This is Worldcoin: Humanness in the age of AI

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Transcripts

All right, so let's start off...

AGI is going to happen,   

and it will change how the economy operates

and it will change how the internet works

in very meaningful ways.

So there are certain parts  of the internet where we clearly need

a human gate, almost.

Like, you can only enter this if you're an actual human being,

otherwise please stay out of this.

And that is what World ID is

in its purest form.

I am Alex Blania. I am CEO of Tools for  Humanity

which is the founding and one of the main contributing entities

to the Worldcoin project.

We believe that, and I think at this point it's fairly obvious,

that in the coming years  

90 plus percent of everything we interact with and see will be

somewhat created or enhanced by AI.

That is a problem.

It's not a problem for everything.

Actually it's, it's very fun and cool for most  things   

because it's just very entertaining.

You will be able to create the perfect song

that you like just with kind of a simple ask.

You will be able to create the perfect video. So  these are all great things.  

But, there's other 

parts of the internet, I think X or Twitter is  actually a good example,

where it's not in all of our interest

if people with certain interests can influence broad public opinion

with tens of thousands of instances of AI that follow a certain idea.

But now we are in the situation where I  

really do believe in the next two years we are  faced with two options:  

either we will enforce government KYC at a pretty large scale

for many things that we use,

or we use World ID.

So fundamentally on a protocol level it's,  it's two things.

It is a way to verify humanness  

truly at population scale, independent of  governments,

able to scale to billions of people.

And that is what we call World ID,

which underlying is a biometric verification  

device that we call the orb, that you see here, 

that actually allows us to do that.  

So that is World ID, that's building block one. And two

is a digital currency called Worldcoin that  

everyone that actually verifies for World ID  receives ownership in it.

That is the protocol level. And then also, to get all of this going, 

we built the first app that connects to the protocol that we call World App

So that's a non-custodial wallet that lets you send money to your friends,

lets you verify with your World ID and  kind of brings together many of the technologies  

that came out of crypto in the last couple years  and just makes them

very easy to understand and use.

So as we started building out the Worldcoin network, we realized that one of the hardest parts  

if not the hardest, honestly, 

was just going to be figuring out who was a real person and who 

was not in the first place to let into the network.

So we researched for many many years, tried a lot  

of different things. At the end of the day we came  up with this idea of World ID,  

which is a digital passport that allows you to

prove that you're a real human on the internet while preserving your privacy.

So when we set out to solve this problem  of how do you figure out

what is a real and unique person,

we tried a bunch of different things that  you can imagine. 

Verifying people's emails and phone number,

verifying their official documents like a passport, doing complex algorithms  

to have people endorse each other and a bunch of  other things. 

And at the end of the day you realize 

that the only thing that is privacy preserving,  inclusive

and honestly just actually secure is biometrics.

I know it sounds scary from, like, sci-fi novels, etc. Minority Report.

It turns out it's the only way to, in an inclusive manner that  allows everybody in the world 

to participate, to issue such a proof of unique humanness. 

But within iris biometrics, we could have or  

we thought of using existing devices. 

Like, the last thing we wanted to do, as much fun as 

it was to to build something like an orb.

Is...it's actually really really hard. It takes a lot of  

time, and we thought about other ways to to do this  but it turns out

that they are, they're not built  

for the same purpose. So in the end we had to  build a custom,

custom hardware device to actually  

enable something like Worldcoin from both, like, an  accuracy inclusivity perspective

as well as from,  

from a security perspective. Essentially what the  orb does is, like, it takes a look at everybody  

who's coming, verifies that you're a real  human, you're not wearing a mask, you're not a  

display you're not a house cat, but a real human.  Then it issues a proof of human certificate,  

essentially, that we call World ID

and that you then own in in your app. And you can use it to  

authenticate against different, or for different  applications and prove

that you're a unique human.

Yeah so one of the most counterintuitive  things about Worldcoin is that the orb and World  

ID are not just private, but they're perhaps one  of the most private systems at this scale  

that have ever existed. And specifically there's  three different layers of of protection of privacy  

that I think is important to understand. Number  one is, the orb is able to perform all of these  

checks on device with different neural networks.  The second layer of protection is the fact that  

your biometrics are separate from your World  ID. You can actually even have a World ID before  

you visit an orb. What the orb does is it simply  marks your World ID as verified. So when you do  

go around using that World ID, it's completely  separate from any biometric data. And then the third  

layer of protection, it's actually quite similar to  what Apple shipped a few years ago that actually  

broken Facebook's entire advertising model. And  so the way this works is, when you go around using  

your ID with different World ID apps, you're not  even sharing your actual ID. You're almost like  

creating a disposable ID so that each app gets  a different version of your ID, which they can  

use to provide you a persistent experience, you  can sign in and sign out, but they cannot see or  

track anything you've done anywhere else with  your World ID.  

So with these three layers of 

protection: the the fact that the orb is able  to perform these checks on device, the fact  

that your biometrics are not your identity, but  only use to verify your World ID and the fact  

that every time you're using your World ID, you're  generating a different, disposable, app-specific ID,  

just makes World ID, again, not just private, 

but one of the most private things out there period.

So decentralization means

that there is no central party that can make the system fail.

That, that's fundamentally what it means.    

And so, if I'm right. If I'm right with my

assumption that Worldcoin will be as a fundamental shift  as I think it will be,

it is very very important

that there will not be a single entity, not me,  not the Worldcoin Foundation, not anyone else that can  

either be attacked externally, or internally come  up with bad ideas or stupid ideas to compromise  

the whole idea of the project. That's why it  matters.  

There is a nonprofit foundation

called the Worldcoin Foundation that is fully out of  mine and Sam's control and that actually has  

all of the IP. All of the important IP that has  been created here is controlled by a nonprofit  

foundation. And why does it exist? Why is it not  a normal company? Fundamentally because all the  

governance eventually will switch to be become  all of humanity.

This idea that every individual  

being able to prove to the internet that you're a  unique human being will be kind of a big building  

block of this. Because once you have solved  that,  

that is something that doesn't exist right now on the internet.

Once you have solved that, you  can actually launch a digital currency by giving  

ownership in it to every human being, because  everyone can prove that they didn't claim a  

share in it before.

And as a result, bootstrap  a billion plus people network and trust that  

kind of the size of the network and resulting network effects will accelerate many many things  

in the world that we think are strictly good. 

I do think World ID can actually do great 

service to society by being an open source,  actual public good that we can all understand  

and we can trust.

And of course there's still a long way to go, but I think that's kind of where we're headed.