Spend plenty of time in San Francisco and take a peek into the future of cyberpunk. A fleet of self-driving cars? Yawn. A startup trying to revive wool mammoths? Certainly, why not. Summon a godlike artificial intelligence that can wipe out humanity? Hoham.
As you would have done on Wednesday night, you may find yourself standing in a crowded room in the Marina district, staring at a sparkling white sphere known as an orb, scanning your eyeballs in exchange for what you call cryptocurrency and World ID.
The event was hosted by World, a San Francisco startup co-founded by open-lied Sam Altman, who came up with one of the more ambitious (or creepy according to your view) technology projects in recent memory.
This is the basic pitch of the company. The Internet is about to overrun with a swarm of realistic AI bots that makes it nearly impossible to determine whether they are interacting with real people on social networks, dating sites, gaming platforms and other online spaces.
To solve this problem, World created a program called World ID. This can be thought of as Internet clear or TSA Precheck. This allows users to verify their humanity online.
To register, users stare at the orb collecting scans of Iris. You then follow some instructions on the smartphone app to receive a unique biometric identifier stored on your device. It has a baked in privacy feature, and the company says it will not store images of users' Iris.
In exchange, users receive a cryptocurrency called WorldCoin. (As of Wednesday night, the sign-up bonus was worth around $40.
At the event, Altman pitched the world as a solution to a problem called “trust in the Agi era,” as artificial general information is approaching and human-like AI systems are getting closer to vision, he said.
“We wanted a way to ensure that humans remain special and central in a world where there is a lot of AI-driven content on the Internet,” Altman said.
Ultimately, world chief executives Altman and Alex Blania believe that something like Worldcoin is needed to distribute revenue from powerful AI systems to humans, perhaps in the form of universal basic income. They discussed various ways to create a “real human network” that combines proof-of-human verification schemes with financial payment systems that allow validated humans to trade with other validated humans.
“The first idea was very crazy,” Altman said. “Then we went a bit crazy and we became a world.”
The project was launched internationally two years ago and discovered many of its early traction in developing countries like Kenya and Indonesia. There, users line up to get ORB scans in exchange for cryptocurrency rewards. The company has raised approximately $200 million from investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures.
There were some hiccups. Global biometric data collection faces opposition from privacy advocates and regulators, and the company has been banned or investigated in places such as Hong Kong and Spain. There are also reports of fraud and workers' exploitation related to the project's crypto-based reward system.
But it appears to be growing rapidly. According to Brania, around 26 million people have signed up for apps around the world since it was launched two years ago, with over 12 million people undergoing ORB scans to verify themselves as human beings.
The world was initially separated from the US, but some were out of concern that regulators were balancing its plans. But the Trump administration's code-friendly policy gave it an opening.
On Wednesday, World announced that it will launch in the US and open front posts of retail stores in cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles and Nashville. We plan to install 7,500 orbs in the country by the end of the year.
The company also revealed a new version of the ORB, the Orb Mini. This is not actually an Orb. Instead, it looks like a smart phone, but serves the same purpose as a larger device. World has announced a partnership with Gaming Company and Match Group Razer, and has announced a dating apricot glomerate.
It is not yet clear whether any of this can make money, or whether privacy-conscious Americans are keen to fork the biometric data of some crypto tokens, as did the developing people around the world.
It is also not clear whether the world can overcome basic skepticism about how strange and ominous the whole is.
Personally, I sympathize with the idea that there is a need for a way to communicate bots and humans. But the proposed fix around the world – a global biometric registry backed by volatile cryptocurrencies and overseen by private companies – may sound like a “black mirror” episode to reach mainstream acceptance. And even on Wednesday, I met many people who were reluctant to stare at the orb in a room packed with enthusiastic early adopters.
“You can't easily abandon your personal data. You're taking into account your eyeball personal data,” one high-tech worker told me.
His global connections with Altman are also being scrutinized. During the event, several skeptics pointed out that, thanks to his position on Openai, he, in a way, is burning the problem that the world is trying to solve (an internet full of fascinating bots).
However, Altman's connection could also help World Scale quickly if they work with Openai or integrate it with an AI product in some way. Perhaps the social networks reportedly built by Openai have a “Verified Human Only” mode, or perhaps users who contribute in valuable ways to Openai's products will be paid at some point in WorldCoin.
(New York Times sued Openai and its partner Microsoft, alleging that it was copyright infringed on news content related to AI Systems. Openai and Microsoft denied the claim.)
Also, privacy norms could change in favour of the world, and today's strange and ominous things could be normalized tomorrow. (Remember how strange it was when you first saw a clear kiosk at the airport? Did you promise to never hand over your biometric data?
When it was my turn to step up to the orb, I removed the glasses, opened the World app and followed the instructions it gave me. (Look like this, look like that, and retreat a bit.) The orb camera captures the texture of my iris and hides for a minute. The rings around the orb glowed yellow, which radiated a happy chime.
A few minutes later I was the owner of WorldCoin Tokens with a World ID and 39.22. (The tokens are worth $40.77 at today's price. If you find a way to get them out of your phone, you'll donate to the charity.)
My ORB scan was quick and painless, but I felt vaguely vulnerable for the rest of the night. However, many of the attendees do not seem to have that kind of anxiety.
“What am I hiding anyway?” a social media influencer named Hannah Stocking said as she stepped up to get an orb scan. “Who cares? I'll take it all.”
