Worldcoin pays crypto to scan your eyes

This past Monday, dozens of futuristic-looking silver orbs appeared in cities around the world. It is a machine dedicated to scanning the eyes of users, a process that is intended to distinguish between humans and robots. That is the centerpiece of Worldcoin, the new project of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the firm behind the famous ChatGPT. A project described as “dystopian” that is beginning to take shape.

Founded three years ago, Worldcoin markets itself as a “personality proof-based global identity and financial network,” according to a statement posted on its website. What does that mean? The ambition of this platform is that users can create an anonymous and verified digital identity that guarantees their privacy on the internet and that helps them to distinguish themselves from artificial intelligence (AI), something like a digital ID. In other words: a user who uses an avatar will be able to show that they are a real person without having to reveal who they are.

The standardization of AI tools is making it increasingly difficult to distinguish content created by humans from that generated by a computer program. This problem will grow as immersion in virtual worlds gains weight and that, in turn, could make the identification project proposed by Worldcoin increasingly in demand. Given this scenario, Altman wants to be the first to occupy this potential business. Curiously, the businessman is now proposing a solution to the problem caused by the products of OpenAI, his other company.

The first step for that idea to work is for thousands of people to agree to have their face and eyeballs scanned by the company. That scanner receives a unique number that identifies the person and that is stored in a database in which, according to the company, more than two million people already have records. Worldcoin has explained that the iris is the most reliable method to identify a human and that, after perfecting its systems, it will anonymize and delete the biometric data of users. Even so, the British regulator has already assured on Monday that it will investigate this practice.

The orbs have already been deployed in Tokyo, Miami and Lisbon and during this week they are expected to reach other cities such as Barcelona, ​​Madrid, Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Singapore or Buenos Aires. In total, the company has ensured that there will be 1,500 devices in up to 35 locations around the world.

To encourage that process, Worldcoin offers 25 coins of its own cryptocurrency to those who give up their iris biometrics. The possession and sale of this new virtual currency, whose current value is around two dollars, is expected to increase its popularity and value.

However, it does not offer it all over the world, but only in those countries where there is no regulation that prevents it. Thus, in the United States it will not be possible to access these. It is likely that in the European Union (EU) either.

This system generates many suspicions. On the one hand, its extractive logic raises fears that Worldcoin will end up amassing millions of sensitive data or that it will fall into other unwanted hands, generating privacy problems. Company employees charged last year in a BuzzFeed investigation that “glitches in the technology” of scanning “have opened the door to fraud.” On the other, it is feared that the use of cryptocurrencies as an economic claim will attract more users, fueling the first problem.

Worldcoin has promised to pave the way for the establishment of a universal basic income – economic income that all citizens would receive without any conditions – “funded by AI” and “drastically increase economic opportunity”. However, Altman has not explained how he intends his system to become a technological utopia, something that raises even more suspicion. The aforementioned BuzzFeed journalistic investigation revealed that the company “has angered the very people it claims to be trying to help”, especially outraging users in Africa and Asia who were allegedly denied the money they were promised in exchange for scanning their eyes.