Altman: Confidence in Universal Basic Income Weakens, WLD Drops 98%

CryptoWorld News: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated in a podcast with The Atlantic Monthly that his belief in Universal Basic Income (UBI) has diminished. He mentioned that UBI has been his advocacy for the past 8 years, but now he thinks distributing money this way is not feasible. He prefers to promote “collective ownership,” hoping to let everyone hold shares of computing power or AI companies; the more AI profits, the more users can share, rather than receiving a fixed amount each month. Altman previously developed the cryptocurrency project World (originally Worldcoin) to promote UBI, with its core design being to verify identity through iris scans and distribute WLD tokens, similar to a crypto version of universal payouts. However, the current price of WLD is about $0.25, a 98% drop from its all-time high of $11.82 in March 2024. Four weeks ago, the World Foundation sold 239 million WLD tokens near a historical low, cashing out $65 million. Altman believes that AI dividends may be monopolized by a few, and he worries that limited computing power and difficult-to-use tools will exacerbate wealth inequality. He emphasizes the need to build massive amounts of computing power to make intelligence as cheap and widespread as possible, while also ensuring tools are easy to use.