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Worldcoin

What is Worldcoin? The Crypto Project Launched by OpenAI CEO

In a rapidly evolving digital landscape, the need for secure and private identification is becoming increasingly crucial. Recognizing the potential challenges posed by advancing AI technologies, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has taken the initiative to launch Worldcoin (WLD), a groundbreaking cryptocurrency project.

Worldcoin seeks to redefine the digital identification process by providing users with a unique World ID, verifying their real-human status while preserving their anonymity.

Worldcoin
Image Source: forbes.com

In this blog, we will explore the core features of Worldcoin and its potential implications on privacy, economic equality, and Universal Basic Income (UBI).

Worldcoin introduces the concept of World ID, a digital passport that serves as a verification of a user’s real-human status. As AI chatbots and generative AI technologies gain popularity, distinguishing between human users and AI bots on the internet becomes increasingly challenging. World ID aims to address this issue by offering a secure and anonymous way to prove one’s human identity online.

To obtain a World ID, users must undergo an in-person biometric screening at one of Worldcoin’s ‘Orbs.’ These Orbs, silver spheres about the size of a soccer ball, are strategically placed in various locations worldwide.

Also Read: Is Twitter changing its logo to an ‘X’?

During the screening process, users undergo a face and iris scan, ensuring the validity of their identity. Upon successful verification, users are rewarded with the WLD token – a tangible acknowledgment of their human status.

With the official launch of Worldcoin, the WLD token witnessed a surge in trading activity. The cryptocurrency’s value soared to an impressive $3.58 from its initial value of $1.70. Major exchanges like Binance quickly listed WLD, and in just a few hours, $145 million worth of WLD tokens were traded. However, as with any new crypto project, there were fluctuations, and the stock price later experienced a 29.4% decline.

While the project has already established 11 Orb locations in the US, including Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and San Francisco, the founders have ambitious plans for global expansion.

Worldcoin aims to set up 35 Orb sites in 20 countries to make World ID accessible to users worldwide. Remarkably, even during its beta phase, the project attracted over 2 million scanned users globally, reflecting the demand for a secure digital identification solution.

The Worldcoin project is not solely focused on digital identification; it also envisions broader societal implications. The founders view it as a stepping stone towards economic equality, democratic distribution of funds, and a potential path to Universal Basic Income (UBI).

By offering a reliable solution to differentiate humans from AI online, Worldcoin opens doors to increased economic opportunity for real individuals. With enhanced security and privacy measures, World ID could protect users from malicious cyber attacks on their identity, fostering a safer digital environment.

Furthermore, Worldcoin’s vision aligns with the concept of Universal Basic Income (UBI), which proposes providing a basic financial support system to all citizens. The project aims to explore how AI technology, through cryptocurrencies like WLD, could pave the way for a sustainable AI-funded UBI program in the future.

xAI

Elon Musk launches AI firm xAI as he looks to take on OpenAI

Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur, has introduced his highly anticipated artificial intelligence startup called xAI.

The team behind xAI consists of engineers from major U.S. technology firms, which Musk aims to challenge in his quest to create an alternative to ChatGPT. Musk, already serving as the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and the owner of Twitter, has been vocal about his concerns regarding AI and has advocated for its regulation.

xAI
Image Source: arabnews.com

He has expressed worries about the potential “civilizational destruction” that AI could bring. In a recent Twitter Spaces event, Musk outlined his strategy for developing a safer AI. Instead of directly programming morality into the AI, xAI plans to create an AI that is “maximally curious.”

According to Musk, AI should strive to understand the true nature of the universe, as this approach is crucial for ensuring AI safety. He believes that an AI that is focused on humanity is more interesting and beneficial than one that is not. Musk also predicted that superintelligence, which refers to AI surpassing human intelligence, will emerge within the next five to six years.

Also Read: Meta now lets you make video calls using a cartoon avatar

While Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI, the company responsible for ChatGPT, he stepped down from the board in 2018. Interestingly, Microsoft is one of the investors in OpenAI. The xAI website announced an upcoming Twitter Spaces event scheduled for July 14.

The xAI team comprises experienced engineers and researchers, including individuals such as Igor Babuschkin, formerly of Google’s DeepMind; Tony Wu, who previously worked at Google; Christian Szegedy, a former research scientist at Google; and Greg Yang, previously associated with Microsoft.

In March, Musk registered X.AI Corp as a separate company in Nevada, where he serves as the sole director and is accompanied by Jared Birchall, the managing director of Musk’s family office, as the secretary.

Musk had previously mentioned his intention to develop TruthGPT, an AI-focused on seeking maximum truth to rival Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s Bing AI, both of which aim to comprehend the nature of the universe.

Generative AI gained significant attention with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which preceded the introduction of Bard and Bing AI. Dan Hendricks, the director of the Center for AI Safety, will provide guidance to the xAI team, focusing on AI risks.

Although xAI is a distinct company from X Corp, it plans to collaborate closely with Twitter, Tesla, and other companies, as mentioned on its website. xAI is currently seeking skilled engineers and researchers in the San Francisco Bay Area.

ChatGPT

OpenAI’s ChatGPT app tops 500K downloads in just 6 days

The ChatGPT app from OpenAI has had a fantastic start despite only being available on iOS and in the United States until today’s extension to 11 more international regions.

In its first six days of availability, the app has already topped half a million downloads, according to a recent report by app intelligence firm data.ai. It is only surpassed by the debut of the Trump-backed Twitter clone, Truth Social, in February 2022 in terms of new app releases that have had the highest performance over the course of this year and the previous year.

ChatGPT
Image Source: techcrunch.com

The App Store has become flooded with third-party apps identifying themselves as “ChatGPT” or “AI chatbot” as customer demand for AI chatbots increased.

Despite the fact that many of these were really “fleece are,” aiming to deceive users into paying for pricey memberships to access their AI, a collection of top applications nevertheless managed to generate millions in revenue from users.

It might have been more difficult for an official ChatGPT app to gain popularity given the competitive environment among AI chatbots. In actuality, though, such was not the situation.

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The majority of its competitors, including other well-known AI and chatbot apps as well as Microsoft’s Bing and Edge apps, which provided some of the first important third-party integrations of OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology, were outperformed by the ChatGPT app from OpenAI.

Though Bing and Microsoft Edge undoubtedly benefited from ChatGPT’s initial popularity, they saw 340,000 and 335,000 downloads on iOS and Android, respectively, in their best five-day periods in February. However, OpenAI’s ChatGPT app easily outperformed them, producing 480,000 installs in the initial five days of its United States launch, when the app was iOS-only

The app outperformed other top AI chatbot apps in the U.S., many of which had generic names to take advantage of consumer searches for terms like “AI” and “chatbot” on the App Store, according to Data.ai’s data. When compared to other apps’ best five-day periods throughout the App Store and Google Play in 2023, OpenAI’s ChatGPT came in at number five in terms of downloads.

According to the data, “Chat with Ask AI,” the sole app that outperformed it, got 590,000 installs between April 4 and 8, 2023, as opposed to ChatGPT’s 480,000 downloads between May 18 and 22. Even though it has only been launched for a week, ChatGPT is already among the top five AI chatbot apps in terms of downloads in May 2023 in the United States.

OpenAI

OpenAI to introduce ChatGPT app for iOS

The ChatGPT app is going mobile. After the App Store was flooded with questionable, unofficial services for several months, OpenAI announced the release of an official iOS app that enables users to use its well-known AI chatbot while on the road.

The company claims that the newly released ChatGPT app will be free to download and use, ad-free, and voice-enabled, but it will only be available to users in the United States at first.

OpenAI
Image Source: freemalaysiatoday.com

The ChatGPT app, like its desktop equivalent, enables users to communicate with an AI chatbot to ask queries without performing a standard online search and to receive advice, discover inspiration, study, conduct research, and do other things.

Also Read: Google to delete inactive accounts starting December

Given the problems with Apple’s own voice assistant, Siri, and Apple’s own lack of advancement in artificial intelligence, the latest update may encourage more customers to adopt ChatGPT as their primary mobile assistant.

Since Google now reaps the benefits of serving as the default search provider in Safari on Apple’s iPhone, the launch may also have an effect on Google.

When using ChatGPT on a mobile device, the app will sync your history across devices, which means it will remember any searches you’ve made through its web interface and make those results available to you.

In order to support voice input, Whisper, an open-source speech recognition technology from OpenAI, is also integrated into the app.

OpenAI claims that ChatGPT Plus members will have early access to additional features and quicker response times in addition to being able to use GPT-4’s capabilities through the new app. “ChatGPT Plus subscribers get exclusive access to GPT-4’s capabilities, early access to features, and faster response times, all on iOS,” the company stated.

The technology that underpins the highly successful ChatGPT has been replaced by the potent artificial intelligence model GPT-4. Earlier in February, OpenAI unveiled a $20 per month test subscription package for their well-known AI-powered chatbot, named ChatGPT Plus.

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According to the corporation, the roll-out of iOS is already underway in the United States and will soon be extended to new nations. With the release of ChatGPT at the end of last year, the public competition to control the AI technology market began. This spurred big giants like Alphabet Inc. and Meta to promote their own products.

The release of the ChatGPT app coincides with major tech companies, such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, experimenting with AI. Google and Microsoft have also integrated artificial intelligence (AI) features into their search engines, the latter of which was accomplished through a costly partnership with OpenAI.

But having direct access to ChatGPT on a mobile device rather than through a search engine or browser may significantly alter how users now use their phones to look for and engage with information.

ChatGPT

Italy Restores ChatGPT after OpenAI Responds to Regulator

According to the agency and the corporation, the ChatGPT chatbot has been reinstated in Italy after OpenAI resolved concerns expressed by the country’s data protection body.

After the Italian data protection authority, designated as Garante, temporarily suspended the chatbot and opened an investigation into the artificial intelligence program’s alleged violation of privacy laws, OpenAI powered by Microsoft, banned ChatGPT in Italy this past month.

ChatGPT
Image Source: satlokexpress.com

Garante had granted OpenAI till Sunday for it to alleviate its worries before permitting the chatbot to resume operations in the nation.

Garante claimed a month ago that ChatGPT didn’t have any legal justification for the huge collection and storage of users’ personal data required to train the chatbot.

Also Read: OpenAI rolls out ‘incognito mode’ on ChatGPT

Garante had also charged OpenAI with failing to verify the legal age of ChatGPT users, who are required to be 13 or older. In response, OpenAI announced it will provide a tool to confirm the age of users in Italy at the time of registration.

The firm announced on Friday that it would make its privacy policy as well as input from users’ opt-out form more visible.

According to a company spokesperson, it will also make available an enhanced way for users in the European Union to take advantage of their privilege to protest its utilization of private information to train its models.

Individuals who wish to opt-out must fill out an elaborate form with their personal information, including any proof of data processing via pertinent prompts.

Garante expressed its appreciation for the measures made to balance technical advancement with adherence to human rights and expressed the hope that the firm would continue on this road toward achieving compliance with European data security standards.

Although ChatGPT’s swift growth has drawn the interest of lawmakers as well as regulators in multiple nations, Italy was the first Western European nation to restrict it.

Also Read: How Will ChatGPT Change Education and Teaching?

On Thursday, a panel of EU parliamentarians approved new regulations requiring companies using generative AI tools, including ChatGPT, to declare any copyrighted data used to create their systems.

The organization that unifies Europe’s national privacy regulators, the European Data Protection Board, established an investigation force on the chatbot previously this month in response to Garante’s concern regarding ChatGPT.

Garante stated that it will cooperate with the special task team and carry out its investigation into ChatGPT.

OpenAI

OpenAI rolls out ‘incognito mode’ on ChatGPT

OpenAI declared on April 25 that it is creating what one employee referred to as an “incognito mode” for its popular chatbot ChatGPT which does not record people’s chat histories or use them to advance its artificial intelligence.

Additionally, the business which is based in San Francisco announced plans for a “ChatGPT Business” subscription featuring more extensive data management.

OpenAI
Image Source: firstpost.com

The decision was made as concern has grown about how ChatGPT along with the other chatbots it influenced handle the data from numerous billions of users, which is frequently utilized for “training” or improving artificial intelligence.

Italy this month suspended ChatGPT due to potential privacy concerns, but said OpenAI might reinstate the service provided certain conditions were met, which include providing users with the ability to reject the collection of their data. France, as well as Spain, also initiated inquiries into the service.

Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), OpenAI, explained to Reuters that the business complies with European privacy laws and is striving to reassure regulators.

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She said that the updated functions were the result of months of effort aimed at putting people “in the driver’s seat” concerning data collecting rather than Italy’s ChatGPT ban.

“We’ll be moving more and more in this direction of prioritizing user privacy,” Murati said, with the goal that “it’s completely eyes off and the models are super aligned: they do the things that you want to do”.

Source: tech.hindustantimes.com

She stated that user data has assisted OpenAI in improving the software’s dependability and reducing political bias, amongst other problems, but added that the business still has difficulties.

With the product update from Tuesday, users can export their data and turn off the “Chat History & Training” option within the settings.

Users can now deactivate “Chat History & Training” in their options and export their data because of its additional features. However, before totally wiping the discussions, OpenAI will keep them on file for 30 days to monitor for any potential abuse. With the upcoming “ChatGPT Business” subscription, chats won’t by default be utilized for training artificial intelligence models.

The business will nevertheless keep conversations for about 30 days to watch for any kind of abuse before eliminating them, according to Nicholas Turley, the OpenAI product officer, who compared this to the incognito mode of an internet browser.

Additionally, the business subscription offered by the company won’t by default use chats for training artificial intelligence models when it becomes accessible in the coming months.

Businesses already have access to ChatGPT thanks to Microsoft Corp.’s investment in OpenAI. The existing clients of the cloud provider, according to Murati, would be interested in that service.