Sam Altman's Eye-Scanning Orb Is Now Coming to the US - Wired [View all]
Sam Altmans iris-scanning, identify-verification technology startup says it will begin expanding to the US starting May 1 and will launch a phone-like hardware device by next year. Those changesand a promised World-branded debit cardsignal the companys ambitions to develop a super appa goal shared by Elon Musk.
Altman and Alex Blania, a German physics researcher, announced at an event in San Francisco Wednesday evening that their venture-backed company, Tools for Humanity, is updating its World products to include a new, smaller, eye-scanning orb. The device-and-app combo scans peoples irises, creates a unique user ID, stores that information on the blockchain, and uses it as a form of identity verification. If enough people adopt the app globally, the thinking goes, it could ostensibly thwart scammers.
Altman has expressed concern about the amount of fakery that new AI tools will enable, including the generative AI tools pioneered by his other startup, OpenAI, which is valued at $300 billion. So the World app, and its hardware component, are Altmans solution to the problem.
Proving personhood is a hard thing to productize, and whiffs of a scam have plagued the startup since it launched. The project has also been scrutinized by foreign governments for its biometric data-capture and storage policies. But Altman and Blania havent been deterred.
https://www.wired.com/story/sam-altman-orb-eyeball-scan-launch-us/