Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has grave misgivings about the World project spearheaded by Sam Altman. He is especially concerned about how it will erode digital privacy. Similarly, the World project intends to develop a system that’s able to distinguish artificial intelligence agents from humans. It will accomplish this by scanning users’ irises to create a new immutable identity layer on the blockchain. With the recently expanded requirement from the U.S. government, Buterin has raised his concerns. Currently, student and scholar visa applicants are required to make their social media accounts available for public search and review.
The U.S. government has implemented this measure to screen for “hostility” and potential threats, raising questions about privacy and surveillance in digital interactions. Buterin, who has a background as a tech reporter and editor, emphasized the risks associated with a “one-per-person” identification system that the World project promotes.
Buterin had an extensive career in journalism and journalism-adjacent tech, having worked at Adweek, VentureBeat, and the Hollister Free Lance. His multimedia career experience gives him a special insight into the collision of technology and privacy. He cautioned that Altman’s initiative risks setting up a dangerous precedent. Everyone may be forced to access the internet through a single public persona.
“In the real world, pseudonymity generally requires having multiple accounts … so under one-per-person ID, even if ZK-wrapped, we risk coming closer to a world where all of your activity must de-facto be under a single public identity,” – Vitalik Buterin.
Buterin joined us to discuss the more general applications of this technology. He cautioned that the federal government could simply order the person to divulge their private key, thus exposing all of that person’s online activity. He proposed that without a dominant issuing authority, be it a person or a bank, is a recipe for confusion. This absence of federal leadership makes it needlessly difficult to uphold privacy.
During the discussion, Buterin emphasized the importance of balancing innovation and privacy in today’s digital identity landscape. He’s convinced that identity projects are key to protecting online discourse from being polluted or hijacked by bots and troll farms. But he insists that these initiatives should do so without compromising user privacy.
“In my view, the ideal outcome of ‘one-per-person’ identity projects that exist today is if they were to merge with social-graph-based identity,” – Vitalik Buterin.
Now based in New York City, the Ethereum co-founder still occupies the frontlines of privacy inside and outside of digital infrastructure. His words are a harbinger of a growing unease among technologists that new identification systems will lead to the erosion of personal freedom and privacy.
