Thursday, six stores across America opened their doors with a curious proposition: enter, leave a metal orb scanning your iris and go out with a new online profile which promises that you are an individual human – and a few crypto dollars for your problems.
Retail stores in the United States are the last outgrowth of the World Project (formerly known as Worldcoin) – the flagship initiative of Tools for Humanity, a startup co -founded in 2019 by the boss of Openai Sam Altman, with Alex Blania and Max Nevendstern.
World allows you to verify that you are a real person so that you can connect to services that require the platform. He specializes in the attempt to distinguish real humans from bots and imitators generated by AI. The idea being, if you perform a site or an application – games or meetings on the Internet, for example – and you really want to make sure that each of your users is real individuals and not false automated, World provides this level of user identity and authenticity management.
Here is the capture: the most reliable way to proceed, supports the startup, is with biometric scanning.
The key components of the world include the orb (a brilliant sphere that photos of your iris and your face), World ID (a supposed system of person proof), the global application (where users manage their identity document and have access to services) and Worldcoin (AKA WLD, a cryptocurrency distributed to users as a reward).
Unsurprisingly, regulators from around the world have raised concerns about all this idea of a collection managed and the storage of biometric data from people. South Korea has a fine of the startup of more than $ 800,000 for privacy violations. Hong Kong ordered him to fully cease operations, and Germany, Kenya and Spain initiated various legal actions against the cabinet.
But too bad all that – on America! The administrator has now set up stores in Austin, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco, with its sweetening orbs. Since SF is also the house of Vesture West, we decided to take a look.
The store, nestled between Macy and Louis Vuitton on the Place de l’Union de la ville, is a little dilapidated and barely painted. A wooden structure in the center of the room houses eight orbs the size of a football ball at variable heights.
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Here’s how it works for American Internet users. We will assume that you must create (or anticipate creation) a human verified profile on the world which is required by an application or service that you want to use.
First of all, you must download the global application, connect and after entering the store, wait when it is linked to a nearby orb. The application tells you where to stand in relation to the sphere and how to position your head, and the scan of your eyes and your face takes a few seconds to finish. This data is used to create a global blocchain world ID which is unique to you according to your physically biometric information.
More specifically, this biometric analysis is encrypted and sent directly to your phone to be converted into this unique identity token, after which the information is deleted on the orb itself, indicates the project. To encourage, the global application is credited with Worldcoins of a value of just over $ 16 in real money. This token is then used later when connecting to things to prove that you are a unique and really real human.
Despite all the control, the startup claims to have 26 million people using its application worldwide, 12 million people who added their biometric data.
During an event on Wednesday in SF, Altman and Blania officially launched the organization in the United States – there have been trials worldwide – and said that the outfit wanted to have 7,500 orbs – four times the current total base – in place through the United States by the end of the year. The biz has created a factory in Texas to pump orbs for America and the rest of the world, and works on a miniaturized version to increase verification.
“I am a very proud American, I think America should lead innovation, not fight it,” Altman told Shindig, which you can watch below.
YouTube video
During the rally, Blania said that the three areas on which the company will focus on games, online meetings and social media, mainly to eliminate robots disguised as real people. Global IDs can help people they chat with real online people, he said. That said, it is not a panacea; We can think of certain drawbacks.
World announced two partnerships during its American launch. A debit card supported by Visa will be published later this year, and Match.com in Japan will use World ID to reassure nerve date.
During our visit to the store, an assistant said that the quantity of traffic for orb had been very high, but we only observed a handful of people who tried it within 15 minutes of the store. A man, a visitor of the RSA conference that takes place right at the bottom of the road, said that he had heard of it in the show and that “free money is free money”. We hope he is right. ®
