Tag: sam altman

OpenAI Dissolves High-Profile Safety Team After Chief Scientist Sutskever’s Exit

OpenAI has effectively dissolved a team focused on ensuring the safety of possible future ultra-capable artificial intelligence systems, following the departure of the group’s two leaders, including OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist, Ilya Sutskever.

Rather than maintain the so-called superalignment team as a standalone entity, OpenAI is now integrating the group more deeply across its research efforts to help the company achieve its safety goals, the company told Bloomberg News. The team was formed less than a year ago under the leadership of Sutskever and Jan Leike, another OpenAI veteran.

The decision to rethink the team comes as a string of recent departures from OpenAI revives questions about the company’s approach to balancing speed versus safety in developing its AI products. Sutskever, a widely respected researcher, announced Tuesday that he was leaving OpenAI after having previously clashed with Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman over how rapidly to develop artificial intelligence.

Leike revealed his departure shortly after with a terse post on social media. “I resigned,” he said. For Leike, Sutskever’s exit was the last straw following disagreements with the company, according to a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified in order to discuss private conversations.

In a statement on Friday, Leike said the superalignment team had been fighting for resources. “Over the past few months my team has been sailing against the wind,” Leike wrote on X. “Sometimes we were struggling for compute and it was getting harder and harder to get this crucial research done.”

Hours later, Altman responded to Leike’s post. “He’s right we have a lot more to do,” Altman wrote on X. “We are committed to doing it.”

Other members of the superalignment team have also left the company in recent months. Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov, were let go by OpenAI. The Information earlier reported their departures. Izmailov had been moved off the team prior to his exit, according to a person familiar with the matter. Aschenbrenner and Izmailov did not respond to requests for comment.

John Schulman, a co-founder at the startup whose research centers on large language models, will be the scientific lead for OpenAI’s alignment work going forward, the company said. Separately, OpenAI said in a blog post that it named Research Director Jakub Pachocki to take over Sutskever’s role as chief scientist.

“I am very confident he will lead us to make rapid and safe progress towards our mission of ensuring that AGI benefits everyone,” Altman said in a statement Tuesday about Pachocki’s appointment. AGI, or artificial general intelligence, refers to AI that can perform as well or better than humans on most tasks. AGI doesn’t yet exist, but creating it is part of the company’s mission.

OpenAI also has employees involved in AI-safety-related work on teams across the company, as well as individual teams focused on safety. One, a preparedness team, launched last October and focuses on analyzing and trying to ward off potential “catastrophic risks” of AI systems.

The superalignment team was meant to head off the most long term threats. OpenAI announced the formation of the superalignment team last July, saying it would focus on how to control and ensure the safety of future artificial intelligence software that is smarter than humans — something the company has long stated as a technological goal. In the announcement, OpenAI said it would put 20% of its computing power at that time toward the team’s work.

In November, Sutskever was one of several OpenAI board members who moved to fire Altman, a decision that touched off a whirlwind five days at the company. OpenAI President Greg Brockman quit in protest, investors revolted and within days, nearly all of the startup’s roughly 770 employees signed a letter threatening to quit unless Altman was brought back. In a remarkable reversal, Sutskever also signed the letter and said he regretted his participation in Altman’s ouster. Soon after, Altman was reinstated.

In the months following Altman’s exit and return, Sutskever largely disappeared from public view, sparking speculation about his continued role at the company. Sutskever also stopped working from OpenAI’s San Francisco office, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In his statement, Leike said that his departure came after a series of disagreements with OpenAI about the company’s “core priorities,” which he doesn’t feel are focused enough on safety measures related to the creation of AI that may be more capable than people.

In a post earlier this week announcing his departure, Sutskever said he’s “confident” OpenAI will develop AGI “that is both safe and beneficial” under its current leadership, including Altman.

© 2024 Bloomberg L.P.
 

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Pitches ChatGPT Enterprise to Large Firms, Including Some Microsoft Customers

OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman has hosted hundreds of Fortune 500 company executives in San Francisco, New York and London this month where he and other OpenAI executives pitched AI services for corporate use, going head-to-head in some cases with financial backer Microsoft, attendees told Reuters.

The roadshow-like events illustrate how the company credited with sparking the explosion of generative artificial intelligence with its consumer offering, is looking to grow new sources of revenue from corporates all over the world – some of it potentially on the home turf of its biggest partner.

The three meetings with senior corporate executives – two in the US last week and one in London on Monday – have not been reported previously.

Altman directly addressed more than 100 executives in each city at the events, according to attendees who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

At each event, Altman and chief operating officer Brad Lightcap offered product demonstrations, including ChatGPT Enterprise, the enterprise grade of its famous chatbot that generates text from simple prompts, software to connect customer applications to its AI services known as APIs, and its new text-to-video models.

OpenAI has promised that ChatGPT Enterprise customers’ data will not be used to train its models. Talking to potential customers from industries including finance, healthcare and energy, OpenAI executives highlighted a range of applications, such as call-center management and translation. They noted the consumer version of its chatbot is already in use by more than 92 percent of Fortune 500 companies.

Microsoft, the largest investor in OpenAI, offers access to OpenAI’s technology through its Azure cloud and by selling Microsoft 365 Copilot, a productivity tool powered by OpenAI’s models targeting enterprises.

Some executives in the audience at the events asked why they should pay for ChatGPT Enterprise if they are already customers of Microsoft, attendees said.

Altman and Lightcap responded that paying for the enterprise service allowed them to work with the OpenAI team directly, have access to the latest models and more opportunity to get customized AI products, according to attendees present.

OpenAI and Microsoft declined to comment.

OpenAI, last valued at $86 billion (roughly Rs. 7,18,998 crore) in a secondary sale, has been trying to diversify its revenue stream since its chatbot ChatGPT quickly gained popularity in late 2022. It is on track to achieve the $1 billion (roughly Rs. 8,359 crore) revenue target it projected for 2024, sources have said.

While trying to build out new products of consumers such as the marketplace ChatGPT stores, the company expects selling to enterprises to become a more meaningful part of its revenue. Lightcap told Bloomberg last week more than 600,000 people signed up to use ChatGPT Enterprise and Team, up from around 150,000 in January.

Lightcap, the main OpenAI executive focused on enterprise adoption, has also spent time in Hollywood talking to studio executives to promote the company’s Sora video creation tool. That technology, which can create and refine videos based on a user’s text description, has caused both excitement and anxiety within the creative industry.

Two major Hollywood studios told Reuters they are seeking early access to begin exploring applications, though there are some concerns about the source of the video used to train Sora, the reliability of the output and its ability to protect copyrighted works.

Fox and News Corp also hosted Altman at a leadership retreat last October, where he took part in a question-and-answer session, according to one source with knowledge of the session.

© Thomson Reuters 2024

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OpenAI Said to Court Hollywood in Meetings With Film Studios, Directors

OpenAI wants to break into the movie business.

The artificial intelligence startup has scheduled meetings in Los Angeles next week with Hollywood studios, media executives and talent agencies to form partnerships in the entertainment industry and encourage filmmakers to integrate its new AI video generator into their work, according to people familiar with the matter.

The upcoming meetings are just the latest round of outreach from OpenAI in recent weeks, said the people, who asked not to be named as the information is private. In late February, OpenAI scheduled introductory conversations in Hollywood led by Chief Operating Officer Brad Lightcap. Along with a couple of his colleagues, Lightcap demonstrated the capabilities of Sora, an unreleased new service that can generate realistic-looking videos up to about a minute in length based on text prompts from users. Days later, OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman attended parties in Los Angeles during the weekend of the Academy Awards.

The ChatGPT maker unveiled Sora in mid-February with a series of high-definition clips that instantly captured the attention of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Sora isn’t available to the public yet, but OpenAI has already granted access to a few big-name actors and directors.

“OpenAI has a deliberate strategy of working in collaboration with industry through a process of iterative deployment – rolling out AI advances in phases – in order to ensure safe implementation and to give people an idea of what’s on the horizon,” a spokesperson for OpenAI said in a statement. “We look forward to an ongoing dialogue with artists and creatives.”

AI is a divisive subject in Hollywood. Many filmmakers and studios already rely on AI in pre-production and post-production, and recognize the promise of a new crop of artificial intelligence tools. But the rise of generative AI services — which can quickly spit out text, images, audio and, increasingly, short videos in response to queries from users — has also raised concerns about upending the livelihoods of everyone from illustrators to voice actors.

Screenwriters and actors went on strike last year in part to fight for protections with the use of the technology. Both unions later secured some safeguards for how AI is used in the entertainment industry. Media companies are also wary of allowing OpenAI to train its models on their work without compensating them. Outlets including CNN, Fox Corp. and Time Magazine have had discussions about licensing their work to OpenAI, Bloomberg has reported.

OpenAI is courting Hollywood as it tries to catch up with the competition. Technology giants Meta Platforms Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google have previously unveiled text-to-video research projects. A growing number of well-funded AI startups, including Runway AI Inc., Pika and Stability AI, are working on this technology as well.

Runway, a leader in the market, previously told Bloomberg that its Gen-2 text-to-video service is already being used by millions of people, including professionals at production and animation studios who rely on it for previsualization and storyboarding. Film editors are also creating videos with Runway and combining them with other footage to make B-roll or visual effects, the company said.

OpenAI’s Sora is still in the research preview stage, the company said, and no pricing has been set.

© 2024 Bloomberg L.P.

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OpenAI’s Sam Altman Highlights Importance of Worldcoin Global Identity Project as AI Picks Pace

The buzz around the Worldcoin project rose and fizzled in days around August this year. Some much needed support from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman to this project, however, has propelled the Worldcoin initiative back onto the headlines. Altman was recently speaking in an interview when he lauded the concept of the Worldcoin project. The web3 initiative, brainchild of Altman himself, aims to issue a global identity of individual humans on blockchain to distinguish them from AI and robots.

In conversation with investment bank FT Partners, Altman reportedly said, “in a world with a lot of AI, knowing who is human matters more and more.”

This statement from OpenAI’s chief came just days after reports surfaced that Worldcoin’s parent company called Tools for Humanity was looking to bag a funding of at least up to $50 million (roughly Rs. 415 crore). To do so, the company is selling Worldcoin ‘s native WLD tokens at slashed prices.

After governments of multiple countries opened inquiries on Worldcoin, it may have resulted in some slowdown for the project’s fundings. For the authorities of Kenya, Germany, and the UK, among other nations – Worldcoin’s requirement for people to register their iris scans did not bode well. The Kenyan law enforcement officers, in particular, also seized Worldcoin’s records and Orb machines to be investigated by Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters.

Earlier this year in May, investment firms like Blockchain Capital, a16z crypto, and Bain Capital Crypto injected $115 million (roughly Rs. 955 crore) into Worldcoin in a Series C funding round.

Since August this year, the project has stayed away from the spotlight up until now when Altman said, “the belief was and is that as AI becomes an increasingly important part of our lives…the ability to identify unique humans was going to be more and more important.”

The San Francisco, US-based company is looking to assign ‘World IDs’ to global citizenry. With this ‘international proof of personhood’, Worldcoin believes that people will no longer need to share their personal details like names, numbers, and email IDs in order to connect with websites.

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Sam Altman to Return as OpenAI CEO Days After Ouster, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella Calls It ‘Essential Step’

OpenAI on Tuesday said it reached an agreement for Sam Altman to return as CEO days after his ouster, capping frenzied discussions about the future of the startup at the center of the artificial intelligence boom.

In addition to Altman’s return, the company agreed in principle to partly reconstitute the board of directors that had dismissed him. Bret Taylor, formerly co-CEO of Salesforce, and Larry Summers, former US Treasury Secretary, will join Quora CEO and current director Adam D’Angelo, OpenAI said.

Altman said in a post on X, “i’m looking forward to returning to openai.”

The board had given few details explaining Altman’s firing on Friday, other than his lack of candor and its need to defend OpenAI’s mission developing AI to benefit humanity.

The deal to restore Altman ushers in a potentially new era for the startup – a non-profit – which long juggled concerns among staff about AI’s dangers and its potential for commercialization. Tuesday’s reshuffle appeared to favor Altman and financial backer Microsoft, which is rolling out OpenAI’s technology to business customers globally.

In a statement on X, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella welcomed the changes to OpenAI’s board.

“We believe this is a first essential step on a path to more stable, well-informed, and effective governance,” he said.

Altman’s return also caps a tumultuous weekend that saw him agree to head a new research team at Microsoft, which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI and given it the computing power necessary for its technology.

That followed a rejection by OpenAI’s board of his first attempt to return to the startup, on Sunday, by naming ex-Twitch boss Emmett Shear as interim CEO.

“While it’s still unclear exactly what the tug-of-war prompting his initial departure involved, Sam Altman’s views about how to run the company will dominate future direction, especially given he’ll be supervised under a new board,” said Susannah Streeter, head of money and markets at Hargreaves Lansdown.

In a post on X, Shear celebrated the late-night outcome Tuesday, which he said followed “~72 very intense hours of work.”

“This was the pathway that maximized safety alongside doing right by all stakeholders involved,” Shear said.

Altman’s dismissal had brought uncertainty for OpenAI and Microsoft alike, which had moved quickly to control damage over the weekend by vowing to hire him and Greg Brockman, president of the startup.

Brockman, who had quit after Altman was ousted, said in a post on X that he was “getting back to coding tonight.”

Nearly all of OpenAI’s over 700-strong staff on Monday had threatened to leave unless the board stepped down and reinstated Altman, according to a letter reviewed by Reuters.

Following this show of solidarity, Altman wrote on X: “we have more unity and commitment and focus than ever before.”

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Fired by ChatGPT Board: Details

The board of the company behind ChatGPT late on Friday fired OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — to many, the human face of generative AI — sending shock waves across the tech industry.

OpenAI’s Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati will serve as interim CEO, the company said, adding that it will conduct a formal search for a permanent CEO.

The announcement blindsided many employees who discovered the abrupt management shuffle from an internal announcement and the company’s public facing blog. 

“Altman’s departure follows a deliberative review process by the board, which concluded that he was not consistently candid in his communications with the board, hindering its ability to exercise its responsibilities,” OpenAI said in the blog without elaborating.

Greg Brockman, OpenAI president and co-founder, who stepped down from the board as chairman as part of the management shuffle, quit the company, he announced on messaging platform X late on Friday. “Based on today’s news, I quit,” he wrote.

Backed by billions of dollars from Microsoft, OpenAI kicked off the generative AI craze last November by releasing its ChatGPT chatbot, which became one of the world’s fastest-growing software applications.

Trained on reams of data, generative AI can create brand-new human-like content, helping users spin up term papers, complete science homework and even write entire novels. After ChatGPT’s launch, regulators scrambled to catch up: the European Union revised its AI Act undefined and the US kicked off AI regulation efforts.

Altman, who ran Y Combinator, is a serial entrepreneur and investor. He was the face of OpenAI and the wildly popular generative AI technology as he toured the world this year.

Altman posted on X shortly after OpenAI published its blog: “I loved my time at OpenAI. it was transformative for me personally, and hopefully the world a little bit. most of all i loved working with such talented people. will have more to say about what’s next later.”

Altman did not return requests for comment. OpenAI was not reachable for further comment.

Murati, who has worked for Tesla previously, joined OpenAI in 2018 and later became the company’s chief technology officer. She oversaw products launches including ChatGPT.

At an emergency all-hands meeting on Friday afternoon after the announcement, Murati sought to calm employees and said OpenAI’s partnership with Microsoft is stable and its backer’s executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, continue to express confidence in the startup, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The Information previously reported details of the meeting.

“Microsoft remains committed to Mira and their team as we bring this next era of AI to our customers,” a spokesperson for the software maker told Reuters on Friday.

In a statement published on Microsoft’s website Nadella added: “We have a long-term agreement with OpenAI…  Together, we will continue to deliver the meaningful benefits of this technology to the world.”

Earthquake

Well wishers and critics piled onto digital forums as the news spread.

On X, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called Altman “a hero of mine,” adding “He built a company from nothing to $90 billion (Rs. 7,50,000 crore) in value, and changed our collective world forever. I can’t wait to see what he does next. I, and billions of people, will benefit from his future work — it’s going to be simply incredible.”

“This is a shocker and Altman was a key ingredient in the recipe for success of OpenAI,” Daniel Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities said. “That said, we believe Microsoft and Nadella will exert more control at OpenAI going forward with Altman gone.”

The full impact of the OpenAI surprise will unfold over time, but its fundraising prospects were an immediate concern. Altman was considered a master fundraiser who managed to negotiate billions of dollars in investment from Microsoft as well as having led the company’s tender offer transactions this year that fueled OpenAI’s valuation from $29 billion (nearly Rs. 2,41,500 crore) to over $80 billion (nearly Rs. 6,66,300 crore).

“In the short term it will impair OpenAI’s ability to raise more capital. In the intermediate term it will be a non-issue,” said Thomas Hayes, chairman at hedge fund Great Hill Capital.

Other analysts said Altman’s departure, while disruptive, would not derail generative AI’s popularity or OpenAI or Microsoft’s competitive advantage.

“The innovation created by OpenAI is bigger than any one or two people, and there is no reason to think this would cause OpenAI to cede its leadership position,” said DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria. “If nothing else, Microsoft’s stake and significant interest in OpenAI’s progress ensure the appropriate leadership changes are being implemented.”

As late as Thursday evening, Altman showed no signs of concern at two public events. He joined colleagues in a panel on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference in San Francisco, describing his commitment and vision for AI.

Later he spoke at a Burning Man-related event in Oakland, California, engaging in an hour-long conversation on the topic of art and AI. Altman seemed relaxed and gave no indication anything was wrong, but left right after his talk was over at 7:30 pm.

The event organizer said at the event that Altman had another meeting to attend.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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Worldcoin Office Searched in Nairobi, Kenyan Authorities Confiscate Stored Records: Report

Kenya’s scepticism around the controversial Web3 project, Worldcoin, seems to be growing with each passing day. Over the weekend, Kenyan authorities reportedly raided the office of Worldcoin in Nairobi, only to confiscate all the stored information of the users who registered with the project. The development followed an official government order there, which suspended Worldcoin-related activities indefinitely, for the time being. The controversial project is the brainchild of Sam Altman, the founder of ChatGPT parent firm, OpenAI.

Officially launched on July 24, Altman’s Worldcoin project is aiming to create a network of ‘real humans’ and no robots. The San Francisco, US-based company is looking to assign ‘World IDs’ to global citizenry. Altman aims to give real humans a ‘global identity of personhood’, which will eliminate the need for them to reveal their personal details just to interact with websites. To do so, the project requires people to submit their eye scans as a biometric verification, which Worldcoin is obtaining via its own spherical machine, called the Orb.

As part of its raid, the Kenyan law enforcement officers have reportedly seized Worldcoin’s records and machines. The confiscated items have been taken to Kenya’s Directorate of Criminal Investigations headquarters for due analysis.

Tools for Humanity, the parent company of Worldcoin, has been accused of not disclosing its true intentions when it registered in Kenya. Immaculate Kassait, the commissioner of Kenya’s Office of the Data Protection, is overseeing the investigations.

The Kenyan authorities shifted its focus to Worldcoin after hundreds of people began queuing to get registered for the project since its official launch in July. All registered nationals have submitted their iris scans into the Orbs. Videos of them doing so have emerged on social media.

People who sign up for their World IDs are also eligible to claim the WLD token, which is the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain-based project. In the backdrop of this ongoing Worldcoin controversy, the pricing of the WLD token dropped from $2.26 (roughly Rs. 187) on August 4, to $1.92 (roughly Rs. 158) on August 8.

Crypto founders and industry insiders remain sceptical of Worldcoin as well. Sathvik Vishwanath, Co-Founder and CEO of Unocoin crypto exchange, said the Worldcoin project raises “serious privacy concerns” over its collection of biometric data. “Although the project team, led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, said Orb does not store user data, sceptics remained wary,” Vishwanath added.

Worldcoin has reached India as well. Several metro stations in and around the National Capital Region (NCR) and some spots in tech hub Bengaluru have Worldcoin booths with people queuing up for registrations.

Indian authorities have not yet joined France, Germany, and Kenya in opening probes against Worldcoin.

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What is the Controversial Worldcoin Project All About and Why are Nations Concerned: Details

Worldcoin, a billion-dollar startup founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, has created ripples in the Web3 space in the last two weeks. Officially launched on July 24, Worldcoin is aiming to create a network of ‘real humans’ and no robots. The San Francisco, US-based company is looking to assign ‘World IDs’ to global citizenry. With this ‘international proof of personhood’, Worldcoin believes that people will no longer need to share their personal details like names, numbers, and email IDs in order to connect with websites.

Within two weeks of its launch, over two million people from around the world have signed up with Worldcoin. People who sign-up for their World IDs are also eligible to claim the WLD token, which is the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain-based project.

At the time of writing, each WLD token was priced at $2.26 (roughly Rs. 187), showed CoinMarketCap. The total market cap of the WLD token currently stands at $266 million (roughly Rs. 2,207 crore).

Soon after the project went live, Worldcoin sign-up booths were installed in different countries. In India, several metro stations in and around the National Capital Region (NCR) and some in India’s tech hub Bengaluru have Worldcoin booths with people queuing up for registrations.

While the cause that Altman’s Worldcoin is trying to chase may seem noble in terms of offering security to user data, the project has received major backlash from several nations.

Those looking to register themselves for their World IDs are required to submit their biometrics with the company. Taking eye scans via its orb is Worldcoin’s way of ensuring verification of each signing-up user.

This requirement has raised concerns among world governments with regards to security of their citizens as well as their countries. Policymakers are also worried about people being exposed to free WLD tokens that are being given as incentives for people signing up.

Kenya is among the first nations to take a stringent step towards controlling the Worldcoin craze — by suspending it indefinitely for the time being.

In an official statement this week, Kenya’s ministry of interior and national administration said, “Relevant security, financial services, and data protection agencies have commenced inquiries to establish the authenticity and legality of the aforesaid activities”.

To oversee and tackle the Worldcoin frenzy in France and Germany, regulators of the European Union are reportedly opening probes on the project.

India has released no such notice for Worldcoin, as of now.

For now, neither Altman nor the Worldcoin team has reacted to Kenya’s suspension.

“Worldcoin aims to establish universal access to the global economy regardless of country or background. It is designed to become the world’s largest human identity and financial network, giving ownership to everyone. All with the intention of welcoming every person on the planet and establishing a place for all of us to benefit in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI),” the project’s website reads.

In March, the company said that the simplest way to use World ID is as a sign-in method.

“Upon selecting Sign in with Worldcoin on a website, mobile app or crypto dapp, you approve or reject the request from your self-custodial wallet to authenticate and prove you’re a real and unique person. No one, not even Worldcoin contributors or application developers, can track you across websites, identify the World ID connected to your account or generally know more about you,” the firm noted.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s Worldcoin Crypto Under European Regulators Scrutiny

Less than a week after its launch, the Worldcoin crypto project of OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman is already under scrutiny by European regulators over its reliance on an eye scan to verify a user’s identity, France’s data protection agency said Friday.

Worldcoin’s launch on Monday comes as the cryptocurrency industry is suffering hard times after the spectacular collapse of FTX and various legal cases against the sector’s biggest players.

Using eye scans, it tries to solve one of the main challenges facing the crypto industry: a level of anonymity so high that makes it vulnerable to scams and spam bots — which AI threatens to make exponentially worse. 

But Worldcoin’s collection of biometric data could run afoul of strict data privacy rules in Europe.

“Worldcoin has begun to collect data in France… which seems questionable as does the conservation of biometric data,” France’s CNIL data regulator told AFP.

After conducting an initial review, CNIL said it identified its counterpart in the German state of Bavaria as the lead agency in Europe to conduct a probe into Worldcoin, and said it supports their investigation.

Worldcoin in fact began operating in June in Germany, which is the home country of co-founder Alex Blania.

Bavaria’s data protection agency had no immediate comment when contacted by AFP on Friday.

With its cryptocurrency and identification system Worldcoin aims to create the “world’s largest identity and financial public network,” according to its website.

Altman and Blania said earlier this week in a letter posted to Twitter, which is being renamed X, that the Worldcoin offers “a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy”.

This will in turn enable Worldcoin as a blockchain-based technology to drastically increase economic opportunity and enable democratic processes.

Blockchains are distributed databases that facilitate the verification and traceability of transactions. 

They can offer lower costs and faster data transfer while ensuring secure transactions, although the most famous blockchain that powers the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, is notorious for being slow and expensive as it requires huge computer processing power to validate transactions as part of its system to reward processors with new bitcoins.

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OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Launches Worldcoin Cryptocurrency Project: Details

Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency project founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, launches on Monday.

The project’s core offering is its World ID, an account that only real humans can get. To get a World ID, a customer signs up to do an in-person iris scan using Worldcoin’s ‘orb’, a silver ball approximately the size of a bowling ball. Once the orb’s iris scan verifies the person is a real human, it creates a World ID.

The company behind Worldcoin is San Francisco and Berlin-based Tools for Humanity.

The project has 2 million users from its beta period, and with Monday’s launch, Worldcoin is scaling up “orbing” operations to 35 cities in 20 countries. As an enticement, those who sign up in certain countries will receive Worldcoin’s cryptocurrency token WLD.

The cryptocurrency aspect of the World IDs is important because cryptocurrency blockchains can store the World IDs in a way that preserves privacy and can’t be controlled or shut down by any single entity, co-founder Alex Blania told Reuters.

The project says World IDs will be necessary in the age of generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which produce remarkably humanlike language. World IDs could be used to tell the difference between real people and AI bots online.

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange, said it will list Worldcoin with the tentative opening of trading expected to be on Monday at 0900 GMT.

Altman told Reuters Worldcoin also can help address how the economy will be reshaped by generative AI.

“People will be supercharged by AI, which will have massive economic implications,” he said.

One example Altman likes is universal basic income, or UBI, a social benefits program usually run by governments where every individual is entitled to payments. Because AI “will do more and more of the work that people now do,” Altman believes UBI can help to combat income inequality. Since only real people can have World IDs, it could be used to reduce fraud when deploying UBI.

Altman said he thought a world with UBI would be “very far in the future” and he did not have a clear idea of what entity could dole out money, but that Worldcoin lays groundwork for it to become a reality.

“We think that we need to start experimenting with things so we can figure out what to do,” he said.

© Thomson Reuters 2023

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