Odd Lots

The Eye-Scanning Orb That Lets Humans Prove They’re Human

New technology to save us from new technology?

A Worldcoin orb on the Odd Lots set.

Source: Joe Weisenthal, Bloomberg
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There are all kinds of societal concerns emerging out of the rise of artificial intelligence. Will it put us all out of work? Will fraudsters be able to use deepfakes — technology that can replicate our images and our voices — to scam us? We're in uncharted territory and nobody knows for sure how society will negotiate these risks. While many people are familiar with ChatGPT, its founder Sam Altman also co-founded Worldcoin, which aims to mitigate these risks. Enter: The Orb, an eyeball-scanning device that could provide everyone with a unique personal identifier. Think a global social security number, except you never have to share what it is with anyone. On this episode, we speak with Alex Blania, the CEO and co-founder of Tools For Humanity, the developer behind the Orb and the Worldcoin project, on his company's vision for how this tech can be used for things like proving one's humanness or collecting a Universal Basic Income in a world where AI predominates. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.