I have this struggle that I'm dealing with right now where it's like, I want to take them seriously

so that we can interrogate the types of things that they're promising to do. But on the other hand,

I don't want to overstate what they actually seem to be doing and contribute to this hype cycle

that is sort of building around WorldCoin when it is just sort of the headlines that is powering the token growth. And that may be their sort of building around WorldCoin, when it is just sort of the headlines that is powering

the token growth, and that may be their sort of sole goal.

Thank you. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week, friend of the show, Molly White, is back again.

If you're not familiar with Molly, she is the creator of Web3 is going just great and a fellow at the Harvard Library Innovation

Lab.

Now, you might have seen some recent reporting on things going on in the crypto world or

crypto-adjacent projects.

I originally invited Molly on the show to talk about WorldCoin, this new project from

Sam Altman, where, you know, there are these shiny silver orb scanning people's eyes

around the world and giving them some cryptocurrencies and promising that, you know, it's going to remake the financial system,

of course, as crypto always promises, you know, make financial services much more available

to many more people, you know, increase equity and all these sorts of grand things. But of course,

as the crypto hype has faded and as we have

seen the AI hype increase, Sam Altman has instead pivoted to positioning this as something that

is going to address the AI problems that he is creating through his company OpenAI as well

by saying that now we need to scan our irises to make sure that we're actual humans so that

AIs can't pretend that they're humans or whatever. I'm still not totally understanding the justification

there and how that is actually supposed to work in practice, you know, especially since people's

irises can change and all that. And, you know, there's a whole load of exploitation and problems

...