The Worldcoin project, with which the executive director of Open AI-Chat GPT, Sam Altman, wants to certify the digital identity of the entire world, has started on the right foot in Africa. Hundreds of citizens of Nairobi (Kenya) queue this week at the Kenyatta International Conference Center in the country’s financial district to give up their biometric data in exchange for tokens. Not everyone is convinced this is a great idea…
The company, founded in 2019 by Altman, Max Novendstern and Alex Blania, has deployed its iris scanning orbs (“The Orb”) in 18 countries. In recent weeks it has deployed successful trials in countries such as Indonesia, India, Chile and Kenya. And also in countries of the western world such as France and Spain.
In Kenya, participants who register and scan their irises into Worldcoin orbs receive 25 platform tokens (WLD) with an estimated value of 7,700 Kenyan shillings; that is, 49.22 euros. To convert these tokens into cash, they must sell them for USDT, a US dollar virtual currency, on cryptocurrency exchanges that list Worldcoin. Afterwards, they can resell USDT for the local currency.
The popularity of Worldcoin has prompted local cryptocurrency companies to jump on the opportunity to “help” participants exchange their tokens for cash. KotaniPay and Nuzo are some of the crypto companies that offer services to exchange WLD for Kenyan shillings.
As explained by the company owned by Altman, the idea is that people can have capital in this digital currency to compensate for the jobs that will be destroyed in the coming years as a result of the advancement of systems based on artificial intelligence.
Although the initiative has been welcomed by many, Kenya’s data protection agency, the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner (ODPC), has issued a warning to Kenyans about the risks of scanning their irises in exchange for crypto tokens. . “People are encouraged to fully investigate how their data will be used,” the statement warned.
The project has also been criticized and is under investigation in several countries. In the case of the United Kingdom, for example, the Information Commissions Office (ICO) announced that it would review the platform’s policy on data collection, to ensure that the company has “a clear legal basis for processing personal data “.
For its part, in France, the entity that controls privacy in the country, CNIL, justified the investigation of Altman’s company, explaining that “the legality of this collection seems questionable, as are the conditions for storing biometric data.”
From Worldcoin they assured that the image of the iris would be deleted once the “humanity” had been verified, and they added that all the data is encrypted. Still, Tools for Humanity’s privacy statement notes: “When you provide us with your data, it may be transferred to, stored, or processed in a location outside of where your data was originally collected. The country to which your data is transferred, stored or processed may not have the same data protection laws as the country in which you initially provided the data”.
Despite the warnings, many Kenyans continue to flock to Worldcoin scanning places in search of free cash. Sam Altman has championed the need for Worldcoin to distinguish between humans and artificial intelligence, as well as to distribute universal basic income and provide identification (KYC) to access formal financial services.
Local crypto businesses have found an opportunity to recruit clients lured by the promise of cash in exchange for scanning their irises, while Altman’s platform has not explained what it plans to do after collecting the scans.
