Exhibitions, Research, Criticism, Commentary

A chronology of 3,585 references across art, science, technology, and culture
● 08/08/2023
“Scanning the irises of individuals in the Global South, who genuinely need the money and are unaware of potential risks, is a contemporary form of colonialism.”
– New York-based artist Burak Arikan, on the recent launch of Worldcoin. Sam Altman’s biometric cryptocurrency project that aspires to be “the world’s largest identity and financial public network” rolled out with an aggressive recruitment campaign including in the Global South. Luring people with a sign-up bonus of 25 WLD—about $50 USD—Worldcoin booths in Nairobi, Bengaluru, and Hong Kong, for example, drew massive crowds.
Twitter
● 24/07/2023
“On the whole, despite the ‘dystopian vibez’ of staring into an orb and letting it scan deeply into your eyeballs, it does seem like specialized hardware systems can do quite a decent job of protecting privacy.”
– Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, assessing Tools for Humanity’s plan to confirm proof-of-personhood for the global populace by scanning their irises for the Worldcoin project. While he concedes it will probably be necessary to distinguish humans from AI soon, Buterin warns of the triple threat of security vulnerabilities, identity black markets, and overly-centralized hardware.
Vitalik.ca
● 24/07/2023

Worldcoin, a proof-of-personhood digital identity system for a future full of AI agents, launches. A Tools for Humanity (OpenAI’s Sam Altman and engineer Alex Blania) initiative, it proposes iris scanning everyone on earth to assign them an anonymized biometric identity—and a related cryptocurrency. Anticipating AI-induced cultural shifts, Altman & Blania claim Worldcoin will let users “prove you are a real and unique person online” and assist in universal basic income (UBI) disbursement.

Worldcoin
● 23/10/2021
“Don’t catalogue eyeballs. Don’t use biometrics for anti-fraud. In fact, don’t use biometrics for anything. The human body is not a ticket-punch.”
– Edward Snowden, on Tools for Humanity’s announcement of Worldcoin, a forthcoming proof-of-personhood digital identity system and cryptocurrency made available in return for biometric data. “This looks like it produces a global (hash) database of people’s iris scans, and waves away the implications by saying ‘we deleted the scans!’” warns the famous whistleblower.
Twitter
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