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Sam Altman wants to convince billions to scan eyes to prove they aren’t bots
- andrewfromx 4y agoimagine the scene when you go in for your scan and you hear some mumbling from the tech, strange beeping, and you realize your cover is blown. You are in fact NOT human. RUN!
- Eisenstein 4y agoDude, just pop a human eyeball in your eyeball socket and you are good to go.
- steveBK123 4y agoWill put a whole new meaning to being "retired"
- mikro2nd 4y ago"I don' know... I just do eyes!"
- weego 4y agoI watched a snippet of him on Les Fridmans podcast. Now, granted Fridman has kind of outed himself as a complete hack more recently. Watching those two wring their hands over whether GPT is 'conscious' cemented my opinion that this is all just choreographed pantomime and a white tech-upper class quasi cult. Anything inflating his ideas into personal space is just a land-grab now.
- gamjQZnHT53AMa 4y ago"granted Fridman has kind of outed himself as a complete hack more recently" What do you mean? I'm out of the loop, not arguing with you.
- thorncorona 4y ago- misrepresents his affiliation with mit - blocks anybody who looks into his past - styles himself as an expert version of jre while being a terrible interviewer - is often misinformed about the subjects of his podcasts.
- mtlynch 4y agoCan you substantiate any of these claims? The latter two are opinion. The first two are factual but hard for anyone else to validate. I tried looking into "misrepresents his affiliation with MIT" and I couldn't figure out what he's misrepresenting. He claims to be a researcher at MIT. The MIT Deep Learning page[0] is all videos from his YouTube channel, including Fridman lecturing at MIT.[1] What's the misrepresentation? [0] https://deeplearning.mit.edu/ https://deeplearning.mit.edu/ [1] https://youtu.be/O5xeyoRL95U https://youtu.be/O5xeyoRL95U
- thorncorona 4y agoI’m not going to rehash countless internet arguments but you may take this Reddit thread and look into it yourself for the first two: https://old.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/zaeztd/_/iymvnuf https://old.reddit.com/r/DecodingTheGurus/comments/zaeztd/_/... If you see his Youtube profile picture it’s pretty obvious he wants to present himself as a lecturer or professor staff, which he is not. For the latter 2 I’m sure the other comments on this thread are helpful.
- mtlynch 4y agoThanks for sharing the link! I personally didn't find the claims in that reddit thread persuasive, but I understand how others might interpret them differently.
- Eisenstein 4y ago> Worldcoin’s parent company, Tools for Humanity, insists that the process will someday be fully open-source and run by the nonprofit Worldcoin Foundation. Where have I heard that before... I think it was another Sam Altman venture. Deja vu here, someone help me out.
- Barrin92 4y agoThe idea of a global id system that pays everyone some basic income is actually pretty decent and admirable but this entire thing is wild. "This here is our orb which scans your eyeball for biometric data so our AI company can pay you in something called Worldcoin" isn't tech, that's a whole ass Deus Ex plotline. Only thing missing is Bob Page popping out of nowhere. You better hire the best PR team on available for that one.
- frankfrankfrank 4y agoMaybe all those suggesting and promoting these things should hand over all their assets for equal distribution. But as always, this tribe of people who think this way are always keen on redistributing other people’s things and wealth.
- tgv 4y ago> a global id system that pays everyone some basic income I didn't know Altman's pockets were so deep he could feed and house the whole planet. That's going to be a problem. Apart from all the other problems with UBI, of course.
- autophagian 4y agoMaybe when an LLM finally automates my career out of existence, I can make a comfortable living as a kind of ocular bandit, harvesting people's eyeballs for sweet, sweet, Worldcoin™
- itronitron 4y agoIt's probably easier to make fake eyeballs or write software to emulate them.
- autophagian 4y agoPerhaps. Less fun, though.
- meindnoch 4y ago"The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping."
- idorube 4y agoWhat do you mean I'm not helping!?
- DebtDeflation 4y agoIf you could collect biometric data from every person on the planet and then deploy a simple authentication tool that uses it, you can collect a slice of every financial and commercial transaction that takes place anywhere. Every bank, every credit card company, every payment processor, every retailer both online and brick and mortar, every B2C company in existence would have to pay you around the clock. Conversely, cross them in any way, and your ability to buy or sell anything would be eliminated instantly.
- exitb 4y ago> A.I.-powered system for evenly distributing money to the world’s population, a form of universal basic income. (...) When a person is scanned, verified, and onboarded to Worldcoin, they are given 25 proprietary crypto tokens, which are also called Worldcoins. The tokens may carry the promise of future riches, but they’re worthless unless the project launches at scale. Wait, what?
- Aeolun 4y agoThey’re giving you fake money in return for your identity. What’s not to like?
- jackstraw14 4y agoThis AI stuff and crypto are a natural match. Anyone paying attention to crypto in the last few years has seen the identity experiments happening, and we're in for a ride if OpenAI taps into this.
- rishav_sharan 4y agoCan we use AI to generate fake retina scans and then use that to earn fake money?
- thunderbong 4y agoIsn't that the actual definition of a pyramid scheme?
- sebzim4500 4y agoNo, because there is no payment from new signups to people who already have tokens. It is something much more bizarre than a pyramid scheme.
- andruby 4y agoNo. Pyramid scheme requires people to bring in new money to pay the earlier people. This is giving “monopoly” money in exchange for eye scans (under the pretense of preventing bots), and hoping for said monopoly money be become valuable
- wolfium3 4y agoTerrible idea. Any form of biometrics are effectively passwords that can not be changed/rotated. If the data is compromised/leaked even once, it's useless. Edit: That said, one of the other commented this: "Eyeballs are usernames not passwords". I think that's ok-ish...
- pgt 4y agoEyeballs are usernames not passwords.
- progbits 4y agoThat's better but still wrong. I have just two eyeballs, but many usernames. Some are tied to each other, some are not. Eyeballs are just eyeballs and just like any biometric horrible idea for anything beyond local-access verification.
- swader999 4y agoOk so I got my balls scanned and I'm ready to sell them out to the highest bidding AI that wants to post on my behalf. Where do I sign up? Is there an app, api or a crypto for that?
- Mindwipe 4y agoSeriously, this is the most obvious attack vector imaginable, and there is not really any mitigation for it.
- bertman 4y agoIt's starting to feel like AI people are becoming the new Crypto Bros.
- tgv 4y agoWhat's wrong with these people? Hubris? They all seem keen on joining the ranks of Elon Musk and Lord Buckethead (whose policy to fight traffic jams, obesity and bike theft was providing free bicycles for all).
- heavyset_go 4y agoYour pictures and personal communications aren't enough, they want your iris scans, too. They're just going to sell this data for identification purposes.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- _zllx 4y agoWe do need a base layer of human verification for several reasons that will make themselves clear in the coming years. Can we maybe try that with a system of IRL humans and inherently pro-privacy tech like ZK proofs, instead of a system of proprietary soul-sucking nightmare orbs? Be creative, think outside the orb. Also, such a system doesn't need any kind of currency attached to it.
- nkrisc 4y ago> One early adopter, a 30-year-old online entrepreneur living in Portugal, told me over Discord that he hopes his tokens will be worth millions, although he’s been disappointed that Worldcoin keeps delaying the release. Why would something that they’re giving away, to presumably everyone on Earth, become worth millions?
- elif 4y agoIf you divide the US M4 money supply in 2021 (20.6 quadrillion) by the US population (331 million) you arrive at roughly $60 million per person. If you assume the USD will have an 'emperor wears no clothes' moment at some point, that value would be shifted to another asset.
- ashwagary 4y ago>Why would something that they’re giving away, to presumably everyone on Earth, become worth millions? Seems like that's a key part of the scammy pitch. "Look at how well bitcoin did, now hand over your PII for this shitcoin".
- boeingUH60 4y agoBetween this and the Open AI hype, I can't shake the feeling that Sam Altman is an effective huckster.
- hanniabu 4y agoThese are the type of scams that give crypto a bad name and tarnish projects like ethereum. Silicon valley VC grifters just trying to steal everyone's data with the promise of having their basic needs met. Wtf is wrong with these people.
- ashwagary 4y agoThere is a growing class of tech orgs running operations that governments cant legally or openly run themselves. If I had to guess, that's partly "whats wrong with these people".
- StefanWestfal 4y agoI am not in the loop on the tech but how secure are eyeball scans? I remember seeing the CCC breaking "facial" recognition to unlock a phone by just taking a picture of the owner on a park bench.
- baxtr 4y agoNot so dumb for him personally I guess. He placed a large AI bet and in parallel a Crypto bet… nice strategy.
- I_am_tiberius 4y agoWhat shocked me was that 2 months ago during an interview he said that he does not understand why we would need decentralized services (web3, defi). Then 1 month later, when SVB collapsed, he literally started crying on Twitter. I would be interested what he says now. I think it's clear that how the blockchain community represents itself via social networks is not great, but I don't trust anyone who doesn't understand why it's absolutely necessary to have decentralized finance. Not sure if Sam doesn't understand it or has political/other motivations for his public opinion about this. Here's the timestamp of the interview I'm referring to. https://youtu.be/57OU18cogJI?t=1010 https://youtu.be/57OU18cogJI?t=1010
- mrtksn 4y agoIt's in the same vein of using blockchain to track real world objects or use CAPTCHA to fight bots. It all fail on the human-machine interface because the definitions on what is real, where something starts and ends falls apart on edge cases and computers are all about edge cases. Consider a fail-proof CAPTCHA, me personally or through hired humans solving it doesn't prove that the rest of the operations are not conducted by a bot. Consider genuine item tracking with blockchain, it still depends on me digitising the real life item and the blockchain can guarantee only whan happens after that. So this is a weak attempt to solve the human-machine interface problem. Put all the other creepy stuff aside, scanning a retina would not prove that I'm an individual who is entitled to the 25 tokens. The first thing people would do is to exploit as many people as possible to take their tokens. The whole exercise of machine scanning a real life object to verify authenticity is useless.
- Euphorbium 4y agoStraight from the minority report.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoSo Sam Altman's OpenAI tech is partly responsible for unleashing a deluge of bots and generated content onto the internet and then he tries to sell you proof that you exist? I think the plan sucks but it does try to solve a fundamental problem. The internet is rapidly becoming a boring dystopia sewer partly because the cost of unleashing bots and generated content continues to decrease. Proving that people on the internet are real and who they say they are is tough. Part of what makes this effortless IRL is the threat of jail (fake ID? you'd have to lie to the government) and that a human IRL doesn't scale (you can only be in one place and doing one thing at a time). You cannot have a town square where it is possible to be anonymous.
- salawat 4y ago>You cannot have a town square where it is possible to be anonymous. In the town square, technically everyone is anonymous until you ask them their name, and even then, no one has to give you the real one. The cops are the only real exception. The thing that truly bugs me about tech/the Internet is that at some point it was decided that everyone is entitled to intimate information on everyone else for even the most transient silly thing.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoGood point. I agree. Although you might not know everyone in the town square, you know for sure they are a real human, putting themselves out there, and interacting with you. That counts for something.
- _cs2017_ 4y agoHow is retina scan any safer than a password, an RSA key fob, etc? Someone can take a scan of my retina secretly (maybe not this year, but surely in the near future); someone can threaten me to take my retina scan; someone can steal a scan I uploaded somewhere; someone can steal from worldcoin the partial information about my retina that they store. Am I missing some fundamental reasons why retina scan is better than other authentication techniques?
- drtgh 4y agoFingerprints have been successfully extracted from photographs on a number of occasions (the fingerprints of Angela Merkel made the headlines). To do a secret retina scan with other kind of technology is a matter of time. Compared to a password or an RSA key, I would say that biometrics are even dangerous.
- drtgh 4y agoA biometric password cannot be replaced by the user in case of interception of communications, troyans, or theft of the database where it is stored; once obtained, there is no way back, any service that makes use of a biometric will be compromised forever. Eyes biometrics would force all users to wear glasses with some kind of polarization on a daily basis, and in turn endangers the physical integrity of the user in case of robbery with violence. Also the privacy of the users would be compromised, a biometric is unique ID (during the time you are not sick), that means traceability. All hardware is hackable. Nothing will prevent someone from analyzing the system and creating accounts for the distributed bots. > How do we prove each person is real? Worldcoin’s solution is cataloging every individual over 18 years old through a privacy-preserving protocol, rewarding each person with cryptocurrency, which in turn will become the new global monetary standard. Ignoring the contradictory paragraph about protecting privacy, it sounds like promoting a crypto using a captcha -that will harm the user on long term- as an advertising for trying to take control of fake money. Is this morally upright? > In two investigations, published on back-to-back days in April 2022 by BuzzFeed News and MIT Tech Review, journalists alleged that Worldcoin trials in developing countries were riddled with deceptive promises made both to orb operators and participants. Other allegations included privacy law violations and even corruption. I am not surprised.
- miki123211 4y agoI'm a blind person with missing eyes (one is medically classified as missing, the other as underdeveloped). This technology kinda terrifies me.
- dtagames 4y agoThe real stupidity of this, aside from the horrible privacy implications, is the belief that somehow interacting with this device is proving you're human, as the article describes it. Actually, the human operating the device has decided that you are a human. If that person is verifying your ID, they're probably doing so with regular old real-world documents. What the device is sending upline is nothing more than a number. That number can be used to identify you (with or without a password) and can and will also be used in all the other (bad) ways that identifying information is used. There is nothing special about capturing it with an orb or scanning your eyeballs. That's techno-mysticism, of which Sam is a big fan.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]