Open AI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman launched a project last year called Worldcoin, which uses iris-scanning technology and pays users in cryptocurrency. But governments around the globe are raising questions about how users' data is handled and how its algorithm is trained. WSJ reporter Angus Berwick joins host Zoe Thomas to explain.
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[00:00:00] I'm Scarlett Johansson. My family relied on public assistance to help provide meals for us. These meals help fuel my love for acting. When people are fed, futures are nourished. Join the movement to end hunger at feedingamerica.org slash act now. Brought to you by Feeding America and the Ad Council.
[00:00:18] Welcome to Tech News Briefing. It's Tuesday, August 20th. I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal.
[00:00:25] Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, has become the figurehead of the artificial intelligence revolution.
[00:00:32] At the same time, one of his other projects, WorldCoin, is aiming to save society from an AI-dominated world.
[00:00:40] But governments around the globe are raising concerns about WorldCoin's efforts to scan the eyeballs of every person on Earth and pay them in cryptocurrency.
[00:00:50] Today, we're bringing you that story.
[00:00:56] Sam Altman's WorldCoin initiative says it's addressing a potential risk.
[00:01:00] In a future where AI models might outsmart humans, how do you tell robots and humans apart?
[00:01:06] But more than a dozen jurisdictions around the globe have suspended WorldCoin's operations or looked into the way it handles user data.
[00:01:15] Our reporter Angus Baric is with us to talk through the project's strategy and the regulatory issues it's facing.
[00:01:21] So Angus, first off, how does the WorldCoin project, which is made up of WorldCoin and a company called Tools for Humanity, work?
[00:01:29] How does it verify humanness?
[00:01:31] WorldCoin, so they've manufactured these kind of basketball-sized chrome orbs.
[00:01:36] And within each orb, there's a kind of very sophisticated camera.
[00:01:41] What happens is that users, they stare into the camera, the camera kind of takes a very kind of high-quality image of their iris, and it then converts that image into a kind of a numerical code, a string of kind of ones and zeros.
[00:01:55] The code is then connected with a person's world ID, which is their kind of online passport.
[00:02:01] And you can then use that passport on other social media sites, such as Reddit or Shopify, and that will then verify you as a human.
[00:02:13] And for each person that goes through this verification process, they receive a payout in WorldCoin's own cryptocurrency, which is called WLD.
[00:02:21] There's two companies here.
[00:02:23] They launched Tools for Humanity to build the technology, and then they set up a Cayman Foundation, the WorldCoin Foundation.
[00:02:31] Which manages the data, the kind of the token issuances, and the IP.
[00:02:37] The totality of this is normally referred to as the WorldCoin project.
[00:02:42] What can users do with the cryptocurrency that they're given for signing up for WorldCoin?
[00:02:47] So WorldCoin say that at least what they want to happen is that people will use WLD, the cryptocurrency, in order to pay for real-world items, perhaps food and services.
[00:03:02] Sam himself has said that he kind of envisions WorldCoin as becoming this kind of globe-spanning financial network in which governments would be able to use to issue a universal basic income to people whose livelihoods have been disrupted by AI.
[00:03:20] But at the moment, I mean, what I can see from my reporting is that the way that WLD is being used today is pretty far from those ambitions.
[00:03:28] Like the trading volume in it daily is mainly speculative.
[00:03:33] How is WorldCoin handling all the data it collects on the users who sign up for it?
[00:03:37] So there are basically kind of two pools of data which WorldCoin collects through its operations.
[00:03:43] There are the iris codes, these strings and ones and zeros, each one which refers to a person's unique kind of iris signature.
[00:03:52] These codes, at least kind of under the current system, WorldCoin splits each code up and each kind of segment of the code is held on a different encrypted data store.
[00:04:03] And WorldCoin say that for someone to kind of break into this database, they would need to break into each data store separately and also obtain all the kind of the encryption keys, which they say, you know, would be a kind of monumental task.
[00:04:18] And that thus these codes are being kept in a very secure way.
[00:04:23] The other pool of data is that users have the option to opt in and share their original iris image with WorldCoin, which WorldCoin will then use to train their algorithms, which are learning how to recognize different people's irises.
[00:04:39] And this is where quite a lot of the controversy has stemmed from, because several regulators and kind of privacy advocates have accused WorldCoin's operators, who are the kind of independent contractors that manage the orbs.
[00:04:53] They've accused these people of inducing users to hand over this data.
[00:04:58] WorldCoin now say that, you know, they've put a lot of resources and time into training and that as of this moment, you know, no operators are being trained to encourage people to hand over that data.
[00:05:10] If people want to hand over that data, then that's up to them.
[00:05:13] Sam Altman didn't comment for your story, but what have the sources you've spoken to said about his involvement in WorldCoin's operations?
[00:05:20] So the people that I've spoken to who've worked there said that, you know, he, on a day-to-day basis, he is not that involved.
[00:05:28] He co-founded it.
[00:05:30] He's chairman of Tools for Humanity, the service provider.
[00:05:33] And in terms of kind of the overall vision of the company, that is very much, it very much plays a kind of key role in kind of world that he wants to build.
[00:05:44] Coming up, Altman wants to combat risks created by AI.
[00:05:49] But global authorities say his WorldCoin project has its own risks.
[00:05:54] We'll explain after the break.
[00:06:02] I'm Scarlett Johansson.
[00:06:03] My family relied on public assistance to help provide meals for us.
[00:06:06] These meals help fuel my love for acting.
[00:06:08] When people are fed, futures are nourished.
[00:06:11] Join the movement to end hunger at feedingamerica.org slash act now.
[00:06:15] Brought to you by Feeding America and the Ad Council.
[00:06:22] We're back with WSJ reporter Angus Barak talking about Sam Altman's WorldCoin initiative.
[00:06:28] Now, Angus, unlike other startups that begin in their domestic markets and then spread internationally,
[00:06:34] WorldCoin isn't offering its crypto token WLD in the U.S. because of what it says is an uncertain regulatory environment.
[00:06:41] But it has been gaining users in less developed markets like Indonesia, Kenya, Nigeria, and throughout Europe.
[00:06:50] Why are critics concerned about this?
[00:06:52] To critics, what they see is that WorldCoin, in order to train its algorithms and gather the data it needed to make its product function,
[00:07:02] they sort out territories where people had a lower technological literacy
[00:07:08] and where people would be more likely to hand over their biometric data in exchange for these crypto payouts.
[00:07:18] What WorldCoin says about this is that, you know, their product has always meant to be global.
[00:07:23] It's even in the name and that they needed to test these orbs in as many geographies and kind of areas as they could to see how it would withstand different climates.
[00:07:34] Let's talk about how governments have responded to this.
[00:07:37] Can you tell us what happened in Kenya?
[00:07:40] Kenya was a very popular early market for WorldCoin.
[00:07:42] And then within about three months of WorldCoin's public launch last year, they racked up about half a million kind of users.
[00:07:50] There are videos online that show immense queues of people, you know, lining up outside conference centers in Nairobi,
[00:07:58] waiting to get scanned by the orbs and receive their issuance of WLD,
[00:08:04] which during that period of time was worth in the region of $50,
[00:08:08] not inconsequential for kind of a regular citizen in Nairobi.
[00:08:13] Authorities that kind of cottoned onto this pretty quickly.
[00:08:16] And the police launched a criminal investigation into the kind of alleged illegal collection of biometric data.
[00:08:24] They, you know, interrogated WorldCoin's local staff.
[00:08:27] They raided a warehouse to seize a bunch of their orbs.
[00:08:32] And they even summoned several of WorldCoin's foreign representatives through Interpol.
[00:08:38] The parliament then held a public inquiry on the issue, which Alex Blania, WorldCoin's, the project CEO, kind of flew in to testify.
[00:08:46] The case, eventually what happened is that back a couple of months ago,
[00:08:51] the police closed their investigation and said that they won't be pressing charges.
[00:08:56] And it seems that there could now be a pathway for WorldCoin to kind of relaunch in Kenya.
[00:09:00] And Alex Blania, he was a California Institute of Technology researcher who was tapped by Altman to co-found the WorldCoin initiative.
[00:09:08] He also serves as CEO of Tools for Humanity, the U.S. company that builds the tech for WorldCoin.
[00:09:15] You know, Kenya is not the only place that WorldCoin is dealing with issues from authorities.
[00:09:20] What other concerns have been raised globally?
[00:09:22] We've tallied about at least over a dozen actions by authorities to either look into the company's operations or to suspend their operations locally.
[00:09:32] Spain, for instance, accused WorldCoin of scanning children and minors under the age of 18 at a large scale.
[00:09:39] Portugal accused WorldCoin of training its operators to, as I said, to encourage people to consent to hand over their iris images to train WorldCoin's algorithms.
[00:09:52] In Hong Kong, authorities, they said that they carried out a number of kind of clandestine visits to WorldCoin sites.
[00:10:00] And after their investigation, they issued a ban against WorldCoin in the territory.
[00:10:05] You know, in their decision, they also noted that they found that WorldCoin was keeping users' biometric data, the iris images, for up to a decade in order to train their algorithms.
[00:10:17] And WorldCoin, you know, and in each of these countries, you know, WorldCoin has been, they say that they've been engaging with regulators to try to assuage their concerns and kind of demonstrate how they've been improving their products to deal with these issues.
[00:10:32] So what's next for WorldCoin, given all of these investigations and regulatory concerns?
[00:10:39] The biggest thing on WorldCoin's horizon is the outcome of an investigation in the EU that will determine if the company can keep operating in Europe.
[00:10:49] This is an investigation which is being led by a kind of a state's data authority in Germany, which is where WorldCoin has a data processing subsidiary.
[00:10:58] The authority says that it expects to reach a decision as soon as a month.
[00:11:03] WorldCoin are obviously very focused on trying to convince this regulator that they should be able to continue operating in the EU.
[00:11:11] How has WorldCoin responded to the global regulatory actions?
[00:11:15] So WorldCoin, they say that they've launched kind of a breakthrough product, which is going to be, you know, vital in this kind of future where we're struggling to distinguish humans from the AI.
[00:11:27] They say that because it's so new and groundbreaking, that it's only natural that regulators struggle to understand the technology and that most of these investigations are simply, you know, regulators reaching out to try to understand what they're doing and that the company is taking the time to engage with regulators, incorporating their feedback and improving their systems.
[00:11:52] That was our reporter Angus Barrick.
[00:11:54] And that's it for Tech News Briefing.
[00:11:57] Today's show was produced by Julie Chang with supervising producer Catherine Millsop.
[00:12:01] I'm Zoe Thomas for The Wall Street Journal.
[00:12:03] We'll be back this afternoon with TNB Tech Minute.
[00:12:07] Thanks for listening.