13 ms·

Worldcoin isn’t as bad as it sounds: It’s worse

478 points by hammock 3y ago

scottmsul 3y ago
I'd be curious to see if someone could use generative AI to make fake irises and scam the handout mechanism
- 93po 3y ago
  They’re actively developing to prevent this, though already it would require a compromised orb and orb operator, which would get blocked from the chain and all irises scanned since compromise removed from the chain. The bigger hurdle is the scanning of people who are dead or unconscious or animals trying to pass as human
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
gumballindie 3y ago
I am seeing a pattern here and I am starting to believe that Sam Altman is an Accelerationist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism A lot of his actions, investments and marketing strategy seem to point in that direction.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Interesting. I wonder how he would characterize his belief system. I personally have a very dim view of him, mostly because of Worldcoin (which is how he came onto my radar). His work with OpenAI confirms my unease with his efforts and makes me wonder what his goals actually are.
  - idlewords 3y ago
    Altman is proof that there is no IQ cap on human stupidity.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Altman's belief system is "I deserve more money and power", that simple. There's no generous interpretation of building a 25% pre-mine shitcoin, and hawking it to third world countries through sketchy contractors who are explicitly incentivized to collect biometrics from anyone they can, where the claimed purpose of said shitcoin isn't even a little bit implemented, especially all of this in light of your friend and business partner runs fucking Palentir
    - rqtwteye 3y ago
      I think most billionaires have the belief system "I deserve more money and power and what's best for me is best for society".
- hiatus 3y ago
  Could you elaborate on which actions, investments, and marketing strategies led you to that belief?
- morkalork 3y ago
  I think he's just out of touch. Here's another example: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9y5n/the-people-building-ai-with-existential-risk-are-really-not-getting-oppenheimer https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9y5n/the-people-building-a...
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    There is a certain degree of that for sure. These people really see themselves as “destroyers of worlds” when in fact they are becoming a but amusing in how they try to inflate their importance on the scene. But the sense of urgency cause by the supposed incoming terror, destitution, and despair seem to indicate these people would almost enjoy seeing it happen. Notice how their marketing doesnt focus as much on the benefits as it does on the drawbacks. It’s as if they _want_ the negatives to come to fruition and some sort of radical change to happen as a result of it. Maybe i am reading too much into it and giving sam and the other folks at openai too much credit, but the idea that they might be accelerationists is so crazy that it might actually be fact. Why else would you go above and beyond to build products that you yourself claim can be extremely harmful, they require radical change, other than you wanting for that negative outcome to happen so that you can achieve said change? Didnt the person say or write somewhere that he wants to solve inequality? And since ai would drastically increase inequality by extracting work from the masses and selling it for the profits of the few at massive scale doesnt it is logical to believe that he’a aiming to prove a point. Speeding things up, cause social upheaval, that leads to social change. The definition of that ideology.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      It's something that I noticed a long time ago in various subcultures that focus on preparing for some variant of "end times". I think that if you've put a ton of time, money, and effort into preparing for a thing to happen, you begin to want that thing to happen (even if unconsciously). If it doesn't, then all that time, money, and effort was wasted.
      - mempko 3y ago
- nkozyra 3y ago
  It's curious to frame this as an intentional act rather than an inevitable, natural stage of capitalism.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    I get that, but it’s almost if someone’s trying to prove the point you just made.
  - amelius 3y ago
    This is like saying that anything that can be hacked, should be hacked (instead of fixed).
  - nemo44x 3y ago
    That's the main idea behind accelerationism from a Landian perspective. That capitalism is just getting started and that it's unstoppable and that it won't transition into socialisim like Marx predicted but rather will encompass more and more of everything and be the vehicle for the next evolution into a cybernetic species. It's the evolution of evolution and it's unstoppable. So get on with it and learn to love it. Quotes like "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism" and Mark Fisher's (CCNU and Nick Land, etc)ideas around capitalism realism sort of sum it up.
    - Nursie 3y ago
      I mean, it’s pretty easy to imagine capitalism precipitating the end of the world …
      - nemo44x 3y ago
        I don't see that per-se. I think it's more likely that capitalism continues to rapidly advance technology to the point where we truly do evolve evolution. So a certain part of the global population will have access to DNA synthesizers and other biotech and AI and can reproduce a master race of post-humans that will dominate and eventually annihilate Homosapiens. After a few generations of rapid improvement (a singularity where post-humans and AI merge into a single entity) they'll view the rest of the world as we view other primates today and won't have much use for them. If not through intentional genocide then just being unable to compete for ecosystem, etc. Homosapiens will fade away as Neanderthals did. Capitalism is a system (much more than just an economic system) that allows for selection like this. In a sense a type of market driven Darwinism which chooses how energy is spent developing the tools that allow humans to evolve rapidly into the next thing. That it's natural that Capitalism started with the industrial revolution which marks the beginning of humans evolving tech rapidly. It's almost as if it was inevitable once we reached that stage. To be against it is futile as it's as natural as gravity. And we just keep getting better at it.
- maxwell 3y ago
  He's just "hack[ing] something to [his] advantage." And pg was his enthusiastic Palpatine. Egging on and fawning over sama was already uncomfortable back in 2010. http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html
  - HellDunkel 3y ago
    Luckily, YC is experiencing a cultural shift. The likes of PG and Marc Andrewessen, Sam Altman and Peter Thiel were not frowned upon in 2010, not to mention Elon Musk or Zuckerberg.
    - ChatGTP 3y ago
      Can you elaborate a bit more?
      - HellDunkel 3y ago
        I need to correct myself. It should have said Hackernews instead of YC. And it is really the comments here that reflect a cultural shift which i think is interesting.
    - maxwell 3y ago
      First, many of them sung a different tune when they were challenging power before becoming established power. Second, they weren't subject to much public scrutiny as they weren't yet household names until maybe the mid '10s when tech companies took over the market.
    - wahnfrieden 3y ago
      Huh? The current YC leadership is also wacked-out authoritarian far right wing
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- floydianspiral 3y ago
  It's weird how much of that wiki article (and others I just looked up) trends towards right/alt-right extremism as I have never thought of accelerationism as something fascists would take to. My original understanding of it was that ai/tech will become so advanced that it will take over a lot of the production and labor we currently do to feed, build, and supply the world with resources and when that part is automated, humans would hopefully be freed up to do more with their life. This would have to involve restructuring money, society and how governments and resources are allocated. Ties to UBI and how much people get will have to be solved in a different way since we no longer need to do all the menial work. The time span between ai starting to be able to do all of this (maybe starting soon) and when we finally figure out we don't need to work for money is the terrible part where loss of jobs would eventually cause an upheaval and rethinking of how society needs to be structured and the acceleration that people talk about is trying to speed through this bad part as fast as possible to get to the other side as possible. I guess my idea of it is not at all what others seem to think though? I'm pretty pessimistic the "other side" will actually be a utopia but that would be up to the collective to figure out but it seems like a worthwhile concept on the surface.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Of course, one of the problems with the idea is that it endorses throwing innocent others under the economic bus. It's nice that they want to "speed through" that part -- but it still boils down to advocating harming people who aren't consenting in exchange for the possibility (not guarantee) of something better for later generations.
  - dundarious 3y ago
    It's not weird at all if you're familiar with the history of the term, and the currents in mass politics of the 20th century. Everything from the German SDP's (left wing) acceptance of Hitler's rise to power with their quasi-accelerationist "first Hitler, then us" strategy, to the (right wing) OSS/CIA/fascist Strategy of Tension in Italy, to (right wing) boogaloo boys trying to incite race war, to (right wing) evangelical millenarianism around sparking war in Jerusalem to prompt coming of the antichrist. It does have its beginnings as a concept in Marxist writings. In a way, Marx himself was the first accelerationist (but he seems to have mostly abandoned that thinking towards the end of his life).
- m-i-l 3y ago
  I hope that the tech billionaires are simply blundering towards the destruction of society, rather than intentionally trying to do so with something like Effective Accelerationism. That would certainly fit with Hanlon's Razor. I have a simple theory that tech billionaires are at least partly influenced by the sci-fi of their youth. While some of the older tech billionaires were brought up on utopian sci-fi like Star Trek, with wonderful ideas like the post-scarcity economy, some of the younger tech billionaires were brought up on the dystopian sci-fi of the 1980s. Unfortunately what seems to be happening is that they may have mistaken dystopia as a blueprint for what to build rather as a warning of what to avoid.
  - latexr 3y ago
    > Unfortunately what seems to be happening is that they may have mistaken dystopia as a blueprint for what to build rather as a warning of what to avoid. Also known as the Torment Nexus. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    I have felt this too. Young SV valley tech bros seem to be trying to build whatever they saw at the movies. This includes some movies with very bad outcomes unfortunately.
arcticbull 3y ago
Like any other non-coin crypto tech, Worldcoin doesn't do what it set out to do because it doesn't solve the oracle problem. If you trust their orb, it generates a wallet for you - but anyone, human or otherwise - can use that wallet. There's a black market in China for these identities already [1] and of course the response from Worldcoin was there's nothing they can do - because there's nothing they can do. So this is just any other coin with extra steps, and the extra layer of trusting Sam Altman with your eyeballs to generate secret keys? [1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-worldcoin-credentials-pops-up-in-china/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...
- meowface 3y ago
  I understand your point, but why the separation of coin vs. non-coin tech? Meaning that the only real guarantee of cryptocurrency is prevention of double-spend rather than a confirmed unique identity?
  - arcticbull 3y ago
    Blockchains can extend the guarantees of the blockchain only to concepts that can be completely represented on-chain, which basically meant just coins. They don't have to interface with the real world so aren't subject issues at the boundary. At least that's one way of looking at it. As soon as you start trying to represent things that actually exist in the real world authoritatively, it breaks down - because the authoritative representation is actually off chain, i.e reality. In this case your identity is the authoritative representation, not the key you present.
    - jsunderland323 3y ago
      This is really well said. I’ve been trying to articulate this point for a long time. I think the boundary is between things that are temporal or bounded by real time and space vs things that are time independent and state based. Oracles always suffer from this problem even if the authoritative representation is another digital thing. For example the whole NFT url swapping thing. Similarly this comes up in version control a lot when your code depends on things that are unversioned, the commit state may be idempotent but the application is not.
ilyt 3y ago
Well, there is no lack of supply of idiots to fall for it.
gonehome 3y ago
[flagged]
- sdwr 3y ago
  Thanks.
- meowface 3y ago
  I think it's a kind of uncharitable article (surely Sam and the rest of the people involved have spent a ton of time thinking about the problem and the existence of black markets and possibilities for abuse), but >I don’t know if it’s the best attempt but I understand what it is and what the goals are. a bad solution can potentially be worse than no solution in this case. A false belief in identity guarantees can facilitate fraud and other manipulation, while "you should never trust anyone or anything, including that there's a 1:1 relationship between public keys and individual humans" at least advises everyone of the risk.
  - gonehome 3y ago
    Agreed, I just have a hard time with articles I know to be uncharitable or written with an obvious bent against the subject. Maybe world coin has thought of these problems? Maybe not, but I wouldn’t trust the author to have done any due diligence. There’s an interesting article to be written here, but this isn’t it imo.
    - gonehome 3y ago
      Also seems unfair that my root level comment was flagged, dang?
- ohgodplsno 3y ago
  Absolute and utter bullshit, and you know it. Sam Altman is always in for a single person: himself. I have never seen less altruistic, less simple to understand than him [0]. Everything, the world ID, the money, the coins, is just a pretense for a single purpose: that he gets involved in everything whenever the idea of a global ID appears anywhere in the world. Or an ID at all. What's that Alabama, you want to create a state ID ? For the low low price of the GDP of a small african country, you can have access to our World ID database of all Alabama-scanned eyeballs. [0] Aside from Larry Elison, but there's still debate on whether he's actually human or not.
simonsarris 3y ago
I think you should instead just read what Worldcoin wrote. It's quite short, and I think easy to consider false. https://worldcoin.org/cofounder-letter https://worldcoin.org/cofounder-letter There are a few words about economic opportunity but little explanation, so you can discount that part. They don't seem to believe it beyond UBI distribution, which has the same problems as any distribution today[1] Their main sell: > scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy > Worldcoin consists of a privacy-preserving digital identity (World ID) > You can now download World App... After visiting an Orb ... you will receive a World ID. This lets you prove you are a real and unique person online while remaining completely private. This seems to be the sole feature but "distinguish" and "privacy" are fundamentally at odds. Always! If you can identify a person, in any way, they are no longer private. They may be private for a little while, but as soon as User12345 is outed to be Taylor Swift, there's no going back. There's no worldcoin re-roll. Twitter accounts are more anonymous than that - at least if your anon twitter account is unveiled, you can make a new one! In that way uniqueness is anti-privacy. It has to be. [1] For example worldcoin has a plan to confirm that people exist. It does not have a plan to confirm that people are dead. https://japantoday.com/category/crime/man-says-he-kept-parents'-bodies-in-house-for-10-years-so-he-could-collect-their-pensions https://japantoday.com/category/crime/man-says-he-kept-paren...
- arcticbull 3y ago
  > They don't seem to believe it beyond UBI distribution, which has the same problems as distribution today Especially since UBI distribution aren't built in any meaningful way on this blockchain. They have some vague notion of one day wanting to use it to provide UBI, but they don't have any idea of what that actually looks like, or when, etc. They are vaguely gesturing towards the concept of UBI.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    It’s the same as any shitcoin roadmap with vague exciting prospects that will be figured out later on but meanwhile promoted as coming soon
- 3y ago
5350-uiop-1130 3y ago
> "mostly harvested from poor people" use a crypto token to exploit poor people. a real web3 VC douchebag move there wasn't that VC who was recently murdered in SF also involved in this project (unrelated murder). in any case mr altman can kiss my hairy yellow a$$ before getting my retina data
yreg 3y ago
I don't think Worldcoin is the solution, but I'm interested in hearing what the rest of you think the solution to the bots-indistiguishable-to-humans problem could look like? Or should we just accept that the times of interacting over internet with strangers you can believe to be humans is over? The only idea I see is for some certificates handed out by government to citizens and I absolutely hate it even in a democracy.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I haven't heard of, and can't think of, a solution to this problem that doesn't introduce much larger problems. Big picture, I don't think the problem of distinguishing humans from bots online is a big enough deal that we should take hits in other areas to solve it. The least-harm solution, as far as I can see right now, is to just accept that the internet cannot be made trustworthy in this way. The only way to know for sure the nature of who you're dealing with will be to deal with them in person. Much like it has always been.
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    What if the person you are dealing with is on the other side of the world? I don't think that really works, you need some kind of trust system. I hope it doesn't turn out that worldcoin is the best solution.
    - nathan_gold 3y ago
      Identity online should be optional. If you read comments on a news story about an upcoming election in your country, you should see some that are verifiably a human citizen from your country, separate from everything else. Pay attention to everything else at your discretion. I think a web that is half identified and half anonymous would work well.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > What if the person you are dealing with is on the other side of the world? Then you can't be sure. > you need some kind of trust system. I agree. I just haven't heard of one that doesn't cause more problems than it solves. Just because we want it doesn't mean we can have it.
unboxingelf 3y ago
Worldcoin is simply another pre-mined, VC backed shitcoin - albeit worst because they’re building a biometrics database. - VCs dump money in (SBF, a16z, etc) - 25% of the coins are kept for the founders + investors How many times do people have to get burned on these scams? Obviously Sam has some street cred with the govt else they would have pulled him infront of congress like when zuck tried to launch Libre.
- jcpham2 3y ago
  This comment is accurate and should be at the top
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- lern_too_spel 3y ago
  > Obviously Sam has some street cred with the govt else they would have pulled him infront of congress like when zuck tried to launch Libre. He got around US regulations by not making it available in the US. No street cred required.
  - jondwillis 3y ago
    There are iris scanning stations across the US and there is no way to geographically limit who and what holds WLD. What does not available mean here? Not available on centralized US-based exchanges?
    - lern_too_spel 3y ago
      It means Tools for Humanity is neither based in the US nor offering the coin in the US. The US cannot control what that company does in other countries. The US can control what Meta does in the US.
- foobiekr 3y ago
  If they didn't seem so stupid, you'd think the biometrics collection thing was the point, but I actually think they're just so dumb it's not even that sophisticated a scam.
idlewords 3y ago
Nothing wrong with incentivizing AI to steal people's eyes.
- uLogMicheal 3y ago
  Literal eyeball bounties.
ineptech 3y ago
I don't get how anyone can call something with an eternally-fixed quantity a currency. What's the plan for when it starts appreciating and people stop spending it and start hoarding it?
- pessimizer 3y ago
  Sell.
- sparkie 3y ago
  Prices drop.
  - ineptech 3y ago
    Why? If any currency is appreciating, people are incentivized to hold it, which has the effect of decreasing supply, and decreasing supply makes the price of something go up, not down.
rollupid 3y ago
There are better ways to achieve the same goals as Worldcoin. https://rollup.id/blog/rollup-id-the-open-source-privacy-first-alternative-to-worldcoin https://rollup.id/blog/rollup-id-the-open-source-privacy-fir...
brucethemoose2 3y ago
A critical part of Worldcoin is its association with AI hype: https://news.google.com/search?q=Worldcoin%20ai&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen https://news.google.com/search?q=Worldcoin%20ai&hl=en-US&gl=... > Investors are recognizing the opportunities presented by AI-based projects that leverage blockchain technology. ...Of course, this is total nonsense. But perception is everything for crypto IPOs.
- wmf 3y ago
  It's worse than that: Sam Altman is selling a solution to a problem he created.
  - brucethemoose2 3y ago
    He didn't really create the problem, and Worldcoin is not a solution.
    - 93po 3y ago
      OpenAI is moving the problem much closer to today and Worldcoin absolutely helps solve problems of inauthentic online behavior
      - tamimio 3y ago
        [flagged]
JohnFen 3y ago
> But when it comes to sensitive information, promises aren’t enough. And the very people who insist that you trust them are the ones who should command the most suspicion. It's the age-old rule of thumb: never trust anyone who says "trust me".
lazzlazzlazz 3y ago
[flagged]
- kergonath 3y ago
  Any substantial comment or profound insight? Otherwise you’re ranting in the wind. We’ve seen these things regularly enough. If you think a good argument needs to be made, then make it. Just dropping 2 links without any form of context just makes you look like a shill or a crank; most people are simply going to ignore them. Particularly if one of them is a tweet, or whatever they are called today.
- hrdwdmrbl 3y ago
  Yeah, the article and this whole comments thread is very intellectually dishonest. Disclosure: I’m like, 70% optimistic about the project. I don’t believe that the team are lying. Anyway, as with many things, time will tell. I wouldn’t get worked up over it. If it fails it’s pretty inconsequential.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    >I don’t believe that the team are lying Why not? >If it fails it’s pretty inconsequential. Definitely, it only collected the biometrics of thousands of desperate people into the hands of private people who work with law enforcement agencies everywhere to provide surveillance as a service.
    - 93po 3y ago
      You’re misrepresenting what it’s collecting and you’re part of the problem in this discussion. Worldcoin isn’t storing anything that could be used by any other entity. It doesn’t store biometrics and there isn’t a way to use the store information to know what the iris looked like that generated it.
      - danbruc 3y ago
        How do you know? Because they said so?
outside1234 3y ago
Scam Altman strikes again
hdivider 3y ago
Imagine sama had put all this energy, capital, and relationship capital into fusion power, instead of WorldCoin. Beyond Helion. It would be easier to accept him as someone who is genuinely altruistic. Instead, he turns out to be just another self-serving 'tech' bro. I write 'tech' because clearly this guy does not actually care about pushing technology forwards for human good -- which is the cause, in my view, of all real technologists. It's about himself, just as it is with the great Technoking.
dmead 3y ago
sam altman is a snake. has an opportunity to testify in front of congress and capitalizes on the event by trying to pull the ladder up behind him. gross sam.
latchkey 3y ago
This is the Eye of Sauron. I'm very much into the crypto world and I'm so tired of all of these dumb scams. Even worse that it is backed by yet another scammer named 'Sam'. I really wish we could focus on things that actually provided value to people. What a waste of time/money/effort. I hope this one dies a quick death. So far, it looks like it will, which is great.
- zer8k 3y ago
  Honest question, is there any cryptocurrency that provides actual value to people? The blockchain can be trivially deanonymized from my understanding. It's difficult to get coins without at any point revealing your identity. So, if you're not in a circle of people who will physically trade coin for cash (or vis-versa) there seems to be no privacy argument. I just fail to see crypto as anything but a scam - period. It's like physical gold and silver but worse at everything they do. How can one even derive value from a coin like bitcoin where the swings are often worse than the bolivar.
  - latchkey 3y ago
    I made this comment the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36885902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36885902 If you want to go back a bit further in time, I'd like to point out someone else's comment that I thought was pretty spot on as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 Hopefully that opens some discussion/thought points that we can focus on. Update: thinking a bit further on your points. My personal concern isn't privacy, my concern is more with decentralization. I don't agree with other people telling me what I can and cannot do with my own funds. It is relatively simple things... If I travel to another country, being limited to carrying $10k cash on a plane, is absurd (why would I need to carry cash anyway?). If I'm in another country, getting access to my funds is often extremely difficult. These are the things that I'd like to see people work on.
    - rizky05 3y ago
      [dead]
bratgpttamer 3y ago
When this first launched, I thought it was some kind of performance art, or a clever attempt to establish a precedent against building such things. Then, I realized he was serious.
- 93po 3y ago
  Any actual criticisms?
  - bratgpttamer 3y ago
    [criticize(p) for p in worldcoin.properties]
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
rngname22 3y ago
Pre-mines are all just neofeudalism.
throwaway104782 3y ago
All cryptocurrency is terrible. Some are just more terrible than others.
alexpotato 3y ago
I think it's interesting to describe the process to establish your identity in the United States if you lost ALL of your identification documents (e.g. in a house fire). It essentially boils down to: - Get a bunch of people you know who can verify that you are indeed who you claim to be - Have them sign legally binding documents that attest that, yes, you are you - Start building your paper documents all over again We never really talk about any of this given that it's pretty rare for this to happen to someone but I think it's interesting to point out that it eventually boils down to your IRL social network.
- icecream_so_gud 3y ago
  I wish a similar system also existed for account recovery instead of being stonewalled by customer service I might be able to recover some years old accounts
notShabu 3y ago
No state can manage identities without the consent of the individual because individuals have to actively protect and manage their identities and not sell them. E.g. we protect our social security numbers against identity theft because the economic benefits of having one outweigh selling it. But when there isn't a benefit, then the identity can just be sold. Solving the identity problem and solving the "good governance" problem are likely the same problem.
raffraffraff 3y ago
I don't know what this is and I'm not even going to read the take-down article. If you slap "coin" onto the name of anything, I'll run a mile from it. I just dropped in to say that. bb.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- 93po 3y ago
  This is valid criticism and it’s unfortunate that they chose this name for sure. It results in knee jerk reactions from people that don’t understand it and make assumptions
- mint2 3y ago
  “Worldcoin” sounds ridiculously cringy and pompous like it came from an 80s young adult novel for boys. It’s kind like how the terrible grammar/spelling in email scams has the side effect of pre-selecting desperate or out of it enough people that ignore red flags.
cwkoss 3y ago
Any decentralized system that uses biometrics for authentication rather than just identification is doomed to fail spectacularly. Biometrics are like a username NOT like a password. When a piece of wolrdcoin is inevitably compromised, people have no means of rolling a new iris. The whole thing will come crashing down. There are so many stupid decisions this team is making. Like, users can opt into the orbs retaining their iris scan for network quality assurance purposes. Would any sane person ever opt into an ATM storing their PIN number for quality assurance? It is an implicit bounty for hacking the orb. And the fact that they seem to need further quality assurance points to the fact that they aren't confident people will have continuous access to their accounts. Best case, I'd imagine anyone who has a catastrophic eye injury would also permanently lose access to their accounts - but I suspect the reality is much worse.
- __alexs 3y ago
  As much as I think Worldcoin is dumb they do get this part right in that they only use the iris scan as a unique identifier to prevent multiple sign ups from the same physical bag of meat^H^H^H^H^H person.
  - tamimio 3y ago
    >unique identifier to prevent multiple sign up Yet there’s already a black market where you can buy multiple accounts with real iris.
    - __alexs 3y ago
      There is still a 1:1 relationship with accounts and people. They have just cut out some extra steps when the original account creator does whatever it is the 3rd party wants them to do manually. That some people might use their Worldcoin account to do things on behalf of someone else is a different problem from the one OP was referring to.
  - cwkoss 3y ago
    Huh, I don't understand the intended security benefit of the iris scans at all then. If the system has value inside of it, inevitably people will figure out how to make synthetic irises that fool the orb, nullifying the sybil attack prevention benefit. Surely someone could get a handful of real iris scans (using the same open source hardware) and generate a huge number of plausible synthetic iris datas. Is the idea that in the current moment of the tech arms race, if someone steals an iris scan, the capability to synthesize an artificial iris that encodes that scan has not yet been developed? Have they published a 'solution' to what happens if you are holding worldcoin in an iris-associated account and then: - your scan data is stolen, ex. fake orb scans you and publishes your iris data on the internet for anyone to use - someone throws acid in your face, your irises don't scan the same anymore. how does this affect the user's ability to access their wallet? (is there additional private key management needed to use worldcoin securely? is the iris scanning thing really nothing more than a temporary sybil countermeasure..?)
theboywho 3y ago
I don't get all the comments, from the worldcoin website: > Your biometric data is first processed locally on the Orb and then permanently deleted. The only data that remains is your IrisCode. This IrisCode is a set of numbers generated by the Orb and is not linked to your wallet or any of your personal information. As a result, it really tells us — and everyone else — nothing about you. All it does is stop you from being able to sign up again. > Since you are not required to provide personal information like your name, email address, physical address or phone number, this means that you can easily sign up without us ever knowing anything about you. If Worldcoin is building a biometric database, that must be the most useless database in the world.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  is there evidence this is accurate? it's marketing copy there's tremendous leeway in "eventual deletion" and it looks like the full device won't be open
  - 93po 3y ago
    They are making the orb hardware and software open source last I heard.
    - abenga 3y ago
      How do we know that is the software and hardware actually deployed?
      - 93po 3y ago
        There were discussions about third party audits but it's still pretty early for that to be concrete
- wmf 3y ago
  You can't beat disgust with better tech.
- tamimio 3y ago
danpalmer 3y ago
Panopticoin
RyanAdamas 3y ago
We just need to ban crypto in the USA through cutting off their access to dollar transfers and pulling exchange charters. The SEC should have never made it an asset. People who have crypto can still get their money out from overseas institutions and platforms, if not simply use it for what it was originally designed to be - peer to peer; not this "code for dough" paradigm it has become. Crypto had its time and we didn't replace the banks with it, so its true potential is gone now that the financial system has control of it. In addition, the USA needs to create a single Civilian Social Platform just like we did the highway system. We need to validate people based upon their citizenship, and label people based upon their relative status to actual stakeholders in the nation.
stevekemp 3y ago
The only thing I know about worldcoin is that I've received about ten spam emails mentioning it in their subject over the past week. That alone is enough to make me lose any interest in hearing more.
sergiotapia 3y ago
VC shitcoin. Bitcoin is the only real, legitimate cryptocurrency because it's not owned by anyone. People getting into worldcoin are just people trying to get their free $ like a free Temu counpon code.
- tamimio 3y ago
  >Bitcoin is the only real, I will add Monero to that list
napierzaza 3y ago
[dead]
tamimio 3y ago
Not sure which one is worse, the ones who gave their biometrics for $20, or the ones that pays to give their DNA..
seydor 3y ago
I wonder if the statistics of the iris are connected to genetics?
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  Probably but that correlation will disappear once you hash it, which they claim they are doing.
arisAlexis 3y ago
Author doesn't get that there is no "eyeball database", only a database of hashes.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I think it's fair to call the database of hashes an "eyeball database".
victor22 3y ago
I'm grateful for worldcoin as it shows the True face of the dystopian ruthless capitalism of Silicon Valley, AÍ companies and all this bullshit that focuses on profit while completely forgets and did regada human wellbeing.
account-5 3y ago
Everytime I hear of worldcoin I immediately think of onecoin. I wonder if onecoin wouldn't be the name of worldcoin if it weren't for the controversy. Onecoin is a good name though.
DonHopkins 3y ago
So maybe I shouldn't have peeped into that "Free Porn Kinetoscope Parlor" that appeared on the street corner down town recently? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope#/media/File:KinetoscopeParlorbis.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope#/media/File:Kineto... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope#/media/File:Kinetophonebis1.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope#/media/File:Kineto...
Cypher 3y ago
I get a sense it's like a digital ID that enslaves everyone
mplewis 3y ago
OK, so I gaze into the orb, it generates me a private key, and assigns me a wallet. Now what happens when I leak that private key? Is it all over for me and my money? I obviously can't get another one – you get one World ID per human.
- derangedHorse 3y ago
  If I recall correctly, the whitepaper talks about using the iris code (generated from your iris image) to associate your private key to your world id. I think one of the purported selling points is that you can recover your identity using an orb and your iris.
seandoe 3y ago
I thought keybase was really on to something. It's ashame they sold out. I'm surprised nothing has picked up where it left off in relation to identity declaration/proof.
paganel 3y ago
Altman has to be a 3-letter front-man at this point, can’t be any other way.
boredumb 3y ago
I'm glad that while hollywood seems to be completely out of entertaining ideas, real life is producing scenarios where millionaires are having their eyes removed by international criminal organizations to cash in on a one world centrally governed currency. Oh boy.
brucenigel442 3y ago
[dead]
blackle 3y ago
What if you don't have eyes? I've been scrolling this thread for ten minutes and also read through the worldcoin website. Nobody seems to have asked this. If they want this to be a true proof of personhood it needs to work for every person.
pangolinja 3y ago
careful guys, Creepy creeper Sam is definitely reading this comment thread over breakfast, while suckling on a teenage adrenal gland.
jengland 3y ago
In my opinion Vitalik's post[0] about it was much more thoughtful and interesting. [0]: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html
bella001 3y ago
[dead]

478 points by hammock 3y ago

scottmsul 3y ago

I'd be curious to see if someone could use generative AI to make fake irises and scam the handout mechanism

93po 3y ago
They’re actively developing to prevent this, though already it would require a compromised orb and orb operator, which would get blocked from the chain and all irises scanned since compromise removed from the chain. The bigger hurdle is the scanning of people who are dead or unconscious or animals trying to pass as human
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

gumballindie 3y ago

I am seeing a pattern here and I am starting to believe that Sam Altman is an Accelerationist: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerationism A lot of his actions, investments and marketing strategy seem to point in that direction.

JohnFen 3y ago
Interesting. I wonder how he would characterize his belief system. I personally have a very dim view of him, mostly because of Worldcoin (which is how he came onto my radar). His work with OpenAI confirms my unease with his efforts and makes me wonder what his goals actually are.
- idlewords 3y ago
  Altman is proof that there is no IQ cap on human stupidity.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Altman's belief system is "I deserve more money and power", that simple. There's no generous interpretation of building a 25% pre-mine shitcoin, and hawking it to third world countries through sketchy contractors who are explicitly incentivized to collect biometrics from anyone they can, where the claimed purpose of said shitcoin isn't even a little bit implemented, especially all of this in light of your friend and business partner runs fucking Palentir
  - rqtwteye 3y ago
    I think most billionaires have the belief system "I deserve more money and power and what's best for me is best for society".
hiatus 3y ago
Could you elaborate on which actions, investments, and marketing strategies led you to that belief?
morkalork 3y ago
I think he's just out of touch. Here's another example: https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9y5n/the-people-building-ai-with-existential-risk-are-really-not-getting-oppenheimer https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9y5n/the-people-building-a...
- gumballindie 3y ago
  There is a certain degree of that for sure. These people really see themselves as “destroyers of worlds” when in fact they are becoming a but amusing in how they try to inflate their importance on the scene. But the sense of urgency cause by the supposed incoming terror, destitution, and despair seem to indicate these people would almost enjoy seeing it happen. Notice how their marketing doesnt focus as much on the benefits as it does on the drawbacks. It’s as if they _want_ the negatives to come to fruition and some sort of radical change to happen as a result of it. Maybe i am reading too much into it and giving sam and the other folks at openai too much credit, but the idea that they might be accelerationists is so crazy that it might actually be fact. Why else would you go above and beyond to build products that you yourself claim can be extremely harmful, they require radical change, other than you wanting for that negative outcome to happen so that you can achieve said change? Didnt the person say or write somewhere that he wants to solve inequality? And since ai would drastically increase inequality by extracting work from the masses and selling it for the profits of the few at massive scale doesnt it is logical to believe that he’a aiming to prove a point. Speeding things up, cause social upheaval, that leads to social change. The definition of that ideology.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    It's something that I noticed a long time ago in various subcultures that focus on preparing for some variant of "end times". I think that if you've put a ton of time, money, and effort into preparing for a thing to happen, you begin to want that thing to happen (even if unconsciously). If it doesn't, then all that time, money, and effort was wasted.
    - mempko 3y ago
nkozyra 3y ago
It's curious to frame this as an intentional act rather than an inevitable, natural stage of capitalism.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  I get that, but it’s almost if someone’s trying to prove the point you just made.
- amelius 3y ago
  This is like saying that anything that can be hacked, should be hacked (instead of fixed).
- nemo44x 3y ago
  That's the main idea behind accelerationism from a Landian perspective. That capitalism is just getting started and that it's unstoppable and that it won't transition into socialisim like Marx predicted but rather will encompass more and more of everything and be the vehicle for the next evolution into a cybernetic species. It's the evolution of evolution and it's unstoppable. So get on with it and learn to love it. Quotes like "it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism" and Mark Fisher's (CCNU and Nick Land, etc)ideas around capitalism realism sort of sum it up.
  - Nursie 3y ago
    I mean, it’s pretty easy to imagine capitalism precipitating the end of the world …
    - nemo44x 3y ago
      I don't see that per-se. I think it's more likely that capitalism continues to rapidly advance technology to the point where we truly do evolve evolution. So a certain part of the global population will have access to DNA synthesizers and other biotech and AI and can reproduce a master race of post-humans that will dominate and eventually annihilate Homosapiens. After a few generations of rapid improvement (a singularity where post-humans and AI merge into a single entity) they'll view the rest of the world as we view other primates today and won't have much use for them. If not through intentional genocide then just being unable to compete for ecosystem, etc. Homosapiens will fade away as Neanderthals did. Capitalism is a system (much more than just an economic system) that allows for selection like this. In a sense a type of market driven Darwinism which chooses how energy is spent developing the tools that allow humans to evolve rapidly into the next thing. That it's natural that Capitalism started with the industrial revolution which marks the beginning of humans evolving tech rapidly. It's almost as if it was inevitable once we reached that stage. To be against it is futile as it's as natural as gravity. And we just keep getting better at it.
maxwell 3y ago
He's just "hack[ing] something to [his] advantage." And pg was his enthusiastic Palpatine. Egging on and fawning over sama was already uncomfortable back in 2010. http://paulgraham.com/founders.html http://paulgraham.com/founders.html
- HellDunkel 3y ago
  Luckily, YC is experiencing a cultural shift. The likes of PG and Marc Andrewessen, Sam Altman and Peter Thiel were not frowned upon in 2010, not to mention Elon Musk or Zuckerberg.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    Can you elaborate a bit more?
    - HellDunkel 3y ago
      I need to correct myself. It should have said Hackernews instead of YC. And it is really the comments here that reflect a cultural shift which i think is interesting.
  - maxwell 3y ago
    First, many of them sung a different tune when they were challenging power before becoming established power. Second, they weren't subject to much public scrutiny as they weren't yet household names until maybe the mid '10s when tech companies took over the market.
  - wahnfrieden 3y ago
    Huh? The current YC leadership is also wacked-out authoritarian far right wing
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
floydianspiral 3y ago
It's weird how much of that wiki article (and others I just looked up) trends towards right/alt-right extremism as I have never thought of accelerationism as something fascists would take to. My original understanding of it was that ai/tech will become so advanced that it will take over a lot of the production and labor we currently do to feed, build, and supply the world with resources and when that part is automated, humans would hopefully be freed up to do more with their life. This would have to involve restructuring money, society and how governments and resources are allocated. Ties to UBI and how much people get will have to be solved in a different way since we no longer need to do all the menial work. The time span between ai starting to be able to do all of this (maybe starting soon) and when we finally figure out we don't need to work for money is the terrible part where loss of jobs would eventually cause an upheaval and rethinking of how society needs to be structured and the acceleration that people talk about is trying to speed through this bad part as fast as possible to get to the other side as possible. I guess my idea of it is not at all what others seem to think though? I'm pretty pessimistic the "other side" will actually be a utopia but that would be up to the collective to figure out but it seems like a worthwhile concept on the surface.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Of course, one of the problems with the idea is that it endorses throwing innocent others under the economic bus. It's nice that they want to "speed through" that part -- but it still boils down to advocating harming people who aren't consenting in exchange for the possibility (not guarantee) of something better for later generations.
- dundarious 3y ago
  It's not weird at all if you're familiar with the history of the term, and the currents in mass politics of the 20th century. Everything from the German SDP's (left wing) acceptance of Hitler's rise to power with their quasi-accelerationist "first Hitler, then us" strategy, to the (right wing) OSS/CIA/fascist Strategy of Tension in Italy, to (right wing) boogaloo boys trying to incite race war, to (right wing) evangelical millenarianism around sparking war in Jerusalem to prompt coming of the antichrist. It does have its beginnings as a concept in Marxist writings. In a way, Marx himself was the first accelerationist (but he seems to have mostly abandoned that thinking towards the end of his life).
m-i-l 3y ago
I hope that the tech billionaires are simply blundering towards the destruction of society, rather than intentionally trying to do so with something like Effective Accelerationism. That would certainly fit with Hanlon's Razor. I have a simple theory that tech billionaires are at least partly influenced by the sci-fi of their youth. While some of the older tech billionaires were brought up on utopian sci-fi like Star Trek, with wonderful ideas like the post-scarcity economy, some of the younger tech billionaires were brought up on the dystopian sci-fi of the 1980s. Unfortunately what seems to be happening is that they may have mistaken dystopia as a blueprint for what to build rather as a warning of what to avoid.
- latexr 3y ago
  > Unfortunately what seems to be happening is that they may have mistaken dystopia as a blueprint for what to build rather as a warning of what to avoid. Also known as the Torment Nexus. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/torment-nexus
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  I have felt this too. Young SV valley tech bros seem to be trying to build whatever they saw at the movies. This includes some movies with very bad outcomes unfortunately.

arcticbull 3y ago

Like any other non-coin crypto tech, Worldcoin doesn't do what it set out to do because it doesn't solve the oracle problem. If you trust their orb, it generates a wallet for you - but anyone, human or otherwise - can use that wallet. There's a black market in China for these identities already [1] and of course the response from Worldcoin was there's nothing they can do - because there's nothing they can do. So this is just any other coin with extra steps, and the extra layer of trusting Sam Altman with your eyeballs to generate secret keys? [1] https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-worldcoin-credentials-pops-up-in-china/ https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2023/05/24/black-market-for-...

meowface 3y ago
I understand your point, but why the separation of coin vs. non-coin tech? Meaning that the only real guarantee of cryptocurrency is prevention of double-spend rather than a confirmed unique identity?
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Blockchains can extend the guarantees of the blockchain only to concepts that can be completely represented on-chain, which basically meant just coins. They don't have to interface with the real world so aren't subject issues at the boundary. At least that's one way of looking at it. As soon as you start trying to represent things that actually exist in the real world authoritatively, it breaks down - because the authoritative representation is actually off chain, i.e reality. In this case your identity is the authoritative representation, not the key you present.
  - jsunderland323 3y ago
    This is really well said. I’ve been trying to articulate this point for a long time. I think the boundary is between things that are temporal or bounded by real time and space vs things that are time independent and state based. Oracles always suffer from this problem even if the authoritative representation is another digital thing. For example the whole NFT url swapping thing. Similarly this comes up in version control a lot when your code depends on things that are unversioned, the commit state may be idempotent but the application is not.

ilyt 3y ago

Well, there is no lack of supply of idiots to fall for it.

gonehome 3y ago

[flagged]

sdwr 3y ago
Thanks.
meowface 3y ago
I think it's a kind of uncharitable article (surely Sam and the rest of the people involved have spent a ton of time thinking about the problem and the existence of black markets and possibilities for abuse), but >I don’t know if it’s the best attempt but I understand what it is and what the goals are. a bad solution can potentially be worse than no solution in this case. A false belief in identity guarantees can facilitate fraud and other manipulation, while "you should never trust anyone or anything, including that there's a 1:1 relationship between public keys and individual humans" at least advises everyone of the risk.
- gonehome 3y ago
  Agreed, I just have a hard time with articles I know to be uncharitable or written with an obvious bent against the subject. Maybe world coin has thought of these problems? Maybe not, but I wouldn’t trust the author to have done any due diligence. There’s an interesting article to be written here, but this isn’t it imo.
  - gonehome 3y ago
    Also seems unfair that my root level comment was flagged, dang?
ohgodplsno 3y ago
Absolute and utter bullshit, and you know it. Sam Altman is always in for a single person: himself. I have never seen less altruistic, less simple to understand than him [0]. Everything, the world ID, the money, the coins, is just a pretense for a single purpose: that he gets involved in everything whenever the idea of a global ID appears anywhere in the world. Or an ID at all. What's that Alabama, you want to create a state ID ? For the low low price of the GDP of a small african country, you can have access to our World ID database of all Alabama-scanned eyeballs. [0] Aside from Larry Elison, but there's still debate on whether he's actually human or not.

simonsarris 3y ago

I think you should instead just read what Worldcoin wrote. It's quite short, and I think easy to consider false. https://worldcoin.org/cofounder-letter https://worldcoin.org/cofounder-letter There are a few words about economic opportunity but little explanation, so you can discount that part. They don't seem to believe it beyond UBI distribution, which has the same problems as any distribution today[1] Their main sell: > scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy > Worldcoin consists of a privacy-preserving digital identity (World ID) > You can now download World App... After visiting an Orb ... you will receive a World ID. This lets you prove you are a real and unique person online while remaining completely private. This seems to be the sole feature but "distinguish" and "privacy" are fundamentally at odds. Always! If you can identify a person, in any way, they are no longer private. They may be private for a little while, but as soon as User12345 is outed to be Taylor Swift, there's no going back. There's no worldcoin re-roll. Twitter accounts are more anonymous than that - at least if your anon twitter account is unveiled, you can make a new one! In that way uniqueness is anti-privacy. It has to be. [1] For example worldcoin has a plan to confirm that people exist. It does not have a plan to confirm that people are dead. https://japantoday.com/category/crime/man-says-he-kept-parents'-bodies-in-house-for-10-years-so-he-could-collect-their-pensions https://japantoday.com/category/crime/man-says-he-kept-paren...

arcticbull 3y ago
> They don't seem to believe it beyond UBI distribution, which has the same problems as distribution today Especially since UBI distribution aren't built in any meaningful way on this blockchain. They have some vague notion of one day wanting to use it to provide UBI, but they don't have any idea of what that actually looks like, or when, etc. They are vaguely gesturing towards the concept of UBI.
- wahnfrieden 3y ago
  It’s the same as any shitcoin roadmap with vague exciting prospects that will be figured out later on but meanwhile promoted as coming soon
3y ago

5350-uiop-1130 3y ago

> "mostly harvested from poor people" use a crypto token to exploit poor people. a real web3 VC douchebag move there wasn't that VC who was recently murdered in SF also involved in this project (unrelated murder). in any case mr altman can kiss my hairy yellow a$$ before getting my retina data

yreg 3y ago

I don't think Worldcoin is the solution, but I'm interested in hearing what the rest of you think the solution to the bots-indistiguishable-to-humans problem could look like? Or should we just accept that the times of interacting over internet with strangers you can believe to be humans is over? The only idea I see is for some certificates handed out by government to citizens and I absolutely hate it even in a democracy.

JohnFen 3y ago
I haven't heard of, and can't think of, a solution to this problem that doesn't introduce much larger problems. Big picture, I don't think the problem of distinguishing humans from bots online is a big enough deal that we should take hits in other areas to solve it. The least-harm solution, as far as I can see right now, is to just accept that the internet cannot be made trustworthy in this way. The only way to know for sure the nature of who you're dealing with will be to deal with them in person. Much like it has always been.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  What if the person you are dealing with is on the other side of the world? I don't think that really works, you need some kind of trust system. I hope it doesn't turn out that worldcoin is the best solution.
  - nathan_gold 3y ago
    Identity online should be optional. If you read comments on a news story about an upcoming election in your country, you should see some that are verifiably a human citizen from your country, separate from everything else. Pay attention to everything else at your discretion. I think a web that is half identified and half anonymous would work well.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > What if the person you are dealing with is on the other side of the world? Then you can't be sure. > you need some kind of trust system. I agree. I just haven't heard of one that doesn't cause more problems than it solves. Just because we want it doesn't mean we can have it.

unboxingelf 3y ago

Worldcoin is simply another pre-mined, VC backed shitcoin - albeit worst because they’re building a biometrics database. - VCs dump money in (SBF, a16z, etc) - 25% of the coins are kept for the founders + investors How many times do people have to get burned on these scams? Obviously Sam has some street cred with the govt else they would have pulled him infront of congress like when zuck tried to launch Libre.

jcpham2 3y ago
This comment is accurate and should be at the top
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lern_too_spel 3y ago
> Obviously Sam has some street cred with the govt else they would have pulled him infront of congress like when zuck tried to launch Libre. He got around US regulations by not making it available in the US. No street cred required.
- jondwillis 3y ago
  There are iris scanning stations across the US and there is no way to geographically limit who and what holds WLD. What does not available mean here? Not available on centralized US-based exchanges?
  - lern_too_spel 3y ago
    It means Tools for Humanity is neither based in the US nor offering the coin in the US. The US cannot control what that company does in other countries. The US can control what Meta does in the US.
foobiekr 3y ago
If they didn't seem so stupid, you'd think the biometrics collection thing was the point, but I actually think they're just so dumb it's not even that sophisticated a scam.

idlewords 3y ago

Nothing wrong with incentivizing AI to steal people's eyes.

uLogMicheal 3y ago
Literal eyeball bounties.

ineptech 3y ago

I don't get how anyone can call something with an eternally-fixed quantity a currency. What's the plan for when it starts appreciating and people stop spending it and start hoarding it?

pessimizer 3y ago
Sell.
sparkie 3y ago
Prices drop.
- ineptech 3y ago
  Why? If any currency is appreciating, people are incentivized to hold it, which has the effect of decreasing supply, and decreasing supply makes the price of something go up, not down.

rollupid 3y ago

There are better ways to achieve the same goals as Worldcoin. https://rollup.id/blog/rollup-id-the-open-source-privacy-first-alternative-to-worldcoin https://rollup.id/blog/rollup-id-the-open-source-privacy-fir...

brucethemoose2 3y ago

A critical part of Worldcoin is its association with AI hype: https://news.google.com/search?q=Worldcoin%20ai&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen https://news.google.com/search?q=Worldcoin%20ai&hl=en-US&gl=... > Investors are recognizing the opportunities presented by AI-based projects that leverage blockchain technology. ...Of course, this is total nonsense. But perception is everything for crypto IPOs.

wmf 3y ago
It's worse than that: Sam Altman is selling a solution to a problem he created.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago
  He didn't really create the problem, and Worldcoin is not a solution.
  - 93po 3y ago
    OpenAI is moving the problem much closer to today and Worldcoin absolutely helps solve problems of inauthentic online behavior
    - tamimio 3y ago
      [flagged]

JohnFen 3y ago

> But when it comes to sensitive information, promises aren’t enough. And the very people who insist that you trust them are the ones who should command the most suspicion. It's the age-old rule of thumb: never trust anyone who says "trust me".

lazzlazzlazz 3y ago

[flagged]

kergonath 3y ago
Any substantial comment or profound insight? Otherwise you’re ranting in the wind. We’ve seen these things regularly enough. If you think a good argument needs to be made, then make it. Just dropping 2 links without any form of context just makes you look like a shill or a crank; most people are simply going to ignore them. Particularly if one of them is a tweet, or whatever they are called today.
hrdwdmrbl 3y ago
Yeah, the article and this whole comments thread is very intellectually dishonest. Disclosure: I’m like, 70% optimistic about the project. I don’t believe that the team are lying. Anyway, as with many things, time will tell. I wouldn’t get worked up over it. If it fails it’s pretty inconsequential.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  >I don’t believe that the team are lying Why not? >If it fails it’s pretty inconsequential. Definitely, it only collected the biometrics of thousands of desperate people into the hands of private people who work with law enforcement agencies everywhere to provide surveillance as a service.
  - 93po 3y ago
    You’re misrepresenting what it’s collecting and you’re part of the problem in this discussion. Worldcoin isn’t storing anything that could be used by any other entity. It doesn’t store biometrics and there isn’t a way to use the store information to know what the iris looked like that generated it.
    - danbruc 3y ago
      How do you know? Because they said so?

outside1234 3y ago

Scam Altman strikes again

hdivider 3y ago

Imagine sama had put all this energy, capital, and relationship capital into fusion power, instead of WorldCoin. Beyond Helion. It would be easier to accept him as someone who is genuinely altruistic. Instead, he turns out to be just another self-serving 'tech' bro. I write 'tech' because clearly this guy does not actually care about pushing technology forwards for human good -- which is the cause, in my view, of all real technologists. It's about himself, just as it is with the great Technoking.

dmead 3y ago

sam altman is a snake. has an opportunity to testify in front of congress and capitalizes on the event by trying to pull the ladder up behind him. gross sam.

latchkey 3y ago

This is the Eye of Sauron. I'm very much into the crypto world and I'm so tired of all of these dumb scams. Even worse that it is backed by yet another scammer named 'Sam'. I really wish we could focus on things that actually provided value to people. What a waste of time/money/effort. I hope this one dies a quick death. So far, it looks like it will, which is great.

zer8k 3y ago
Honest question, is there any cryptocurrency that provides actual value to people? The blockchain can be trivially deanonymized from my understanding. It's difficult to get coins without at any point revealing your identity. So, if you're not in a circle of people who will physically trade coin for cash (or vis-versa) there seems to be no privacy argument. I just fail to see crypto as anything but a scam - period. It's like physical gold and silver but worse at everything they do. How can one even derive value from a coin like bitcoin where the swings are often worse than the bolivar.
- latchkey 3y ago
  I made this comment the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36885902 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36885902 If you want to go back a bit further in time, I'd like to point out someone else's comment that I thought was pretty spot on as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26238410 Hopefully that opens some discussion/thought points that we can focus on. Update: thinking a bit further on your points. My personal concern isn't privacy, my concern is more with decentralization. I don't agree with other people telling me what I can and cannot do with my own funds. It is relatively simple things... If I travel to another country, being limited to carrying $10k cash on a plane, is absurd (why would I need to carry cash anyway?). If I'm in another country, getting access to my funds is often extremely difficult. These are the things that I'd like to see people work on.
  - rizky05 3y ago
    [dead]

bratgpttamer 3y ago

When this first launched, I thought it was some kind of performance art, or a clever attempt to establish a precedent against building such things. Then, I realized he was serious.

93po 3y ago
Any actual criticisms?
- bratgpttamer 3y ago
  [criticize(p) for p in worldcoin.properties]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

rngname22 3y ago

Pre-mines are all just neofeudalism.

throwaway104782 3y ago

All cryptocurrency is terrible. Some are just more terrible than others.

alexpotato 3y ago

I think it's interesting to describe the process to establish your identity in the United States if you lost ALL of your identification documents (e.g. in a house fire). It essentially boils down to: - Get a bunch of people you know who can verify that you are indeed who you claim to be - Have them sign legally binding documents that attest that, yes, you are you - Start building your paper documents all over again We never really talk about any of this given that it's pretty rare for this to happen to someone but I think it's interesting to point out that it eventually boils down to your IRL social network.

icecream_so_gud 3y ago
I wish a similar system also existed for account recovery instead of being stonewalled by customer service I might be able to recover some years old accounts

notShabu 3y ago

No state can manage identities without the consent of the individual because individuals have to actively protect and manage their identities and not sell them. E.g. we protect our social security numbers against identity theft because the economic benefits of having one outweigh selling it. But when there isn't a benefit, then the identity can just be sold. Solving the identity problem and solving the "good governance" problem are likely the same problem.

raffraffraff 3y ago

I don't know what this is and I'm not even going to read the take-down article. If you slap "coin" onto the name of anything, I'll run a mile from it. I just dropped in to say that. bb.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
93po 3y ago
This is valid criticism and it’s unfortunate that they chose this name for sure. It results in knee jerk reactions from people that don’t understand it and make assumptions
mint2 3y ago
“Worldcoin” sounds ridiculously cringy and pompous like it came from an 80s young adult novel for boys. It’s kind like how the terrible grammar/spelling in email scams has the side effect of pre-selecting desperate or out of it enough people that ignore red flags.

cwkoss 3y ago

Any decentralized system that uses biometrics for authentication rather than just identification is doomed to fail spectacularly. Biometrics are like a username NOT like a password. When a piece of wolrdcoin is inevitably compromised, people have no means of rolling a new iris. The whole thing will come crashing down. There are so many stupid decisions this team is making. Like, users can opt into the orbs retaining their iris scan for network quality assurance purposes. Would any sane person ever opt into an ATM storing their PIN number for quality assurance? It is an implicit bounty for hacking the orb. And the fact that they seem to need further quality assurance points to the fact that they aren't confident people will have continuous access to their accounts. Best case, I'd imagine anyone who has a catastrophic eye injury would also permanently lose access to their accounts - but I suspect the reality is much worse.

__alexs 3y ago
As much as I think Worldcoin is dumb they do get this part right in that they only use the iris scan as a unique identifier to prevent multiple sign ups from the same physical bag of meat^H^H^H^H^H person.
- tamimio 3y ago
  >unique identifier to prevent multiple sign up Yet there’s already a black market where you can buy multiple accounts with real iris.
  - __alexs 3y ago
    There is still a 1:1 relationship with accounts and people. They have just cut out some extra steps when the original account creator does whatever it is the 3rd party wants them to do manually. That some people might use their Worldcoin account to do things on behalf of someone else is a different problem from the one OP was referring to.
- cwkoss 3y ago
  Huh, I don't understand the intended security benefit of the iris scans at all then. If the system has value inside of it, inevitably people will figure out how to make synthetic irises that fool the orb, nullifying the sybil attack prevention benefit. Surely someone could get a handful of real iris scans (using the same open source hardware) and generate a huge number of plausible synthetic iris datas. Is the idea that in the current moment of the tech arms race, if someone steals an iris scan, the capability to synthesize an artificial iris that encodes that scan has not yet been developed? Have they published a 'solution' to what happens if you are holding worldcoin in an iris-associated account and then: - your scan data is stolen, ex. fake orb scans you and publishes your iris data on the internet for anyone to use - someone throws acid in your face, your irises don't scan the same anymore. how does this affect the user's ability to access their wallet? (is there additional private key management needed to use worldcoin securely? is the iris scanning thing really nothing more than a temporary sybil countermeasure..?)

theboywho 3y ago

I don't get all the comments, from the worldcoin website: > Your biometric data is first processed locally on the Orb and then permanently deleted. The only data that remains is your IrisCode. This IrisCode is a set of numbers generated by the Orb and is not linked to your wallet or any of your personal information. As a result, it really tells us — and everyone else — nothing about you. All it does is stop you from being able to sign up again. > Since you are not required to provide personal information like your name, email address, physical address or phone number, this means that you can easily sign up without us ever knowing anything about you. If Worldcoin is building a biometric database, that must be the most useless database in the world.

wahnfrieden 3y ago
is there evidence this is accurate? it's marketing copy there's tremendous leeway in "eventual deletion" and it looks like the full device won't be open
- 93po 3y ago
  They are making the orb hardware and software open source last I heard.
  - abenga 3y ago
    How do we know that is the software and hardware actually deployed?
    - 93po 3y ago
      There were discussions about third party audits but it's still pretty early for that to be concrete
wmf 3y ago
You can't beat disgust with better tech.
tamimio 3y ago

danpalmer 3y ago

Panopticoin

RyanAdamas 3y ago

We just need to ban crypto in the USA through cutting off their access to dollar transfers and pulling exchange charters. The SEC should have never made it an asset. People who have crypto can still get their money out from overseas institutions and platforms, if not simply use it for what it was originally designed to be - peer to peer; not this "code for dough" paradigm it has become. Crypto had its time and we didn't replace the banks with it, so its true potential is gone now that the financial system has control of it. In addition, the USA needs to create a single Civilian Social Platform just like we did the highway system. We need to validate people based upon their citizenship, and label people based upon their relative status to actual stakeholders in the nation.

stevekemp 3y ago

The only thing I know about worldcoin is that I've received about ten spam emails mentioning it in their subject over the past week. That alone is enough to make me lose any interest in hearing more.

sergiotapia 3y ago

VC shitcoin. Bitcoin is the only real, legitimate cryptocurrency because it's not owned by anyone. People getting into worldcoin are just people trying to get their free $ like a free Temu counpon code.

tamimio 3y ago
>Bitcoin is the only real, I will add Monero to that list

napierzaza 3y ago

[dead]

tamimio 3y ago

Not sure which one is worse, the ones who gave their biometrics for $20, or the ones that pays to give their DNA..

seydor 3y ago

I wonder if the statistics of the iris are connected to genetics?

sebzim4500 3y ago
Probably but that correlation will disappear once you hash it, which they claim they are doing.

arisAlexis 3y ago

Author doesn't get that there is no "eyeball database", only a database of hashes.

JohnFen 3y ago
I think it's fair to call the database of hashes an "eyeball database".

victor22 3y ago

I'm grateful for worldcoin as it shows the True face of the dystopian ruthless capitalism of Silicon Valley, AÍ companies and all this bullshit that focuses on profit while completely forgets and did regada human wellbeing.

account-5 3y ago

Everytime I hear of worldcoin I immediately think of onecoin. I wonder if onecoin wouldn't be the name of worldcoin if it weren't for the controversy. Onecoin is a good name though.

DonHopkins 3y ago

So maybe I shouldn't have peeped into that "Free Porn Kinetoscope Parlor" that appeared on the street corner down town recently? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope#/media/File:KinetoscopeParlorbis.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope#/media/File:Kineto... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope#/media/File:Kinetophonebis1.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope#/media/File:Kineto...

Cypher 3y ago

I get a sense it's like a digital ID that enslaves everyone

mplewis 3y ago

OK, so I gaze into the orb, it generates me a private key, and assigns me a wallet. Now what happens when I leak that private key? Is it all over for me and my money? I obviously can't get another one – you get one World ID per human.

derangedHorse 3y ago
If I recall correctly, the whitepaper talks about using the iris code (generated from your iris image) to associate your private key to your world id. I think one of the purported selling points is that you can recover your identity using an orb and your iris.

seandoe 3y ago

I thought keybase was really on to something. It's ashame they sold out. I'm surprised nothing has picked up where it left off in relation to identity declaration/proof.

paganel 3y ago

Altman has to be a 3-letter front-man at this point, can’t be any other way.

boredumb 3y ago

I'm glad that while hollywood seems to be completely out of entertaining ideas, real life is producing scenarios where millionaires are having their eyes removed by international criminal organizations to cash in on a one world centrally governed currency. Oh boy.

brucenigel442 3y ago

[dead]

blackle 3y ago

What if you don't have eyes? I've been scrolling this thread for ten minutes and also read through the worldcoin website. Nobody seems to have asked this. If they want this to be a true proof of personhood it needs to work for every person.

pangolinja 3y ago

careful guys, Creepy creeper Sam is definitely reading this comment thread over breakfast, while suckling on a teenage adrenal gland.

jengland 3y ago

In my opinion Vitalik's post[0] about it was much more thoughtful and interesting. [0]: https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html https://vitalik.eth.limo/general/2023/07/24/biometric.html

bella001 3y ago

[dead]