The Download: Deception, exploited workers, and free cash: How Worldcoin recruited its first half a million test users

On a sunny morning last December, Iyus Ruswandi, a 35-year-old furniture maker in the village of Gunungguruh, Indonesia, was woken up early by his mother. A technology company was holding some kind of “social assistance giveaway” at the local Islamic elementary school, she said, and she urged him to go.

When he got there, representatives of Worldcoin were collecting emails and phone numbers, or aiming a futuristic metal orb at villagers’ faces to scan their irises and other biometric data. What was going on?

Two months before Worldcoin appeared in Ruswandi’s village, the San Francisco–based company called Tools for Humanity emerged from stealth mode. Worldcoin was its product. 

The company’s website described Worldcoin as an Ethereum-based “new, collectively owned global currency that will be distributed fairly to as many people as possible.” Everyone in the world would get a free share—if they agreed to an iris scan with a device that resembles a decapitated robot head, which the company refers to as the “chrome orb.” 

The orb was necessary, the website continued, because of Worldcoin’s commitment to fairness: each person should get his or her allotted share of the digital currency—and no more. To ensure there was no double-dipping, the chrome orb would scan participants’ irises and several other biometric data points and then cryptographically confirm that they were human and unique in Worldcoin’s database. 

Gunungguruh was not alone in receiving a visit from Worldcoin. MIT Technology Review has interviewed over 35 individuals in six countries—Indonesia, Kenya, Sudan, Ghana, Chile, and Norway—who either worked for or on behalf of Worldcoin, had been scanned, or were unsuccessfully recruited to participate.

Our investigation reveals wide gaps between Worldcoin’s public messaging, which focused on protecting privacy, and what users experienced. We found that the company’s representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. These practices may violate multiple laws. Read the full investigation. Read the full story.

—Eileen Guo and Adi Renaldi

This horse-riding astronaut is a milestone in AI’s ability to make sense of the world

A new era for AI: When OpenAI revealed its picture-making neural network DALL-E in early 2021, the program’s human-like ability to combine different concepts into images was striking. Now, the San Francisco-based lab has announced its successor, DALL-E 2, which produces much better images, is easier to use, and—unlike the original version—will be released to the public (eventually).

What’s changed? Image-generation models have come a long way in just a few years. While previous results have been distorted and blurry, DALL-E 2’s creations can be stunning: ask it to generate images of astronauts on horses (see above), teddy-bear scientists. or sea otters in the style of Vermeer, and it does so with near photorealism. 

What now? The AI raises questions about what we mean by intelligence, especially with regards to its creativity. Read the full story (and check out the amazing images!)

—Will Douglas Heaven