WEBVTT

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- [Narrator] This is Future Tech,

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where each week we
discuss the good, the bad,

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and the ugly of where tech
is headed in 2023 and beyond.

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- Sam Altman's latest
play for world domination

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has launched out of beta.

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Worldcoin is live and our reporter

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went to get his eyeballs scanned.

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Tom, how was it getting your
eyes scanned by Worldcoin?

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- You know, it was a little underwhelming.

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And the most disappointing part, right,

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is the idea is that Worldcoin is creating

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this like identification system

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where they're trying to work on a way

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to root out bots, right?

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So the idea is they scan
your eyeball, your iris,

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which is supposed to be totally unique,

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and then that will be
tied to your identity

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on various platforms at
some point in the future.

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That's the really important
thing they're working on.

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And then kinda going
alongside of this, parallel,

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is this cryptocurrency thing,

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which is the Worldcoin part of it.

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But I also think that that's not,

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like the cryptocurrency part of it

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isn't really the goal, right?

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What they said is there's kind
of three competing visions

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of what Worldcoin's gonna be, right?

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So in the short term,
they just kinda wanna do

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this fun thing with cryptocurrency.

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But they said this idea that in the future

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where you might be able to
log in with your eyeball

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as opposed to your Google
account or your Facebook account,

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that's what they see as
a more important vision

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for what this product is gonna be.

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And the idea is, right, anyone can make

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a fake Google account, a new
Gmail address for their bot.

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But if it's just your
eyeball, then that's just you.

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And actually when you get
it scanned by this thing,

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which they call the orb, it's
like got some weird cameras

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in it and they hold it up to your face.

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You just kinda stay there for a while.

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- And it's like a separate computer.

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It's a silver orb about this big?

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- Right, yeah. It's
this weird little robot.

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I asked them if they
felt like it was alive.

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They said no, which is less fun for me.

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But the point is, you know,

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not just about like logging into things

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but also there's this whole
problem around ChatGPT, right,

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Which is the Sam Altman
project that most people

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have probably heard of
where it's, you know,

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pretty much impossible to tell
whether something was written

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by ChatGPT or by a human being.

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OpenAI actually put
out a piece of software

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that was supposed to
detect whether some text

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was written by AI and
then they pulled it back

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because it doesn't work, right,
it was really hard to tell.

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So the idea is is like through some sort

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of identity verification,
they'll be able to determine

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that a piece of text was
written by a human or by AI

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because it'll be tied to something.

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And then in the long
term, the really fun idea

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that Sam Altman has is
essentially it's possible

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that AI or ChatGPT or OpenAI will suck up

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all of the wealth in the world.

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And then Sam Altman's plan
is to redistribute that

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through some sort of
universal basic income plan

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and he thinks Worldcoin might
be the way that he does that.

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- I mean, we've seen these
kind of systems before.

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Like, India has its Udhar system,

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which is a tie-in between the equivalent

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of a Social Security number and your iris.

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There have been some problems with that.

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And hackers at one point said they stole

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some material from Worldcoin.

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Like, has the company
encountered any problems

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that we know of so far?

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It's been around for what, four years?

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- So yeah, the beta just launched, right?

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So it's pretty new.

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What they told us was that
they're really confident

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about their privacy and security systems

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that they have set up.

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They feel like using the
iris as a unique identifier

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is a way to get around
all these problems, right?

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'Cause I can steal someone's
Social Security number.

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I can't log in with your
eye unless I have your eye.

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But I also that seems like
kind of a backwards way

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to go around this, right?

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Like, no matter what, I can
always type in my email address

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and my password and (indistinct) to that.

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But like if I get blinded
or I get cataracts,

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then I would never be able to log in

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to my cryptocurrency wallet ever again.

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Like, that doesn't seem like a great idea.

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- Yeah. And I mean you can
steal someone's fingerprint.

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Like, we've seen that happen.

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So presumably you can steal
their eye print as well.

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And that's happened in India
with this Udhar system.

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So I don't know. The
logic is not quite there.

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But it's probably a better identifier

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than the password I use for
four different accounts.

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- I don't know, like to me
it feels like they're making

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a bet here, right, that
someone needs to build

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some new identity verification system

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and whoever is in charge of that

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stands to make a lot of money.

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So Sam Altman's, you know, making this bet

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that maybe if we set this up, it'll be us.

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That would be great for them.

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I'm not really sure what the benefit

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is for consumers, right?

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Like, they told us that
the people who were coming,

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apparently a lot of
people learned of this.

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Like, two million people have signed up.

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In the US, they're not
getting anything in exchange.

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It's people who are really excited

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about cryptocurrency
at this point in 2023.

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- What do you do now
with your eyeball scan?

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- Well, right now, nothing.

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Now I wait and hope that
it becomes something.

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They kind of hinted
that maybe at some point

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in the future when these
regulatory issues get sorted out

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like maybe I'll get a very
tiny amount of cryptocurrency,

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which I guess like I'll donate
to charity or something.

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Like, I probably can't
for like weird, you know,

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journalism ethics reasons,
I can't hold on to that.

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Yeah, so I'll have to
give someone else my $2

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or whatever it is.

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- For more on Worldcoin
and scanning our eyeballs,

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check out gizmodo.com.