "believed". I don't think he has changed his mind on that. I don't know Sama, but these actions don't give me a lot of faith. However, I am open to having my mind changed on that. It's too easy to target those in the ring.
IAmNotACellist 4y ago
[flagged]
porknubbins 4y ago
Another thing that worries me is seeing multiple openAI founders on twitter making grand predictions about the future of AI instead of staying humble and keeping their head down and letting the product speak for itself. That is not how serious engineers usually talk, sounds more like wannabe monopolists to me.
- boringg 4y ago
  Sounds like they're pumping their product.
norswap 4y ago
It's important to note that WorldCoin does not get to see the retinas, whose picture never leave the orb (and are deleted after the fact), but only a hash of them. The orb's hardware blueprints and the software is open source too. The system attempts to solve an important problem: figure out who's a human (not a robot) online. One could argue Sam is creating the problem as well as the solution, I suppose. Still, it's better than only having the problem. Right now the problem does not seem extremely pressing, but I believe it might become more so. Even if we don't see rampant abuse of AIs masquerading as humans, another ambition of WorldCoin is to perform wide-ranging experiments in UBI, and being able to distinguish "real" humans in that context is absolutely crucial. This goes doubly in the third world, where people often simply don't have IDs (and available forms of IDs can be easily manufactured through bribery). (That being said, I broadly agree with the criticism of OpenAI laid out in the above article. Still, we can have nuance.)

Loughla 4y ago

Oh wow. I forgot that was even a thing. Is that project dead? I assume it is, but would love to be surprised that it still exists, just for the novelty of the entire thing.

zer0tonin 4y ago
It's still around afaik
oneng 4y ago
It's not merely still around, they're still actively hiring for it on LinkedIn.
shrimpx 4y ago
Here it is: https://worldcoin.org/ https://worldcoin.org/
- donnowhy 4y ago
  [flagged]
mt360 4y ago
They've been present with their strange shiny orb at my local shopping mall in Portugal for the last year or two, and are often at a busy train station nearby too.

pedalpete 4y ago

I believe you mean "believes", not "believed". I don't think he has changed his mind on that. I don't know Sama, but these actions don't give me a lot of faith. However, I am open to having my mind changed on that. It's too easy to target those in the ring.

IAmNotACellist 4y ago

[flagged]

porknubbins 4y ago

Another thing that worries me is seeing multiple openAI founders on twitter making grand predictions about the future of AI instead of staying humble and keeping their head down and letting the product speak for itself. That is not how serious engineers usually talk, sounds more like wannabe monopolists to me.

boringg 4y ago
Sounds like they're pumping their product.

norswap 4y ago

It's important to note that WorldCoin does not get to see the retinas, whose picture never leave the orb (and are deleted after the fact), but only a hash of them. The orb's hardware blueprints and the software is open source too. The system attempts to solve an important problem: figure out who's a human (not a robot) online. One could argue Sam is creating the problem as well as the solution, I suppose. Still, it's better than only having the problem. Right now the problem does not seem extremely pressing, but I believe it might become more so. Even if we don't see rampant abuse of AIs masquerading as humans, another ambition of WorldCoin is to perform wide-ranging experiments in UBI, and being able to distinguish "real" humans in that context is absolutely crucial. This goes doubly in the third world, where people often simply don't have IDs (and available forms of IDs can be easily manufactured through bribery). (That being said, I broadly agree with the criticism of OpenAI laid out in the above article. Still, we can have nuance.)