Tag Archives: Sam Altman and Worldcoin

ChatGPT as a Confessor

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ChatGPT users are unloading personal thoughts and feelings to the chatbot in detailed terms. So much so that Altman, OpenAI’s chief executive, has been warning that they shouldn’t expect the same sorts of privacy protections that come with intimate conversations with psychologists or lawyers. 

“People talk about the most personal s— in their lives to ChatGPT,” Altman said during a podcast appearance in July 2025. “If you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there’s like a lawsuit or whatever, like we could be required to produce that and I think that’s very screwed up. I think we should have like the same concept of privacy for your conversations with AI that we do with a therapist or whatever.”

Excerpt from Tim Higgins, Why Apple’s Tim Cook Is the Odd Man Out in the AI Race, WSJ, Aug. 2025

Can AI Do That? Knowledge Impossible to Copy

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Zuckerberg hasn’t had much success in his efforts to hire the field’s biggest stars, including OpenAI’s co-founder Ilya Sutskever and its chief research officer, Mark Chen. Many candidates are happy to take a meeting at Zuckerberg’s homes in Palo Alto and Lake Tahoe. In private, they are comparing gossip and calculating Meta’s chances of winning the AI race.

The handful of researchers who are smartest about AI have built up what one described as “tribal knowledge” that is almost impossible to replicate. Rival researchers have lived in the same group houses in San Francisco, where they discuss papers that might provide clues for achieving the next great breakthrough. 

Excerpt from Ben Coen et al, It’s Known as ‘The List’—and It’s a Secret File of AI Geniuses, WSJ, June 27, 2025

Worldcoins for Your Eyes: How Sam Altman is Saving us from the Robots

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Sam Altman wants to save us from the AI-dominated world he is building. The trouble is, governments aren’t buying his plan, which involves an attempt to scan the eyeballs of every person on Earth and pay them with his own cryptocurrency-the Worldcoin. But Worldcoin has come under assault by authorities over its mission. It has been raided in Hong Kong, blocked in Spain, fined in Argentina and criminally investigated in Kenya. A ruling looms on whether it can keep operating in the European Union….Among the concerns: How does the Cayman Islands-registered Worldcoin Foundation handle user data, train its algorithms and avoid scanning children? 

Worldcoin verifies “humanness” by scanning irises using a basketball-sized chrome device called the Orb. Worldcoin says irises, which are complex and relatively unchanging in adults, can better distinguish humans than fingerprints or faces. Users receive immutable codes held in an online “World ID” passport, to use on other platforms to prove they are human, plus payouts in Worldcoin’s WLD cryptocurrency. Worldcoin launched in 2023 and says it has verified more than six million people across almost 40 countries. Based on recent trading prices, the total pool of WLD is theoretically worth some $15 billion.

Altman says his technology is completely private: Orbs delete all images after verification, and iris codes contain no personal information—unless users permit Worldcoin to train its algorithms with their scans. Encrypted servers hold the anonymized codes and images. However, several authorities have accused Worldcoin of telling Orb operators, typically independent contractors, to encourage users to hand over iris images. Privacy advocates say these could be used to build a global biometric database with little oversight.

Excerpt from Angus Berwick, Sam Altman’s Worldcoin Is Battling With Governments Over Your Eyes, WSJ, Aug. 18, 2024

How Much Are Your Eyes Worth? Altman has an answer

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Worldcoin is appealing a decision from Spain that temporarily banned it from scanning people’s eyes in exchange for cryptocurrency tokens…The Spanish Data Protection Agency, or AEPD, ordered a precautionary measure prohibiting Worldcoin’s activities in the country for up to three months after it received several complaints on the collection of data from minors, and what it said were other infringements.

Worldcoin operates as an open-source protocol, according to its website. Users download a wallet app that supports a digital identity known as World ID. To get their identity verified, users stand in front of a physical imaging device known as the orb that relies on sensors to scan their eyes “to verify humanness and uniqueness.” More than 4 million users across 120 countries signed up for World ID, with orb verifications taking place in 36 countries, according to Worldcoin’s website.

The AEPD said its precautionary measure effectively called on Tools for Humanity—the company of which OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman is a co-founder—to cease the collection and processing of personal data through its Worldcoin project and to stop using the data it had gathered so far in Spain.

Excerpts from  Mauro Orru, Sam Altman’s Eye-Scanning Worldcoin Venture Appeals, WSJ, Mar. 7, 2024