If Sam Altman gets his way, it may not be long until you’ll have to scan your eyeball to buy concert tickets.
Driving the news: World (formerly Worldcoin), the startup co-founded by OpenAI chief Sam Altman, has upgraded its human verification tool, World ID, and is now integrating it into a number of companies’ apps, including Shopify, Zoom, Tinder, and DocuSign.
To guard against deepfake impersonation and fraud, Zoom and DocuSign plan to use World ID to verify that the users on video calls or signing documents are, in fact, the people they say they are.
Another World ID feature called Concert Kit would allow artists to only sell tickets to verified human buyers, blocking out bots that buy tickets en masse for the resale market.
Catch-up: World ID is like a more extreme version of that little “I’m not a robot” box that pops up sometimes. It has three tiers for confirming identity: a selfie, a government ID, and an in-person biometric eye scan at one of the company’s iris “orbs.” Companies using World ID then decide what level of verification they require from users.
Why it matters: We may not be far away from a reality where we will have to hand over our biometric data to prove our “humanness” before doing anything from signing a legal document to making an online dating profile.
Our take: The need for a human-verification system in the age of AI agents and deepfakes is real, but entrusting a Sam Altman-led startup with that immense responsibility (and power) may be shortsighted.
Altman has been described by people close to him as a pathological liar, was temporarily ousted from OpenAI (in part) for prioritizing quick product releases over public safety, and reportedly tosses off one-liners that sound close to something a movie villain would say, like “I don’t care about money. I care more about power.”
Bottom line: A JPMorgan note earlier this month summed up the irony of AI tools being positioned as the only solution to problems caused by AI tools: it “feels like an arsonist selling fire extinguishers.”—LA
