GM,
Blocktrend's first movie screening event was successfully held last weekend. Afterward, we received several pieces of feedback, all saying the movie was much better than expected. And it's true!
Before the event began, I asked everyone why they decided to participate. Some were there to show their support for the cause, others came to meet fellow members, and some simply wanted to enjoy snacks and watch a movie on a Saturday night. The atmosphere throughout the event was lighthearted and fun. The most memorable part was after the movie ended, when everyone shared their favorite moments. It was fascinating to learn that different scenes resonated with different people, something you don't quite experience when watching streaming content alone.
Now, onto the main topic.
Last week, the eye-scanning iris project, Worldcoin, held a product launch event. In addition to announcing its rebranding to World Network (hereafter referred to as "World"), they also revealed plans to expand into Taiwan. In the near future, you might see people in the streets of Taipei lining up to scan their irises in exchange for a monthly Universal Basic Income in WLD tokens. When that time comes, everyone will face a natural question: Should I give it a try? Let's start with the famous Turing Test.
Turing Test
Imagine you open a dating app and start chatting with a new friend. The conversation is going great, and the other person seems genuinely interested in you. But how can you be sure that you're talking to a real human and not a highly skilled chatbot?
In 1950, British mathematician Alan Turing proposed a method called the Turing Test. For decades, it has been the academic gold standard for determining whether you're interacting with a human or a machine. The concept of the Turing Test is quite simple and only requires three "people"—two humans and one machine. None of them know each other, and they can only communicate through text-based questions and answers.
Turing's hypothesis was that machines can't think as well as humans. So, one human participant asks questions to the other two "people." After a few rounds of Q&A, the human questioner should be able to pick up subtle clues and accurately identify which is the human and which is the machine. If the questioner cannot distinguish between the two through their responses, then the machine has successfully passed the Turing Test by imitating a human convincingly.
As we enter 2024, the Turing Test has started to show its limitations. A paper published last year in the scientific journal Nature declared that ChatGPT had successfully passed the Turing Test. In other words, the Turing Test is no longer enough. Ahead of us lies an uncharted territory where new methods must be developed to distinguish between humans and machines.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, recognized this issue earlier than most. In 2021, he introduced the World project. Altman believes that AI will generate vast amounts of wealth for society, but it may also replace many jobs. As a result, the World project revolves around two main ideas:
Distinguishing between humans and machines
Making humans shareholders in the machines1
If we all become shareholders in the machines, there’s no need to fear them taking over our jobs. Instead, we would be happy to let the machines do the work while we earn universal basic income. To achieve these two goals, Altman introduced a series of innovations: iris scanning, cryptocurrency, the World App wallet, and the World Chain blockchain.
World is Coming
The biggest highlight of the recent World launch event was the introduction of a new iris-scanning device called the Orb, which is now available for pre-order online. Out of curiosity, I decided to pre-order one myself while writing this article. For a $100 deposit, the pre-order is secured, and the device is expected to be delivered in the second quarter of 2025. Perhaps we can even host a small gathering for Blocktrend members to scan their irises together when the device arrives.
World aims to create a unique digital identity for every person on Earth through its Orb device — the World ID. World ID is a digital certificate that users must store in their World App wallet on their phones. With this certificate, you are verified as a real person by World, and in addition to receiving monthly WLD cryptocurrency, it has other, more urgent applications.
A few months ago, a terrifying deepfake scam occurred in Hong Kong. An employee from the finance department of a multinational company received a text message from someone claiming to be the CFO of the UK headquarters, stating that they were conducting a confidential transaction and requesting the employee's attendance at an online video meeting to prepare for a wire transfer. During the meeting, the Hong Kong employee followed the "CFO's" instructions and made 15 separate transfers, totaling HKD 200 million, to various designated accounts. It was only later that they discovered the entire video call was a scam.
Hackers used deepfake technology to mimic the CFO's voice and lip movements, successfully carrying out the sophisticated attack. Some might argue that the employee was careless and should have double-checked, but police investigations revealed that the hackers had already gained the employee’s trust through prior communications via WhatsApp and email, and even engaged in one-on-one video calls without being detected. So, what can be done?
World is stepping forward with a solution. The upcoming product, Deep Face, claims to use World ID to counter deepfake attacks, allowing people to trust what they see online. As shown in the image below, it can integrate with popular video conferencing tools like Zoom, Facetime, and Google Meet. Users with World ID will have a QR code displayed in the bottom right corner of their screen, allowing others to verify that the person on the screen is truly them.
This is because when people scan their irises with the Orb machine, it also takes a photo of their face. In the future, when using World ID to prove their identity in video conferencing software, users will need to open the World App wallet and take a selfie again. The system will compare the two photos for similarity. Even if someone looks similar, without their personal World ID stored in the wallet, they won't be able to pass the verification. Only the actual person can successfully pass both the facial recognition and hold the wallet's private key at the same time.
And that’s how it works. In the future, the first thing people will likely say when joining a meeting online won’t be “Can you hear me?” but instead, they’ll scan a QR code to verify that the person on the other side isn’t a robot. Reading this makes you appreciate how Sam Altman has managed to excel at creating both AI and anti-AI products at the same time.
However, the biggest concern about the World project remains privacy and security risks. Isn’t it too risky for one company to handle people’s iris scans, facial photos, and wallet private keys simultaneously?
Privacy Concerns
Because World collects people’s iris data, the project has been banned by several governments since its launch. The distribution of unconditional basic income in the form of WLD tokens has also been criticized by media as paying for personal data2. Although I pre-ordered the Orb machine, I’m still hesitant about actually scanning my iris. After all, both World ID and WLD tokens have no concrete applications so far, and the fact that its leader’s name is Sam doesn’t exactly inspire confidence (just kidding).
What if this personal data is misused? World’s response is: “We don’t want to know who you are, we just want to verify that you’re human.”
In its privacy white paper, World mentions that Elon Musk once vowed to eliminate scam bots from the X platform. However, after taking over, he realized it was extremely difficult to eliminate AI bots without affecting the user experience. Not only can AI easily bypass account creation processes, but today's scam bots are even willing to invest in paid verification badges.
If presenting identification and paying with a card are no longer sufficient to verify identity, does that mean in-person verification is the only option? World suggests that World ID could solve this issue.
By scanning the iris and taking a photo with the Orb, it’s essentially like an in-person check. However, the Orb doesn’t retain users’ raw data. Instead, the data is converted into a string, encrypted, and fragmented, using multi-party computation to ensure personal information remains secure. You can think of the Orb as a highly capable but forgetful receptionist—it quickly identifies people by their biometric traits but can’t remember them afterward. This balances identifying real individuals while protecting their privacy. In the future, users won’t need to worry about exposing their personal data when showing their World ID, because the system uses zero-knowledge proofs3, allowing users to confirm their identity without revealing any personal information to platforms like X.
Based on objective information, World has made considerable efforts to address public concerns, and even Vitalik agrees that World is handling privacy issues more seriously than many tech giants. Yet, I still don’t feel entirely confident in this project.
Perhaps it’s because the potential consequences of iris data leaks are unclear, or maybe it’s seeing OpenAI, under Sam Altman’s leadership, undergo significant organizational changes and shifts in founding members. It makes me question whether we should trust such critical personal data to someone overseeing such an unstable organization. While intuition might be wrong, and open-source, encryption, and decentralization offer scientific safeguards, if the Orb were available tomorrow, I’d still choose to wait a little longer.
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