My Eyeball Met With Sam Altman’s Crypto AI Scanner

Sam Altman’s imprimatur has given a new lease of life to cryptocurrency Worldcoin, whose orb-shaped iris scanners — key to verifying individuals who can then claim free tokens — are now being pitched as humanity’s future ID system in a world dominated by artificial intelligence. The hype has certainly been very human: After launching this week, the digital money more than doubled in value before falling as much as 90%.

So far, so crypto. Clearly, there’ll always be some kind of market for speculative tokens lacking intrinsic value. But Worldcoin does have something worth taking a closer look at: Those orbs, and the apparent willingness of 2 million people and counting to scan their irises in return for… well, what exactly? In a world where our data is regularly hoovered up by web browsers, social-media networks and smartphone apps, why would people willingly hand sensitive biometrics to Worldcoin and its opaque foundation, based in the regulation-lite Cayman Islands, especially after reports of hacks and fraud?