AI gold rush will take humanity to dark places

In the spotlight: Altman speaks during a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing in Washington. Congress is debating the potential and pitfalls of artificial intelligence as products like ChatGPT raise questions about the future of creative industries. — Bloomberg

SCANNING humanity’s eyeballs in exchange for cryptocurrency and assigning the encoded results to a blockchain is the kind of dystopian idea that might have stoked a speculative boom during the pandemic, before eventually crashing to earth and leaving a trail of angry investors behind.

But with interest in artificial intelligence (AI) reaching fever pitch, this risky solution to proving personhood in the digital world is gaining new impetus.