WLD has dropped 98%, and Altman is no longer promoting UBI.

According to Beating Monitoring, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a podcast with Atlantic Monthly CEO Nicholas Thompson: “I’m not as strong in my belief in UBI as I used to be.” Universal Basic Income (UBI, giving everyone regular cash payments) has been his flagship proposal for 8 years, but now he feels that distributing money this way is no longer feasible. He is more interested in “collective ownership,” allowing everyone to hold shares of computing power or AI companies, so that the more AI profits, the more everyone shares, rather than receiving a fixed monthly payment.

Altman also launched a cryptocurrency project called World (formerly Worldcoin) to promote UBI. Its core design involves scanning irises to verify real identities and then issuing WLD tokens, essentially a crypto version of universal cash distribution. Currently, WLD is worth about $0.25, down 98% from its peak of $11.82 in March 2024. Four weeks ago, the World Foundation sold 239 million WLD tokens near its all-time low, cashing out $65 million. Altman’s statement about losing faith in UBI at this time is quite intriguing.

He is worried that AI dividends will be monopolized by a few people. He said that if computing power is limited, tools are difficult to use, and integration is low, wealthy individuals will drive up the price of computing power, exacerbating wealth inequality. He believes the most important thing is to build large amounts of computing power and make intelligence as cheap and accessible as possible. Having computing power alone is not enough; tools must also be user-friendly. He cited Codex as an example: three months ago, it was a command-line tool only a small number of technical experts could handle; now, you can install an app to use it, but for non-technical users, it’s still not very friendly — “there’s still a lot to do.”