Why Sam Altman Wants to Scan Your Eyeball
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Why is there a new store in San Francisco scanning eyeballs?
Last week, a new storefront opened in San Francisco. Our producer Sophie Codner was there. And what brought you into the store today?
I heard about this store on news and social media. It sounded a bit mysterious, and I really wanted to find out exactly what's going on. I'm not sure if I still do know exactly what's going on, but it's an interesting concept from what I could gather.
Nothing's sold at this store. And what's actually going on inside sounds pretty sci-fi. People are getting their eyes, specifically their irises, scanned by a device called the orb.
What are your impressions of the orb? You know when you're not ready for the future, but it's now? It's that feeling. It's that feeling.
The orbs are metallic spheres about the size of volleyballs. Inside each one, there's a camera taking high-definition pictures of people's eyes. The goal is to create individualized online IDs for each person based on the unique patterns in their eyes. Did you get your eye scanned?
I did. Yes. Yes, I did.
Okay, how'd it go?
Pretty seamless, actually. It was quick. A minute, two minutes, and I was in.
All this eye scanning is part of a project called World. It's the brainchild of Sam Altman, the tech visionary and CEO of OpenAI. In Altman's view, what's happening in this San Francisco storefront could be part of the solution to a pressing problem, how to tell humans and AI apart.
What is Sam Altman's World project?
We needed a way that we could know what content was made by a human, by an AI. The initial ideas were very crazy. Then we came down to one that was just a little bit crazy, which became world.
Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Annie Minoff. It's Friday, May 9th. Coming up on the show, Sam Altman's global project to tell man from machine. Have you seen one of these orbs or touched one?
Yeah, unfortunately, I have not seen one physically, and I have not yet scanned my iris. So currently, there is no way to be assured that I am the real Angus Barak.
My colleague Angus Barak has been following Sam Altman's eye scanning project. As the CEO of OpenAI, Altman's had a front-row seat to AI advances, including helping to create chatbots like ChatGPT that sound a whole lot like humans. And that's where Altman saw a potential problem.
I think he saw that we were going to reach a point in the future where AI and technology would be so advanced that we wouldn't really be able to distinguish it from humans, you know, and particularly kind of in an online setting. So, you know, that could apply to bots on social media or deepfake people on video calls, etc.
How far away did he think that future was? Because it almost feels like it's here.
I think what's most surprised me is how quickly this kind of Terminator-esque world is sort of arriving. Well, you know, we don't have the Terminator walking around, fortunately. But yeah, the internet is a kind of drastically different place to how it was a couple of years ago. And I think this issue of kind of distinguishing man from machine is just becoming kind of very pressing across so many different parts of our society and economy.
This man or machine problem has come up in all sorts of areas. On social media, in online dating, e-commerce, education, and gaming.
I think the point was made recently that for gamers, it used to be really easy to spot a bot because they would probably be like jerky and probably just weren't playing as well as a human. But now their abilities have kind of far outstripped even the nerdiest of human players.
How does the orb technology work to identify humans?
AI fakes are also becoming a problem in banking.
I think the sophistication of deep fakes now has reached a point that they can bypass like a bank or kind of financial firms, like customer checks, which typically rely on comparing your passport photo with like a scan of your face.
Altman says he wanted to help solve this problem. And to do it, he co-founded World.
We wanted a way to make sure that humans stayed special and central in a world where the internet was going to have lots of AI-driven content.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
Why is there a new store in San Francisco scanning eyeballs?
0:05–1:43
2
What is Sam Altman's World project?
1:43–4:27
3
How does the orb technology work to identify humans?
4:27–6:48
4
Why does the world need a new form of identification?
6:48–9:18
5
How does World incentivize people to participate?
9:18–17:26