by Stavroula Pabst, Unlimited Hangout:
More than a sketchy cash for biometrics scheme, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and friends’ Worldcoin project is positioning itself as a one-stop shop for identity and financial infrastructure that could upend traditional finance and governance structures as we know them.
Want $50 worth of cryptocurrency? Scan your irises with one of Worldcoin’s orbs and it’s yours. Such is Worldcoin’s (rather odd) elevator pitch to the public, which has subsequently rolled out its iris-scanning orbs to 38 countries worldwide.
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Launched in mid-2023 and described by founder Sam Altman upon launch as “a global financial and identity network based on proof of personhood,” Worldcoin has made a big splash in its efforts to grow an identity and finance network using the unique, orb-based iris scans of every individual on Earth.
worldcoin launches today: https://t.co/UXXE5AFznS
— Sam Altman (@sama) July 24, 2023
Some are excited by the project, many fear it. Debatable optics of using an orb (often stylized in Worldcoin’s communications as “the Orb”) as a project centerpiece aside, Worldcoin’s orb-based iris scans have been suspended in several countries, including Spain, Kenya, and Portugal due to mounting privacy concerns and the organization’s sketchy business practices. But, as Rest of World reports, the scans have recently become popular in Argentina, where pervasive economic crises and record inflation rates have made many hungry for instant cash: in January 2024, Worldcoin boasted it had scanned the irises of about one percent of Argentines.
Amongst the tech world’s most ambitious projects today, Worldcoin is positioning itself as a one-stop shop for identity, finance, and Universal Basic Income (UBI) infrastructure that is poised to undermine, if not subvert, traditional financial systems and governance structures internationally — all in response to problems attributed to the growth of the AI industry, which is arguably led by Altman’s own OpenAI.
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