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--:-- Annie Minoff: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Friday, May 9th.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: Last week, a new storefront opened in San Francisco. Our producer Sophie Kodner was there.
--:-- Sophie Kodner: And what brought you into the store today?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I heard about this store on news and social media. It sounded a bit mysterious, and I wanted to find out exactly what's going on. I'm not sure if I still do know exactly what's going on, but it's an interesting concept from what I could gather.
--:-- Sophie Kodner: Nothing's sold at this store, and what's actually going on inside sounds pretty sci-fi. People are getting their eyes, specifically their irises, scanned by a device called the orb.
--:-- Annie Minoff: What are your impressions of the orb?
--:-- Sophie Kodner: You know when you're not ready for the future, but it's now, it's that feeling. It's that feeling. The orbs are metallic spheres, about the size of volleyballs. Inside each one, there's a camera taking high-definition pictures of people's eyes.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The goal is to create individualized online IDs for each person, based on the unique patterns in their eyes.
--:-- Sophie Kodner: Did you get your eye scanned?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I did. Yes. Yes, I did. Okay, how'd it go?
--:-- Sophie Kodner: Pretty seamless, actually. It was quick. A minute, two minutes, and I was in.
--:-- Annie Minoff: All this eye scanning is part of a project called World. It's the brainchild of Sam Altman, the tech visionary and CEO of OpenAI.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: In Altman's view, what's happening in this San Francisco storefront could be part of the solution to a pressing problem, how to tell humans and AI apart.
--:-- Annie Minoff: We needed a way that we could know what content was made by a human, by an AI.
--:-- Sophie Kodner: The initial ideas were very crazy. Then we came down to one that was just a little bit crazy, which became World.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: Coming up on the show, Sam Altman's global project to tell man from machine.
--:-- Annie Minoff: CRM was supposed to improve customer relationships. Instead, it's shorthand for can't resolve much.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: On the ServiceNow AI platform, CRM stands for something better.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: Have you seen one of these orbs? Or touched one?
--:-- Angus Baric: Yeah, unfortunately, I have not seen one physically, and I have not yet scanned my iris.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So currently, there is no way to be assured that I am the real Angus Baric.
--:-- Angus Baric: My colleague Angus Baric has been following Sam Altman's eye scanning project.
--:-- Annie Minoff: As the CEO of OpenAI, Altman's had a front-row seat to AI advances, including helping to create chatbots like ChatGPT that sound a whole lot like humans.
--:-- Angus Baric: And that's where Altman saw a potential problem.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I think he saw that we were going to reach a point in the future where AI technology would be so advanced that we wouldn't really be able to distinguish it from humans, you know, and particularly kind of in an online setting.
--:-- Angus Baric: So you know that could apply to bots on social media or deepfake people on video calls
--:-- Annie Minoff: How far away did he think that future was?
--:-- Angus Baric: Because it almost feels like it's here.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I think what's most surprised me is how quickly this kind of Terminator-esque world is sort of arriving.
--:-- Angus Baric: Well, you know, we don't have the Terminator walking around, fortunately.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But yeah, the internet is a kind of drastically different place to how it was a couple of years ago.
--:-- Angus Baric: And I think this issue of kind of distinguishing man from machine is just becoming kind of very pressing across so many different parts of our society and economy.
--:-- Annie Minoff: This man or machine problem has come up in all sorts of areas. On social media, in online dating, e-commerce, education, and gaming.
--:-- Angus Baric: I think the point was made recently that for gamers, it used to be really easy to spot a bot because they would probably be jerky and probably just weren't playing as well as a human.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But now their abilities have kind of far outstripped even the nerdiest of human players.
--:-- Angus Baric: AI fakes are also becoming a problem in banking.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I think the sophistication of deepfakes now has reached a point that they can bypass like a bank or kind of financial firms, like customer checks, which typically rely on comparing your passport photo with like a scan of your face.
--:-- Angus Baric: Altman says he wanted to help solve this problem. And to do it, he co-founded World.
--:-- Annie Minoff: We wanted a way to make sure that humans stayed special and central in a world where the internet was going to have lots of AI-driven content.
--:-- Angus Baric: Obviously, the irony was that he was probably the foremost figure driving us toward this future as well.
--:-- Annie Minoff: You know, I think people have said that he has the virus on one hand and the antidote on the other.
--:-- Angus Baric: So how does World plan to identify real humans on the internet? That is where the orbs come in.
--:-- Annie Minoff: How does that process work? How does the scan happen?
--:-- Angus Baric: So there's an ultra-high-definition camera kind of loaded inside one of this orb, a shiny object about the size of a kind of basketball.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Then you would stare into the orb's camera.
--:-- Angus Baric: It would capture this image of your iris.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And then what the orb then does is that it converts that image into an immutable code.
--:-- Angus Baric: And that code is then kind of unique to you as an individual.
--:-- Annie Minoff: World says it then deletes the pictures of your eye. The only thing it says it retains is that individualized code.
--:-- Angus Baric: That iris code can then link to something called a world ID, basically your online proof of humanness.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I mean, isn't this just a fancy social security number? Like, why is it better than a passport or a password?
--:-- Angus Baric: So I think what they say is that the problem with, you know, for instance, like a passport or your kind of social security number is that that's kind of bound to the kind of confines of your nation.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And I think that, you know, they want a global solution that can be recreated anywhere around the world.
--:-- Angus Baric: Not everybody in the world has a passport. Passports can be forged, and they're not standardized around the world.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The world ID, on the other hand, could work for anyone, anywhere. Or at least that's the idea.
--:-- Angus Baric: And in Altman's kind of vision of the future, how are people using this code? Like, what's the scenario where I'm being asked to flash my world ID?
--:-- Annie Minoff: So you would be tagged, for instance, on Reddit or on a dating site or on a shopping site or a social media site, and you would then be tagged as a verified... Verified human.
--:-- Angus Baric: A verified human, exactly.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And if I'm speaking with you and your World ID, I can be confident that you're not a bot who is out to trick me.
--:-- Alex Blania: World had a problem. How to get people to stand in front of an orb and get their eyeballs scanned.
--:-- Annie Minoff: For a lot of people, staring into this orb and allowing it to scan my eye isn't the most enticing prospect.
--:-- Alex Blania: But World had a solution for that, too. It would give people a little extra incentive to get scanned.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The project developed its own cryptocurrency called WorldCoin.
--:-- Alex Blania: They have their own token called WLD. If you agree to get your eye scanned, you become eligible to claim some free WorldCoin.
--:-- Annie Minoff: WorldCoin's value fluctuates based on trading.
--:-- Alex Blania: When the project was launching, you know, one WLD token was worth around $10.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And I think so that people were receiving, you know, potentially up to about $100 just to participate in this.
--:-- Alex Blania: World had a vision, a technology, and a hook to get people to sign up. Now, it just had to start scanning people's eyes. That's next.
--:-- Annie Minoff: This episode is brought to you by LifeLock.
--:-- Alex Blania: Between two authentication strong passwords and a VPN you try to be in control of how your info is protected.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But many other places also have it, and they might not be as careful.
--:-- Alex Blania: That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats.
--:-- Annie Minoff: If your identity is stolen, they'll fix it. Guaranteed, or your money back.
--:-- Alex Blania: Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast for 40% off.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Terms apply.
--:-- Alex Blania: This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
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--:-- Alex Blania: Well, with the name Your Price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills.
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--:-- Alex Blania: World officially launched in July of 2023.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But they didn't start in the U.S. Instead, they went just about everywhere else.
--:-- Alex Blania: Kenya, Argentina, Germany, Spain, Hong Kong.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Operators scanned people's eyes in shopping malls and galleries, offering WorldCoin to those who participated.
--:-- Alex Blania: And they found plenty of takers.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Over the last week, more than 350,000 Kenyans have already gotten their eyes scanned here by the device in Nairobi.
--:-- Alex Blania: I think there was an infamous case in which thousands of people swarmed this WorldCoin site at this convention center in Nairobi.
--:-- Annie Minoff: These huge queues of people spilling out onto the roads.
--:-- Alex Blania: And I think there was a huge degree of intrigue.
--:-- Annie Minoff: There was also quite a lot of excitement about it, in part because people were able to receive these payouts of the cryptocurrency, which they could then swap for actual cash.
--:-- Alex Blania: Governments in some of those countries, though, were less than thrilled.
--:-- Annie Minoff: They were kind of caught off guard and were learning that there were troops of orb operators heading through their communities with the orbs in tow.
--:-- Alex Blania: World says that orbs currently delete photos of participants' eyes.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But in some countries, World has allowed people to later opt in and share their eye photos with the project to help train its algorithms.
--:-- Alex Blania: That has raised some issues.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Hong Kong, for example, banned World after finding it was retaining iris images for up to a decade.
--:-- Alex Blania: Authorities in Argentina accused World of having abusive user terms and launched investigations into it.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And in Spain, officials accused the project of scanning children's eyes.
--:-- Alex Blania: Let's talk about some of the main concerns.
--:-- Annie Minoff: What issues have critics raised with this project?
--:-- Alex Blania: The main concerns has been that, you know, effectively you could potentially have a private company collecting very kind of sensitive biometric data of people all around the world.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And if a database like that could ever be compromised, that would expose a lot of very sensitive biometric data.
--:-- Alex Blania: And I think the problem with biometric data, unlike, you know, for instance, like a passport, is, you know, once an image of my iris, once that's been released publicly, I can't, like, get another one.
--:-- Annie Minoff: You can't change your iris.
--:-- Alex Blania: So you're kind of now perpetually vulnerable to identity theft.
--:-- Alex Blania: I asked Alex Blania about some of the pushback that it's received.
--:-- Annie Minoff: What's your response to governments who have been uncomfortable with how you've rolled this out in the past?
--:-- Alex Blania: I think it's not all that surprising and something to be expected from the beginning.
--:-- Annie Minoff: If you are a data protection authority and you have a sci-fi-looking project launching in your country and saying, hey, we have these orbs that verify humanity, you know, I think it's very fair for a data protection authority to ask questions.
--:-- Alex Blania: And so my response is like, look, I think this is very important.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And I think it has all the properties that we all want for such technology, which is fully privacy preserving and anonymous.
--:-- Alex Blania: And so we will work with regulators around the world to explain them what this is.
--:-- Annie Minoff: For some of them, it will take time.
--:-- Alex Blania: And that's totally OK.
--:-- Alex Blania: What do you say to someone who might be in an Orb store right now trying to make this decision? Do I hand over to you, Alex Blania, and your company this very sensitive biometric data?
--:-- Annie Minoff: What would you say to them?
--:-- Alex Blania: So the first thing I would say is like you actually don't hand anything over.
--:-- Annie Minoff: It's a pretty complicated technology.
--:-- Alex Blania: And so first of all, the reaction is not surprising, I would say.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Like it's very understandable.
--:-- Alex Blania: You know, it feels like a very... It feels sci-fi.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And it's your eye. It feels very sci-fi.
--:-- Alex Blania: But the thing is like we really designed a system from the ground up.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So everything we do is open source or most of it is open source.
--:-- Alex Blania: And it designed in such a way that actually there is no central storage of the data.
--:-- Annie Minoff: It is very very far extreme on the privacy direction actually.
--:-- Alex Blania: Much more than basically anything else you could use.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And that, of course, is counterintuitive because you feel like, okay, your biometrics are involved.
--:-- Alex Blania: So it's a little hard to wrap your head around it.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But I think once this is getting more and more adoption, I think more and more people will understand that this is actually technology you can trust.
--:-- Alex Blania: And so I think we will get over this initial hump of, oh, this is like so weird or so sci-fi.
--:-- Alex Blania: Should governments be doing this?
--:-- Annie Minoff: I mean, you're doing this as a company, but verifying people's identities, you know, ID documents, that's traditionally been the purview of government.
--:-- Alex Blania: So actually, I think these are separate problems.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I think governments should still do identity verifications, like use kind of the social security number, all of those things.
--:-- Alex Blania: So what we do is, I think, strictly additive because verifying humanness on the Internet is a global scale topic.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And much more importantly, while we are a company, everything we do is designed to actually be a protocol.
--:-- Alex Blania: And so everything we do is open source and many different parties will come together to make this work.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So it's much more like the email protocol or something where we just set up the standard and we set up the technology, but it will only work if many, many probably big companies and potentially even governments, so we already work with some governments, will come together to make this technology work.
--:-- Alex Blania: So you really do see this as kind of a global infrastructure project?
--:-- Annie Minoff: Very much so, yeah.
--:-- Alex Blania: How do you imagine World is going to make money?
--:-- Annie Minoff: So there will be fees attached to it at some point.
--:-- Alex Blania: So if you have, like, assume you have a large notion network that will rely on that as their proof of human, they will have to pay some amount of fee for each of this human verification.
--:-- Annie Minoff: And so the platform itself, I think, will turn out to be very valuable.
--:-- Alex Blania: So that's not our concern at this point.
--:-- Angus Berwick: World has just launched in the U.S. finally.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Why now?
--:-- Angus Berwick: What's changed in the United States is the return of Donald Trump and his full-throated embrace of crypto.
--:-- Annie Minoff: So I think they now feel that they're not exposed to the legal dangers that they could have faced under the Biden administration.
--:-- Angus Berwick: And they can now start scanning irises and issuing WLD cryptocurrency, confident that they won't be obstructed.
--:-- Annie Minoff: I think that they plan to expand in the U.S. very aggressively.
--:-- Angus Berwick: And, you know, they plan to deploy several thousand orbs all around the country.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But I think ultimately, I guess it will depend on the public's appetite to participate in this project.
--:-- Angus Berwick: World is initially launching in Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, and of course, in San Francisco, where the orbs have already been booted up.
--:-- Annie Minoff: The QR code is invalid.
--:-- Angus Berwick: And that means that more people will soon be pondering a choice, to scan or not to scan.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Did you have any reservations? Were you debating it at all?
--:-- Angus Baric: I think there's always some reservations around biometric data, because it's something that's particularly personal to you, and there's nothing that you can do really to change it.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But I'm not someone that shies away from data sharing.
--:-- Angus Baric: I think your data's already out there for the most part.
--:-- Annie Minoff: Any reservations or fears? If I hypothetically get in trouble, will they be able to find me everywhere in the world?
--:-- Angus Baric: That's my wish or my worry.
--:-- Annie Minoff: But I think other than that, it's better to be ahead.
--:-- Annie Minoff: That's all for today, Friday, May 9th.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: Additional reporting in this episode from Sophie Cotner.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: The show is made by Catherine Brewer, Pia Gadkari, Carlos Garcia, Rachel Humphries, Sophie Codner, Brian Knudsen, Matt Kwong, Kate Linebaugh, Colin McNulty, Laura Morris, Enrique Perez de la Rosa, Sarah Platt, Alan Rodriguez Espinosa, Heather Rogers, Pierce Singhi, Jivika Verma, Jessica Mendoza, Lisa Wang, Catherine Whalen, Tatiana Zamis, and me, Annie Minoff, with help from Trina Menino.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: Our engineers are Griffin Tanner, Nathan Singapak, and Peter Leonard.
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--:-- Annie Minoff: Our theme music is by So Wiley. Additional music this week from Thanks for listening.
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