[akira2501]

It's a grift^2.

It's simply pretending that language models masquerading as AI are so absurdly powerful that human identity itself is now threatened and requires an additional verification layer to prove that you are actually human. Like the language model product, I think they're purely trading on hype.

I'm not sure what having my retinal scan gets you if you can't actually replicate an eyeball matching that scan.

[rngname22]

It's absolutely the case that there will be a need for human verification, in fact it already is a core part of identity verification, it's one reason we have a liveness check.

The rise of LLM and generative image and video absolutely poses threats in the form of criminal impersonation and scams, in terms of maliciously intentioned catfishing, in terms of manipulation of public discourse, and last but not least to the enshittification of online discussion.

Online discussion spam filters have been decent at removing low effort commercial shilling and automated trollposting, but LLM poses a real threat in that regard. If you don't want a 14 year old troll to be able to set an automated script to spam post 50 new convincingly written Reddit posts every hour about how horrible Playstation 7 is and how much better Xbox Series 15 is to /r/Games, then you care about human verification or spam detection that takes into account the new abilities of LLMs.

All that being said Worldcoin doesn't look like the best answer.

[luma]

Finally a sensible take. The problem that Worldcoin is looking to solve is real. I think the solution they've arrived at is terrible but that's not because I don't believe in the problem.

LLMs are going to shift the orbit of the internet and present a spam-adjacent problem on a scale we haven't seen before. Existing power structures are going to be very suddenly convinced of the need to either prove one's identity, or at a minimum, prove one's humanity and uniqueness.

I have no idea what the solution here is but man I hope it's not a fricken crypto currency and maybe also not exploiting the 3rd world. These seem like they should be low bars but here we are.

[littlestymaar]

The problem is real, but it's not the problem that worldcoin addresses, because they:

- wouldn't need a blockchain or crypto tokens for that.

- but they would need to provide a way for people to authenticate as humans on random website (without reavealing their identities, because GDPR in the EU).

Since they do 1 but not 2, we can positively conclude that Altman take avantage of a real problem as a marketing pitch for his product that isn't in fact aimed at this problem.

[rgrieselhuber]

I think it's more of a compliance test than anything else. They already have all the facial recog data they would need, or could easily source it.

[at-fates-hands]

This just gives them another vector to prove its actually you.

Matching finger print data with facial recog is about as close as you can get to foolproof identity analysis I would think. I know both can be faked, but for a majority of the population, having these two markers would be almost impossible to claim it wasn't you.

[rgrieselhuber]

This is what government ids are already for. Instead of creating new systems to strip away privacy rights, spend more time enforcing laws and prosecuting identity theft. Tying identity to biometrics makes it involuntary at some point down the road, which is obviously the real intention.

[throwawaycities]

There is no money in setting fires, the money is in selling people help to put them out after you start them.

[usefulcat]

> I'm not sure what having my retinal scan gets you if you can't actually replicate an eyeball matching that scan.

With a sufficiently large number of samples, the ability to create convincing synthetic retinal images? Though to what end I don't know.

[checkyoursudo]

The same thing we do every night, Pinky...