“Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” — Luke 21:28.
Sam Altman, CEO of the company behind the world-altering ChatGPT artificial intelligence system, along with a partner announced yesterday the launch of Worldcoin, a global currency for those who “prove their humanity” through an iris scan. It has been tested in a couple dozen countries, and now they’re ready and hoping to take it global.
The Worldcoin website says, “If successful, we believe Worldcoin could drastically increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy, enable global democratic processes, and eventually show a potential path to AI-funded UBI [universal basic income].”
Obviously this raises concerns with respect to globalism, privacy, freedom, the economy, and even biblical prophecy.
Human Intent?
Worldcoin’s stated purpose is to create a fully private and trustworthy means to prevent artificial intelligence from masquerading as humans and to keep individuals from claiming to be more than one person. At face value it sounds great: The 2020 election sure could have benefited from security like that.
Its primary application, however, would be economic, especially to keep AI out of fraudulent participation in the human business of buying and selling. That is, to solve a problem created by — guess who? — the creators of Worldcoin, among others.
Humanitarian Intent?
The company behind Worldcoin names itself “Tools for Humanity.” Its logos feature the mottoes “For every human,” and “The future is bright, and it belongs to the people of the world.”
Another part of Worldcoin’s stated purpose is to provide a universal basic income globally. Sounds great again, right? Sure, if you like socialism, and if can find it in you to believe a tech giant corporation has nothing but altruism in its heart.
That, plus you’d also have to agree with them in denying that the future belongs in any way to the God who created time and space. Humanism in our day is virtually always atheistic, or in another sense polytheistic, treating humans as gods themselves.
“We’re From a Massive Tech Corporation and We’re Here to Help”
The saying used to be “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” Usually that’s taken to mean, “Don’t trust a word of that.” I’d rather have the government than this, though: At least we can vote, and retain some semblance of checks and balances. We can at least pay lip service to the rule of law. Tools for Humanity, in contrast, is out to create a global economic kingdom with a self-appointed emperor ruling by right of economic might.
Still, you can’t deny they’ve been helpful. Tools for Humanity went to a number of developing countries, testing their iris-scanner “Orb” with promises of “free money.” How free was it? MIT Technology Review published a scathing report on it:
We found that the company’s representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. These practices may violate the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) — a likelihood that the company’s own data consent policy acknowledged and asked users to accept — as well as local laws.
Helpful, yes. Helping themselves. Because they had the money and the power.
Read more at: stream.org