Sam Altman isn’t slowing down. After taking the lead in the future of artificial intelligence, he now wants to capture us… through our eyes. Literally.
His company, Tools for Humanity, just launched Worldcoin in the United States, a biometric identity system based on iris scans. Six cities are involved: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, and San Francisco. In their sleek, very Apple-style stores, you can scan your eye using a basketball-sized device called the Orb to get your World ID.
The idea? Use your iris like a digital fingerprint to prove you’re human. In a world where AI bots are multiplying at insane speed, we apparently need a “proof of humanity.” And according to them, it must be global, irreversible, and recorded on the blockchain. Once your eye is scanned, you get assigned a unique IrisCode, becoming your identity within the Worldcoin project. By 2026, they’ll roll out the Orb Mini, a portable version with an app to scale the system worldwide.
And it doesn’t stop there. Worldcoin is already collaborating with Visa for a Worldcoin-branded debit card and with Match Group to test age verification on Tinder in Japan. So it’s not just about digital security anymore — it’s about money and relationships. And it all starts with one look.
But while they dream of a “safer world,” the big question grows louder: at what cost? Biometric data isn’t like a password you can change. If something goes wrong, you can’t exactly swap out your eyes. It’s not just a technical issue — it’s ethical and political. Who controls this data? Who decides how it’s used? And most importantly: do we really want a global system where our identity is tied to a device made by one private company?
The numbers are already huge: over 12 million irises scanned worldwide. But now, with the U.S. launch, the stakes are higher than ever. Because the future of digital identity systems might just start here — and if we’re not careful, that future might be looking deeper into us than we’re ready for.
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