Sam Altman, chief executive of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, has officially launched his new cryptocurrency project Worldcoin via Tools For Humanity, the company he co-founded in 2019.
Central to Worldcoin is the World ID ‘digital passport’ that “lets you prove you are a unique and real person while remaining anonymous”.
“As AI technology and adoption continue to advance globally, it’s more important than ever to establish and scale privacy-preserving proof of personhood online,” reads the website.
To do this, Tools For Humanity is deploying 1,500 Orbs, biometric imaging devices built for the Worldcoin project to “verify humanness and uniqueness in a secure and privacy-preserving way”.
Users who sign up to verify their identity through World ID will receive Worldcoin tokens (WLD) in return, which will presumably act as a proxy for the success of the project.
The group says that WLD holders will also be able to vote on governance proposals for the project.
According to CoinMarketCap, the Worldcoin token is currently valued at US$2.49 per token and has a market capitalisation of US$259mln.
Only one percent of the fully diluted supply is currently in circulation.
According to the white paper, 60% of the fully diluted supply is reserved for users who verify their identity through World ID.
Altman has suggested that the Worldcoin project could help preserve people’s identity in a world where artificial intelligence will play an increasingly central role.
"People will be supercharged by AI, which will have massive economic implications,” he told Reuters.
He specifically pointed out the possibility of using Worldcoin to distribute universal basic income (UBI).
Because AI "will do more and more of the work that people now do," Altman said that UBI can help to combat income inequality.
World ID, reckons Altman, could be used to distribute UBI payments.
"We think that we need to start experimenting with things so we can figure out what to do," he said.
Altman himself may have done more to advance the case for AI than anyone else recently.
His company’s ChatGPT large-language model became the fastest-growing user application of all time this year, although it was subsequently overpassed by Zuckerberg’s new Threads social media app.