A person's iris is recorded as part of a demonstration of iris recognition biometric technology being used at Vancouver International Airport.CHUCK STOODY/CP
Jacob Silverman is a journalist in New York. He is the author of two books and the host of the new CBC podcast on the fall of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, The Naked Emperor. He also writes a Substack newsletter.
On May 23, Sam Altman, the startup impresario behind OpenAI, the maker of wildly popular generative text app ChatGPT, got to try one of his other signature products for the first time. At least officially. After a busy day of meetings with government officials in three different European capitals, Mr. Altman tweeted a photo of himself having his eyeball scanned by a large metallic orb.
Worldcoin, which offers users WLD crypto tokens in exchange for “proof of personhood” via an iris scan, is made by an Altman-founded company called Tools for Humanity. Using the language of financial empowerment, global development and crypto hype, Worldcoin has spent the last couple of years paying contract workers to take its orbs and scan eyes all over the world, with an emphasis on the Global South, where people are rewarded with local currency, a small gift or the promise of WLD tokens. (WLD hasn’t officially launched, so there aren’t yet tokens to trade.)
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Experts and regulators around the world have expressed concerns about artificial intelligence gobbling up jobs and spewing out misinformation at scale. But relatively little attention has been paid to what the founder of the best-known AI product is also spewing out. Worldcoin’s scheme to collect iris scans en masse in exchange for a contrived digital token, and doing so while professing humanitarian intent, is one of the most baldly dystopian concepts to come out of Silicon Valley in a while.
Last week, Worldcoin raised another US$115-million in investment money, reflecting a growing trend of unproven, potentially exploitative technologies being pushed out into the world before regulators, or consumers, are ready.
Worldcoin is an unusual project, mixing sensitive biometric data collection with crypto tokens, which potentially count as securities, with certain attendant regulatory requirements that many crypto firms don’t seem keen on following. Thus, Worldcoin’s terms of use seem to ban U.S. customers, at least from acquiring WLD tokens. Whether Mr. Altman, a U.S. citizen, should have been allowed to sign up for Worldcoin at all will have to be left to company lawyers – and perhaps the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Since Worldcoin’s soft launch in 2021, the backlash has been predictable and consistent. The project has spent as much time assuring potential users about the security of their biometric data as it has collecting it. And still, a black market for iris scans – a phrase to make one shiver – has already appeared, with people selling Cambodian iris scans to Chinese Worldcoin users for US$20 per set.
An MIT Technology Review investigation last year found that the company had engaged in “deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent.” It may also have violated the General Data Protection Regulation, the EU’s key data privacy law. Worldcoin workers and users (if those who submit their eyeball scans can be called users) seem equally discontented. Contractors have complained of mistreatment, shifting pay and difficulties with local authorities. One Kenyan truck driver called the company “thieves” who had “robbed” him for his data.
It seems like a recipe for corruption to send out thousands of contractors to hoover up millions of iris scans in exchange for a digital IOU. Worldcoin claims to be solving problems around digital identity and a global basic income, but it is already creating others – and it’s barely in the beta phase. And the token itself could be worthless or fall prey to the pump-and-dump mechanics of so many crypto projects. Initial adopters were promised US$25 worth of WLD, but lately payouts have been denominated in WLD tokens, even though the company acknowledges in an online FAQ that “there are no guarantees about how much WLD will be worth, or whether it will have value.”
It’s still unclear just what “problem” Worldcoin aims to solve as it fills its digital basket with millions or even billions of people’s biometric data in a bid to enrich its backers. Worldcoin has raised money from venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, which benefited enormously from the recent crypto boom. Just because the product is a chill-inducing surveillance orb doling out what MIT Technology Review called a “useless IOU” doesn’t mean VCs can’t profit by acquiring WLD tokens at an investor’s discount and then selling them when WLD debuts on public markets. That has been the core business model driving crypto investment in recent years. And no matter what fantastical vision Sam Altman spins of a global basic income, providing a return on investment is what this is all about.