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Good, because this is an awful and stupid and terrible and ridiculous and exploitative idea. On its no-pun-intended face. Let's be clear, it does not matter a
by jrm4 3y ago
Good, because this is an awful and stupid and terrible and ridiculous and exploitative idea.
On its no-pun-intended face.
Let's be clear, it does not matter at ALL if Sam Altman or anyone presently involved has good intentions; the goal is biometric crypto, and biometrics -- which is to say, unalienable IDs, is by default an awful idea and should probably be dismissed outright.
- dcsommer 3y agoWhy are unalienable IDs an awful idea? Unalienable IDs seem to me to be the "default" of human societies. Before technology, everyone had "unalienable IDs" -- if you saw Bob, it was Bob.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jacquesm 3y agoOr Bob's twin brother. Or someone that really looked like Bob.
- afavour 3y agoI'm always skeptical of "before technology" comparison because they rarely account for the radical differences of the world today, like scale. But in this case the comparison doesn't really work. If Bob went to a new town he could introduce himself as Dave and no-one would be any the wiser. By comparison eyeball scans are owned by a private company, infinitely replicable and reusable. They could follow you absolutely everywhere you go without your permission.
- joe_the_user 3y agoAlso, biometrics aren't like people recognizing each other. They eventually have to be become data sent over a network so they're basically a password/id designed/assumed to not be alterable or spoofable - but that assumption is generally false. Hacking can happen from anything from someone getting private info to someone walking around with a mask. And here, as mentioned, there's no password resets available.
- crimsontech 3y agoI wonder how we handle stolen biometric data? Do we invalidate it like a stolen certificate? Sorry sir, your eye has been revoked, you can no longer authenticate to this, or any of our partner services.
- soco 3y agoIt's difficult to have your eye stolen (let's not get into gore please). But they could simply hack the backend, and say your eye belong to someone else. The app now shows Bob the bank robber being Dave the bank manager, just long enough to empty the vaults. Oh it was on blockchain so you can see afterwards that it was actually Bob?
- psd1 3y agoOr the inept might trade their IDs for instant cash, as is actually happening (reportedly). Since Worldcoin is bribing 3rd-world grannies to sign up. I know that HN is crawling with individual-responsibility people. To those people I say: do you shrug coldly when your aged mothers get scammed? Are villages without electricity fair game?
- salad-tycoon 3y agoWorse still, Your eyeballs are scanned now everyone will think you are Bob, even if you actually are Dave, because that’s what the app says. Doesn’t matter what you say or argue because the app says you are Bob and the app is never wrong. I was at Walmart buying some heavily discounted gel blasters. I ordered them for pickup originally but then thought “Walmart employee will misplace it “accidentally” and then buy it when the shift is over” (it happens, a lot). As such, I decide to go myself and pick them up. Turns out Walmart online vs in store clearance price is a big difference so I ask for a price adjustment at the register. I wait for the super user trainer expert person who then calls more super expert backup. They proceed to explain to me that they could do a price adjustment but the app says there are none in stock. Mind you I have the blasters right there at the register and explain to them that these products actually are in stock and say “can we all agree that we are all seeing the same thing right here?” Answer: sorry, no because again the app says it’s not in stock and we no longer have that product. The app says no and what the app says is final. Dammit. You are Bob and these gel blasters in front of us don’t exist. Goodluck Bob.
- pschuegr 3y agoKafka wept
- evolve2k 3y agoMy mistake, I’ve just remembered these must already be mine. Proceeds to walk out with them.
- spiderfarmer 3y agoThat’s what I would have done.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoTake as many as you like
- majormajor 3y agoThere's two things going on - technology, like you mention, but also scale. Scale brings trust problems. Got a million people in your city? Even without technology, you probably don't know Bob. Bob can rip you off without realistically expecting repercussions, unlike in a small village where everyone depends on each other, and Bob would get kicked out and have to try to find somewhere else. So scale also breaks a lot of the value of permenant IDs, and things like outsourced trust (credit reports, etc) will never be perfect. And in a big society, even a 99% success rate would be A LOT of people getting fucked over. Can this eyeball-thing fix that? Largely, no - any errors in the system that aren't identity theft will still be there. And potentially worse: even fancy technological systems are almost always vulnerable to technological exploits. And then if too much trust is placed in the validation mechanism, a bad actor could potentially go nuts.
- callalex 3y agoIf eyeballs were unailienable then safety glasses wouldn’t exist.
- riversflow 3y agoBefore technology, Bob could skip 3 towns over and change his name to Rick.
- Tanoc 3y agoWhich was useful. If Bob was the subject of a targeted attack by Larry that unjustly sullied his reputation or opportunities, moving from Aton to Ceeton and changing his name to Rick means that Larry's erasure of Bob's standing is effectively reversed. Sure, it could be abused. But literally everything has the potential to be abused. Life is about weighing the risks of abuse against the reward of opportunity. And honestly I think we've gotten really bad at assessing that risk in the past half century, with powerful individuals muddying our perception even further to pursue their own goals.
- kwhitefoot 3y agoNot everything old is good.
- bloqs 3y agoBackalley eye replacement surgery
- whatshisface 3y agoThe "If you saw Bob" identity was limited to a few hundred people if you were a king, and a few dozen otherwise. Biometrics in digital systems will allow the most disagreeable out of a billion people to positively identify you.
- aorist 3y agoUnalienable IDs might be the default of small-scale face-to-face societies, but not ones which operate at scale. Not even "Bob" can serve as a fixed identifier without intentional state action — (sur)names were very often intentionally assigned to make administration (e.g. taxation) easier: > Campaigns to assign permanent patronyms have typically taken place, as one might expect, in the context of a state’s exertions to put its fiscal system on a sounder and more lucrative footing. Fearing, with good reason, that an effort to enumerate and register them could be a prelude to some new tax burden or conscription, local officials and the population at large often resisted such campaigns. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/james-c-scott-seeing-like-a-state#toc19 https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/james-c-scott-seeing...
- goodbyesf 3y ago> Unalienable IDs seem to me to be the "default" of human societies. Before technology, everyone had "unalienable IDs" -- if you saw Bob, it was Bob. Interesting. That makes me wonder if cultures around the world feared twins precisely due to the fact that ''unalienable ids' were the default of human societies'. In 'Things Fall Apart', identical twins are automatically 'dispatched' in the evil forest as soon as they are born because they are deemed 'evil'. I never understood why. But since identical twins break the natural default id system of human societies, maybe some societies felt it better to sacrifice the few to preserve the system.
- kevinventullo 3y agoI do think this project sounds scary and dystopian, but aren’t SSN’s effectively unalienable IDs?
- afavour 3y agoYou could issue someone a new SSN. I know it rarely ever happens but it is certainly possible. Eyeball scans... less so.
- discodave 3y agoAs a thought experiment, could a witness protection program (i.e. an arm of the government) issue a new/fake SSN? Yes. Could they change your retina? Maybe some surgery exists to do this, but it sounds risky/complicated!
- taeric 3y agoThis is somewhat weak with the argument here, though? The idea would be that you could get a new "world coin address," and I see no reason that couldn't be doable. That is, the thought experiment here is not that people interact with your retina identity, but with an address that has been confirmed to be associated with a living person. There will have to be ways to build "collective" groups in this landscape, as such there will have to be other webs of trust on top of it. Right? To be clear, I'm not convinced world coin is a good idea, but I'm not sure this is a clear take down of it?
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y agoSee: Minority Report :)
- SketchySeaBeast 3y agoI would argue that in our current identity theft riddled world SSN's are as much a liability as anything. At some point they became used as both the id and the password.
- soligern 3y ago
- 3327 3y ago[dead]
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoAgreed. Unfortunately the reality is Sam didn't "pay" the right officials off so this ban is less altruistic than we're lead to believe. Edit: the down v00ter clearly doesn't understand how African countries work (China has made inroads as well as they have because of bribes). This is the reality on the ground whether you like it or not.
- CrazyPyroLinux 3y agoYou say that like it doesn't happen everywhere. See-also: the other crypto Sam.
- mike_hock 3y agoIn what way would we ever expect the ban to be altruistic? Kill the cancer before it grows. It's in every country's best interest to destroy this scam as early as possible. So the cancer didn't pay the right officials to disable Kenya's immune response. Good news!
- pessimizer 3y agoAgain, whenever we do stuff, it's somehow China's fault. It would be nice if we could refer to the bad things we do without calling them Chinese.
- jrm4 3y agoIn theory, I agree; it wigs me out. It feels almost racist when I describe their social credit score -- but, sorry -- facts are facts.
- _lvbh 3y ago“Social credit score” is pure western propaganda. It’s called “trust score” and it’s by companies like Tencent (at the behest of the Chinese government) instead of directly from the CCP. Having a low score prevents usage of public facilities (transport, vending machines). Mine was so low I can’t buy a drink via WeChat
- 3y ago
- apienx 3y agoBiometrics (as a way to identify people) are used by plenty of governments around the world. There are plenty of people who don't care about privacy (as evidenced by the rise of social media). Why wouldn't such people be allowed to profit off their biometric data?
- landemva 3y ago> Why wouldn't such people be allowed to profit off their biometric data? And legalize selling kidneys. My body my choice.
- tim333 3y agoGot my scan. I'm happy. Worldcoin's happy. Who's exploited?