Sam Altman believes his AI-enabled, iris-scanning Orbs can help save the world from other AI systems he’s creating. I’m not convinced.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s buzzy startup Worldcoin has a relatively straightforward pitch to prospective users. First, you fork over a scan of your eyeball to one of several thousand iris-scanning, basketball-sized metal computers called “Orbs.” In exchange, you’ll receive a one-of-a-kind “World ID” that could one day be used to verify your identity throughout the web. In many locations, Worldcoin will actually trade you some of its own WLM cryptocurrency tokens “simply for being human,” per its website.
Gizmodo was invited for some face-to-face time with “The Orb’’ this week in New York City. The experience, which only took a few minutes, was easy, comfortable, relatively mundane, and unquestionably dystopian. We gazed into “The Orb’s” eye and saw a cynical, anarcho-capitalist dream world where displaced workers bow in servitude to Silicon Valley’s crypto philanthropists.
Gizmodo arrived at the Worldcoin pop-up, not far from Google’s office in Chelsea, dripping in sweat induced by a brutal New York heat wave. Videos circulating online showed long, winding lines of people filling city blocks eagerly awaiting their chance to sign up, so we mentally prepared ourselves for a toilsome, sweaty odyssey. Altman himself noted “crazy lines around the world” in a tweet. In reality, there was just one other person at the shared workspace signing up when we arrived.
Worldcoin staff assured us they saw a steady stream of sign-ups in New York throughout the week. The lackluster line could be attributed to the company’s decision not to offer any crypto in exchange for iris scans in the US due to an uncertain regulatory environment. Users who sign up in other markets receive 25 WLD tokens. Some two million people signed up during the beta testing period. A spokesperson told Gizmodo that could change in the future, but leadership does not appear willing to budge on that just yet. So we gave away our data for free.
“When we started thinking about this, we didn’t think it would end up as ‘world minus the US coin’ and here we are,” Altman said in an interview with the Financial Times. “The US does not make or break a project like this.”
A friendly Worldcoin representative and an “Orb operator” greeted us and helpfully answered our questions while the eye-scanning metal sphere sat lurking on the pedestal near the back of the room. To get started, the operator had us create a new account on the Worldcoin app. Our reporter was asked to verify that he was above 18 years old and was given the choice to opt-in to let Worldcoin save the image of his iris to train its future algorithms. Those who don’t opt in, the operator said, may have to revisit an Orb location to reverify their identity if Worldcoin updates its algorithms in the future. Nowhere during this process was our reporter ever asked to provide his name, phone, number, email, or other identifying information, nor had he provided that information beforehand.
