ChatGPT has sparked a boom in artificial intelligence, but also raised concerns about the blurring of the line between humans and machines. The rise of large language models (LLMs) has enabled artificial intelligence to mimic human expression in an amazing way, and it is becoming increasingly difficult for us to tell whether a piece of text or conversation is generated by a human or a machine. In this case, how to prove that you are a human and not a robot has become an important task.
Recently, the United States held its first major hearing on artificial intelligence. At the meeting, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called for regulation of AI, welcomed legislation in this area, and expressed concerns about the damage that AI would cause to the labor market.
What's interesting is that Sam Altman is trying to solve the problems brought by artificial intelligence through cryptocurrency and blockchain. The WorldCoin company he co-founded launched the ecological wallet World App in May this year, which attracted widespread attention. The company is committed to solving a series of challenges brought by artificial intelligence, and through the integration of biometric iris scanning and distributed ledger technology, it creates a better, fairer and more just world, becomes the infrastructure for the implementation of universal basic income, and contributes to solving the problem of job losses caused by artificial intelligence.
Obviously, Altman has set a grand vision for WorldCoin. He is ambitious and has claimed that he plans to reach the milestone of 1 billion users by 2023, but the official website currently shows that there are only 1.7 million users. So, will Worldcoin bring a beautiful utopian world to users, or is it just a short-lived project to cut leeks? This article will explore the importance of proof of personality in the era of artificial intelligence, explore the solutions provided by Worldcoin, and explain to interested users how to participate in the WorldCoin airdrop.
Part 1 Why is it important to prove that you are human in the AI era?
There is a famous saying in the Internet world: "You never know whether the person on the other side of the network is a person or a dog", and now this problem will be more serious. Imagine that we will spend more than 10 hours a day on the Internet, but we don't know whether we have talked to different forms of neural networks for five or six hours. This will be very scary.
Digital identity has been an unresolved issue since the invention of the Internet. According to the McKinsey Global Institute report "Digital Identity: The Key to Inclusive Growth", more than 4.4 billion people in the world do not have a legal identity or cannot have a digitally verified identity, which is also a major obstacle to people's access to financial services.
Now, the performance of deep learning models is constantly improving, surpassing human levels at an increasingly faster rate on various benchmarks. Large language models (LLM) have also made significant progress recently, and their performance has reached the top 20% of human capabilities in most traditional evaluations. The progress of GPT-4 is particularly obvious compared to the evolution of GPT-3.5.
As we move towards a new era of artificial intelligence, solving the problem of personality verification is more important than ever. On the one hand, we need to ensure that the benefits generated by future systems are fairly distributed, ensuring everyone's economic interests and rights in the Web3.0 and AI era. Sybil Attack can create multiple fake accounts to gain undue advantage or influence, so limiting the number of accounts that each person can create is critical for digital and decentralized governance, and it also helps to fairly distribute scarce resources, such as universal basic income, social welfare and subsidies. On the other hand, we need to clarify who can be trusted and what information can be trusted on the Internet to prevent the spread of AI-generated content, which can lead to large-scale deception or spread false information.
Currently, there are methods such as Turing test or face video to verify human, but Altman believes that using this to distinguish AI from humans is far from enough. Because with the rapid development of technology, artificial intelligence has passed the Turing test, and the phenomenon of face replacement brought by deep fake technology has also proved that identity verification based on video is becoming increasingly unreliable.
Part 2 Worldcoin is not only a cryptocurrency, but also wants to be the "ID card" in the AI era
So, how do you ensure that registered users are real humans and have only one account?
WorldCoin initiated the open identity protocol World ID and developed the Orb device, which can scan a person's iris to verify their uniqueness and humanity and assign them a "World ID" that can be used as a global digital passport. The WorldCoin team believes that in the context of biometrics, the higher the entropy, the more unique and unpredictable the biometric feature is. Iris have higher entropy than fingerprints and facial recognition. They are not easily changed by external factors and are not easily affected by demographic biases. Therefore, irises are more suitable for personality proof than faces and fingerprints.
Through Proof of Person (PoP) credentials, the World ID Protocol enables everyone to prove their humanity online without relying on a third-party institution. This innovative authentication method utilizes zero-knowledge proofs to maximize user privacy and achieve identity security through a World ID managed by the user himself.
WorldApp not only becomes the "identity card" of the AI era, but also makes it easier for ordinary people to enter the encryption field.
The rise of cryptocurrency has brought about a huge change in the global economy. However, cryptocurrency users currently only account for 3% of the world's population. One of the main obstacles is the lack of accessibility, and the general public often finds it difficult to integrate into this field.
The founders of WorldCoin are deeply aware of this problem. In early 2020, Alex Blania hit it off with Sam Altman and Max Novendstern, "What if there was a way to distribute shares of digital tokens to everyone on the planet for free?" The three founders believe that the more people hold currency, the easier it is to send and receive payments with it. They hope to expand the popularity of cryptocurrency by building user-friendly tools and systems so that everyone can easily access digital assets, regardless of their location, income level or background, and can easily buy, sell and manage digital assets with just a few clicks.
WorldCoin is committed to building the world's largest and fair digital identity and digital currency system, and as a public utility, giving everyone ownership. It is designed to be decentralized, meaning that ultimately its supervision and decision-making will be borne by its user community. It consists of three parts:
• World ID – a privacy-focused digital identity that proves an individual’s unique identity.
• Worldcoin Token – the first globally freely distributed token to unique individuals for utility and future governance.
• World App – Enables global payments, purchases and transfers using Worldcoin tokens, digital assets, stablecoins and traditional currencies.
Since its initial release, 1.5 million people have joined the pre-release version of the World App, and more than 500,000 people use it each month. On average, the app processes about 60,000 transactions and 25,000 World ID checks per day. The WorldCoin team believes that if successful, World ID will become the largest network of real people on the Internet, available to everyone as a public product.
In terms of token distribution, the Worldcoin token is called $WLD, and the maximum supply is 10 billion.
1. 8 billion provided to the community.
2. $1 billion for long-term funding of the Worldcoin protocol (including grants to developers).
3. 1 billion for contributors and investors of Worldcoin protocols and tools. (100 million tokens were given to first round financing institutions)
Moreover, WorldCoin officials stated that 80% of the tokens are Grants and will not be sold to the public. Worldcoin tokens are expected to be launched in the first half of this year.
So, how do you get tokens?
1. Download the World App
2. Find the nearest Worldcoin operator in the World App
3. Complete the Orb QR code scanning and verification process with the help of the Worldcoin operator
4. Obtain a unique, fully functional world ID
WorldCoin officials specifically point out that World ID is designed to verify the uniqueness of the user, not the user's personal identity. Because biometric technology is involved, privacy is maintained at the highest standards. The image is processed in the Orb's local memory and then deleted. The output is just an iris code, which is a way to represent the iris texture with a number. Users can choose to opt in to back up their images.
Once verified, users can hold their World ID in the World App or in a wallet developed by WorldCoin Protocol partners in the future and use it to seamlessly log into websites, mobile applications, and crypto dapps. Users can also earn small amounts of free digital currency through the “Learn to Earn” feature in the World App.
Part 3 Altman creates a utopia in Web3
The capital strength behind WorldCoin cannot be underestimated. At the beginning of last year, Worldcoin's total token supply was valued at $3 billion through a $100 million token sale, with a16z and Khosla Ventures participating in the round. According to the Financial Times, Altman recently planned to raise another $100 million for Worldcoin.
Of course, investment institutions have their reasons for choosing it because of the founder, but what is the specific value of this project? In fact, one of the reasons that prevent the crypto industry from becoming a global virtual economy is that the crypto world lacks a credit system and arbitration institutions, and malicious actors can use multiple identities to commit fraud. This chaotic state hinders the development of cryptocurrency. Therefore, to ensure that the crypto industry can develop into a global Web3 economy, it is necessary to ensure that everyone can obtain a unique identity confirmation on the blockchain, which can reduce fraud and malicious behavior and increase trust. This is also the reason why DID projects are often called high-quality tracks with broad market prospects. WorldCoin uses iris recognition to solve the problem of unique real identity authentication. By establishing a reliable digital identity authentication system, it can reduce malicious behavior, increase trust, and make DeFi more inclusive and innovative.
The utopia envisioned by Altman is based on the authentication of a single true identity.
Many fields have already shown significant job losses due to generative AI models, but Altman has predicted that AI will create enough wealth to pay every adult a certain amount of money. To achieve this vision, Worldcoin firmly believes that decentralization is needed from the beginning to cope with future currency devaluation and has made universal basic income a core component of its vision to offset the loss of jobs caused by AI. WorldCoin aims to create a utopia and hopes to become the infrastructure for the implementation of universal basic income to contribute to solving the problem of job losses caused by AI.
In addition, WorldCoin also aims to achieve global governance and digital collective decision-making. Many Web3 projects adopt a token-based governance model, where each token has one vote. Although this model achieves decentralization and democratization to some extent, it may also exclude some individuals and favor those with greater economic power. To solve this problem, a reliable mechanism that can resist Sybil Attack is needed to simplify the implementation of an autonomous governance model based on unique human identity.
In this regard, WorldCoin's Proof of Person (PoP) credential system plays a key role. By utilizing Proof of Person (PoP), WorldCoin achieves the goal of truly governing the protocol by the people and ensures that everyone can benefit from it. This mechanism emphasizes the principle of "one person, one vote", allowing everyone to participate equally in the decision-making process without being interfered with by duplicate identities.
Conclusion
There are still a number of challenges to achieving WorldCoin's ambitious goals. The first is the feasibility and sustainability of universal basic income. Although the vision of providing everyone with universal basic income is attractive, how to actually raise and distribute funds is a complex issue. WorldCoin needs to develop a sustainable economic model to ensure that the source and use of funds are properly managed. At the same time, user privacy and data security are also an important consideration. As the basis of digital identity authentication, World ID needs to guarantee user privacy and data security. They need to protect users' personal information and comply with relevant data protection regulations. In addition, Worldcoin also needs to face challenges from traditional financial institutions and governments.
Despite all the challenges, the utopian world built by WorldCoin is still worth looking forward to. R3PO believes that the development of Web3 needs to go beyond simple fundraising and the superficial prosperity of ICO. The real Web3 revolution requires more visionary innovation and long-term persistence that is more in line with Web3 beliefs. WorldCoin has the potential to provide more equal and inclusive economic opportunities for people around the world. We look forward to Worldcoin becoming a force for industry change like the emergence of Open AI, and providing great help for a fairer and better world.
References:
1、OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman’s $200M bet that crypto will solve AI threat
https://cryptoslate.com/openai-co-founder-sam-altmans-200m-bet-that-crypto-will-solve-ai-threat/
2、HOW TO USE WORLD APP AND VERIFY YOUR WORLD ID
https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/how-to-use-world-app-verify-world-id
3、PROOF OF PERSONHOOD:What it is and why it’s needed
https://worldcoin.org/blog/worldcoin/proof-of-personhood-what-it-is-why-its-needed
4、HUMANNESS IN THE AGE OF AI
https://worldcoin.org/blog/engineering/humanness-in-the-age-of-ai
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