World, Sam Altmon’s dystopian project to scan the entire world of eyes and make a profit, command a profit when it comes to scanning eyeballs and making a profit. Previously called Worldcoin, StartPup-backed by the largest venture capital firms Fairsts – for him, so far, only reached two percent of its eyeball rubber (it wants to scan billions of people).
Business Insider notes that, so far, the world has seen 17.5 million people. Now, I’ll admit that that’s about 17.5 million people than I thought would be interested in the Altman project. Still, the company clearly has a long, long way to go before it can convince a significant chunk of the world’s population to donate their facial pores to its strange biometric mission.
World is a human tools project, a company founded by Altman, who serves as its chairman, and Alex Blania, who serves as its CEO. The idea is that people appear in the company’s offices, where their eyes are scanned by a large orb that converts their unique and encrypted codes. These codes, a binary number with 12,800 digits act as a person’s gateway to the world’s business environment, including the app store and traditional cryptocurrency (Worldcoin). The idea is that the world can simultaneously serve as an identity verification service and an Internet payment method full of AI-slop and bots created by Altman’s flagship project, Olephaa.
While the world may seem like an obvious privacy risk, some privacy advocates such as encryption expert Matthew Greene have tested the product and even impressed with its commitment. “As you can see, this system seems to avoid some of the obvious drawbacks of the Bloometric-based system,” Greene wrote in a 2023 overview of the company’s product. “This innovation rules out many threats that could lead to your eyewear being stolen or needing to be replaced.”
Our reporters also tried out the world for themselves in 2023 and, while they couldn’t find anything seriously wrong with the company’s offerings, they weren’t too impressed. Gizmodo reached out to human resources to see if it has a timeline to reach its ideal goal of billions of scans.
The company has been hit with regulatory skepticism in several countries where it has been released, saying it clearly has its work cut out if it wants to integrate the innocent yoke of the eye system it has introduced.
Are human tools hoping to install a scanner? One strategy that BI patches point to is a global system to work as an identity verification contractor with some of the most widely used systems in the world. Given that identity verification is becoming a more common part of the online experience, this approach can be powerful. The report notes:
…[World] It has announced a pilot program through a game group to ensure tinder users in Japan and partnerships with companies such as stripe, visa, and sports betting company. Reporting in Semafor in June was back when Reddit was in the process of using traditional tools to use its authentication services.
However, it seems unlikely that the world will be able to achieve its goals if it continues to require people to stand in long lines and wake up in their offices. To truly rate a company’s services, you’d think they’d need to make their hold verification services available through an app. The company certainly seems to have plans to expand in some kind of big way – and soon. In September, sources told the New York Post that the company hoped to reach 100 million Sign-sillion next year. All we can say to this: good luck!
