Speaker 1: Zone Media. Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue.
Speaker 1: I'm your host ed Zetron. What Last week, Sam Altman's
Speaker 1: sort of debuted his latest idea, a project called World
Speaker 1: that claims to be and this is a direct quote,
Speaker 1: a network of real humans built on an anonymous proof
Speaker 1: of human and globally inclusive financial network. I want to
Speaker 1: diet anyway, This slew of buzzwords is meant to distract
Speaker 1: you from what World really is a collection of extremely
Speaker 1: shitty apps that requires you to scan your eyeball for
Speaker 1: some reason. Now, the company behind World is called Tools
Speaker 1: for Humanity, an annoying name for a company with an
Speaker 1: annoying tagline that claims they're building for humans in the
Speaker 1: age of AI. I note that literally every software company
Speaker 1: is by definition, building for humans, unless there is a
Speaker 1: dog version of word I didn't know about. Anyway, back
Speaker 1: to All's latest bullshit. New users sign up by using
Speaker 1: one of seven thousand orbs scattered throughout the world to
Speaker 1: scan their eyeballs, even though it's worth mentioning that the
Speaker 1: official website only lists eight one hundred and thirty seven
Speaker 1: locations with the specialist hardware required, and they're in a
Speaker 1: seemingly random bunch of countries. Thailand, the Dominican Republic, and
Speaker 1: Ecuador are all listed, but France and the United Kingdom
Speaker 1: and Australia are not, I imagine due to local laws or
Speaker 1: maybe just they didn't want to bother it never is
Speaker 1: obvious with these people. When he user signs up, they
Speaker 1: receive sixteen world coin or wld tokens. These are worth,
Speaker 1: at the time of writing this script, ninety one cents.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty low price to give up random startup,
Speaker 1: a scan of your unique retina patterns. But whatever user
Speaker 1: accounts are registered on the blockchain, which is, for some
Speaker 1: reason the good thing. And when I read that, I
Speaker 1: had to convince myself that I hadn't time travel back
Speaker 1: to twenty seventeen or twenty twenty one or another time
Speaker 1: when scam artists were running around this rampantly. You may
Speaker 1: be wondering what the point of all of this is.
Speaker 1: From what I can tell is that it's an attempt
Speaker 1: to create some sort of verified identification system where companies
Speaker 1: connect to world systems and can guarantee that each user
Speaker 1: is real. And I'm really guessing here because world does
Speaker 1: not seem that interested in explaining. By verifying your identity
Speaker 1: using this giant metal orb you get access to a
Speaker 1: suite of mini apps, including the ability to buy stuff
Speaker 1: with crypto, create human only Telegram groups, top up a
Speaker 1: prepaid cell phone using crypto, and crypto for working out
Speaker 1: livestream from your World account, play shitty mobile games, or
Speaker 1: doorso user crypto. Well, it really all of this is
Speaker 1: just a series of very poorly done apps, and they're
Speaker 1: all basically crypto apps or something to do with spending
Speaker 1: your World coins. And for all the pomp, circumstance and bullshit,
Speaker 1: press World's actual product is the same kind of mediocre,
Speaker 1: bottom of the barrel crypto bullshit that scam out Ice
Speaker 1: will howk it into twenty twenty one, with the veneer
Speaker 1: of respectability given by Sam Llltman and his marketers in
Speaker 1: place to make sure the media actually covers it. I
Speaker 1: should note that you can do all these things already
Speaker 1: without the additional layer of biometric verification or anything to
Speaker 1: do with the blog chain. Now, according to mister Altman,
Speaker 1: and faithfully parroted without a single thought, not one by
Speaker 1: Kevin Ruce of The New York Times, Alex Heath of
Speaker 1: the Verge Worldcoin and I quote heath could be used
Speaker 1: as a form of universal basic income for individuals whose
Speaker 1: jobs have been replaced by AI. How where's the money
Speaker 1: coming from?
Speaker 2: Sam?
Speaker 1: How would that work? What does any of that mean?
Speaker 1: Who knows? Just just write the fucking quote down, I guess,
Speaker 1: just say it. We don't all have our own personal
Speaker 1: Massayoshi Sun to lend US forty billion dollars whenever we want.
Speaker 1: It's just it's incoherent. Nevertheless, mister rus of the Times
Speaker 1: Mysterious went on to say that Altman and Alex Blinia,
Speaker 1: the other co founder, believe that something like world coin
Speaker 1: will be needed to distribute the proceeds and powerful AI
Speaker 1: systems to humans, perhaps in the form have you guessed it?
Speaker 1: And that's my addition, universal basin income? And I know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I know, I bag on mister Russe a lot.
Speaker 1: I know I'm merciless with him, but come on, man,
Speaker 1: how how what does that even mean? Man?
Speaker 2: When has a tech company ever distributed the proceeds of anything,
Speaker 2: especially one run by Samilton, the CEO of Open Ai,
Speaker 2: a company built on stealing people's shit and trying to
Speaker 2: take their jobs.
Speaker 1: It's just I don't know, man, Like I try not
Speaker 1: to be so much of a hater. But you see
Speaker 1: this shit, and you like Kevin Rus is ostensibly not
Speaker 1: an idiot, Like, why wouldn't you just say, hey, Yeah,
Speaker 1: they say they want this to be universal basic income,
Speaker 1: but I haven't described why or how or even what
Speaker 1: the practicalities are. And that's a problem that would be
Speaker 1: a good thing for the New York Times to discuss.
Speaker 1: But no, we need to keep the column going. Don't
Speaker 1: mean Kevin. Tech companies are notorious for engaging in complex
Speaker 1: tax avoidance schemes precisely because they don't like distribute the
Speaker 1: proceeds of their activities, which normal people call paying our
Speaker 1: fair share of tax. Mechanisms designed to tax these companies
Speaker 1: engaging in aggressive tax of avoidance practices are now referred
Speaker 1: to as the Google Tax, precisely because tech companies are
Speaker 1: the worst offenders. And I've often said the Open AI's
Speaker 1: success is based on impossible things happening, like a company
Speaker 1: kind of raising more money than any startup has ever
Speaker 1: raised in perpetuity until some yet unseen breakthrough maths or
Speaker 1: semiconductor engineering happens and allows it to essentially crawl into
Speaker 1: the black, but not without first burning hundreds of billions
Speaker 1: of dollars. This is basically what World appears to be
Speaker 1: as well, except with far less effort. Like I guess
Speaker 1: we're going to put all the eyes in the machine
Speaker 1: and then something will happen. Right, wrong, nothing's happening. World
Speaker 1: has actually been around for a few years, and they've
Speaker 1: been doing some really nasty stuff behind the scenes. According
Speaker 1: to Ailing Guo and Adi Ronaldi of MIT Technology Review,
Speaker 1: who reported in twenty twenty two and I'll be Linking
Speaker 1: in the episode, notes that all would hire local ORB
Speaker 1: operators to sign people up, and I quote receiving commission
Speaker 1: for each person's biometric data that they collect, turning them
Speaker 1: into the equivalent of a door to door salesman, but
Speaker 1: instead of knives or Kirby vacuums, they're trying to take
Speaker 1: pictures of your eyes. These operators, according to tech Review,
Speaker 1: barely knew what they were selling, what World called coin did,
Speaker 1: or how the information was collected, what was done with
Speaker 1: any of this stuff. World preyed upon people in developing
Speaker 1: and often poor countries like Indonesia, Kenya, Sudan, and Ghana,
Speaker 1: where people might be tempted with what might be considered
Speaker 1: by Western standards are pittance to scan their eyes and
Speaker 1: download the app as on the side. By the way,
Speaker 1: world Coin is now banned in both Spain and Hong Kong.
Speaker 1: Almost every article about world takes their idea at face
Speaker 1: value that this is a company verifying people's identity using
Speaker 1: their eyes, and that they will, as a result, be
Speaker 1: able to connect this to a verified eye database and
Speaker 1: then do something. Just something will, then something will happen.
Speaker 1: It's good to verify people because AI AI bots right right,
Speaker 1: I mean, social networks are, they're full of bots, and
Speaker 1: this will stop that somehow, won't it. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I want to be clear that this whole thing is
Speaker 1: extra normally fucking stupid, and nobody would have paid attention,
Speaker 1: even an Iowa to of attention to it if Samuilman
Speaker 1: wasn't attached. And we know that because if you search
Speaker 1: for biometric blockchain verification funding on Google with the verbeta
Speaker 1: match and turned on, you see a bunch of companies
Speaker 1: that have also tried to do exactly the same thing
Speaker 1: over the past few years. And while they raised the
Speaker 1: odd million here or there, especially during the twenty twenty
Speaker 1: one twenty twenty two VC market, they didn't really go anywhere.
Speaker 1: On top of the obvious privacy concerns of millions of
Speaker 1: people creating a giant biometric database of their eyes, World's
Speaker 1: ideas are somewhere between also rans and complete fucking nonsense.
Speaker 1: Weld has raised one hundred and fifteen million dollars at
Speaker 1: a three billion dollar valuation, yet has built no infrastructure
Speaker 1: of apps, no real business model, and and nothing other
Speaker 1: than an aggressive attempt to gather millions people's eyeballs. They
Speaker 1: do also have an upcoming visa debit card to use
Speaker 1: your crypto without first converting it into Viat currency, which
Speaker 1: is an idea that's extremely old and has been done
Speaker 1: many many times over the years. Oh and they're also
Speaker 1: going to allow you to verify your identity on Tinder,
Speaker 1: which is a feature that Tinder already offers. And really,
Speaker 1: though biometric verification is already a thing, there's something called
Speaker 1: pass keys, which are already being offered as a replacement
Speaker 1: to passwords, and a bunch of sites like Amazon I
Speaker 1: think best bias. Well, they work by storing a cryptographic key,
Speaker 1: not cryptocurrency cryptographic, it's the maths one, and they store
Speaker 1: it on your device, which is something you already have
Speaker 1: and verify that against something that you can't easily spoof,
Speaker 1: like a scan of your face and what face ID
Speaker 1: does or fingerprints and yes, your iris is in some cases,
Speaker 1: well World wants to offer exactly that, but you have
Speaker 1: to use some giant eye scanner thing that you have
Speaker 1: to physically travel to one only available in a handful
Speaker 1: of countries and give your data to a man who
Speaker 1: loves the lie and make himself more money. And while
Speaker 1: it's true that some in the developing world lack any
Speaker 1: formal identification and that in turn makes it harder for
Speaker 1: them to access travel documents, banking services and government services,
Speaker 1: we don't need Sam Moltman to solve that problem. Indias
Speaker 1: solved this almost sixteen years ago with its ad Hoar program,
Speaker 1: which now covers ninety nine point nine percent of the
Speaker 1: adult population. Adhar gives Indian citizens a twelve digit unique
Speaker 1: identify which is linked to their biometric information. In India
Speaker 1: managed to accomplish this without crypto or the blockchain. I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's not perfect, I'm sure that there are critics
Speaker 1: of it, but it's definitely better than World. And also
Speaker 1: it's old news and it's not exciting, even though it worked.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about Sam Altman and whatever the fuck he's
Speaker 1: up to now. Some people Alex Heath have also said
Speaker 1: that World's platform has over one hundred and fifty apps,
Speaker 1: but neglected to check if that was the case. That
Speaker 1: it appears there are only sixty three of them, with
Speaker 1: the vast majority of them being either a crypto app
Speaker 1: or an app that otherwise verifies you using your World idea.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like how Android has always had more
Speaker 1: apps than iOS, but they are often low quality, like
Speaker 1: app based wrappers of websites you already can read in
Speaker 1: your browser, or trivial ones like a flashlight app. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, this is also something that happens in
Speaker 1: iOS now because Apple doesn't give a rap fuck. Nevertheless, nevertheless,
Speaker 1: World's App Store is nonsense, and to talk about it
Speaker 1: is a real app store is journalistic malpractice. Come the
Speaker 1: fuck on, I'm sick of this. If Sam Molton was
Speaker 1: not involved with this, this wouldn't get coverage and it
Speaker 1: would never have raised money, and frankly, I think everyone
Speaker 1: would be making fun of it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I've read about fifteen different articles about World to write
Speaker 1: this monologue, and I was hoping i'd find just this
Speaker 1: mesion of information about this company that would somehow show
Speaker 1: depth or substance or something other than Sam Altman is
Speaker 1: working on something. And I'm gonna be honest. I came
Speaker 1: up shore and what you just heard there was my
Speaker 1: cat Howell, who has decided to join me for this episode.
Speaker 1: World is a fuss. It's another cynical con yes, how
Speaker 1: peddled by a cynical con man. Twenty percent of World's
Speaker 1: tokens have, according to MIT Tech Review, already been allocated
Speaker 1: to their full time employees and investors. And I cannot
Speaker 1: find any good reason why this thing even needs a token.
Speaker 1: In fact, I really can't find a cogent reason for
Speaker 1: this company to exist. I don't see a business model
Speaker 1: or even much of a product. Well. Zapp is a
Speaker 1: boring collection of crypto adjacent bullshit, the kind of which
Speaker 1: I thought we'd abandoned five years ago. Their token is
Speaker 1: yet another phony attempt to connect privacy to the blockchain,
Speaker 1: which is ridiculous because the blockchain is just the type
Speaker 1: of database, and their mission is almost contemptuous in its vagueness. Well,
Speaker 1: it feels like something propped up specifically to absorb data.
Speaker 1: Venture capital and media attention and inadvertently proves that something
Speaker 1: is broken in society that allows companies to raise money
Speaker 1: to do nothing and use the media as their marketing.
Speaker 1: On just society, Sam will be laughed out of the
Speaker 1: building or unceremoniously launched headfirst from the top of it.
Speaker 1: In ours he celebrated for his vacuousness, his ideas championed
Speaker 1: as some sort of altruistic blueprint for the future.
Speaker 2: Good Grief