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The opening moments of the 1982 film Blade Runner introducing viewers to the world of artificially intelligent creatures that “resemble” humans. To tell a human from a machine, people rely on something called the Voight-Kampff test, which is like a polygraph; robot irises display subtle details when requested. If you’re dealing with a robot, you’ll know by sight.
If Sam Altman has his way, this might be kind of how it works in real life. Last week, he announced the expansion of the World ID verification service, created by a startup called Tools for Humanity. Altman founded the company in 2019, the same year he became CEO of OpenAI. On stage last Friday, he explained product as a way to prove one’s identity in a digital environment full of robots, fakes, fraudsters and other types of scammers. Think of it as an evolution of CAPTCHA, a security program used to identify bots and prevent attacks on websites. To prove your humanity and get a Universal ID, you must look into a white, icy orb and allow the company to take pictures of your face and eyeballs.
Orbs, as they’re officially known, are basically basketball-sized cameras that Tools for Humanity has placed in stores, restaurants and other places around the world. They capture biometric information from your irises, encrypt it to protect your privacy, and use it to create a kind of digital passport that you can bring to various websites and apps: something that can be visually appealing. Blade Runner but also Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise’s character is implanted in the back eyeball to avoid facial recognition software.
I encountered the Orb in the wild this morning at a New York coffee shop, where it was installed on top of some delicious wax and a few jars of raw honey. After downloading the World app and holding my phone up to the device, I looked deeply into its aperture; I told the guy behind me not to worry—he could pass me and order his coffee. A few minutes later, the program informed me that I had been granted human status.
As intrusive as the whole thing is, Altman’s invention focuses on a real issue. A few years ago, AI-generated photos and videos couldn’t replicate the work of a real camera; today, examples can be convincing to give even the smallest details. As CEO of the company that helped fuel the AI revolution, Altman bears some of the responsibility for this age of internet communication. Now he sells the solution.
For all the positive effects artificial intelligence can have on society—Altman has it he suggested that AI may one day cure cancer and provide free education to “everyone on Earth”—technology also makes it very easy for us to fool each other. Scammers were using online bots before ChatGPT arrived, but the trend has increased dramatically in the age of AI. With a few simple tips, anyone can summon a team of change-minded individuals. At the same time, people are creating incredible digital butlers known as agentswhich have already begun to fill digital spaces and can often pass for humans. If generative AI is used in the simulation service, fraud and misinformation (cost companies billions annually) or for better reasons, fundamentally changing the way we use the Internet.
Altman has been working on this project for some time. World ID is an offshoot of Worldcoin, a cryptocurrency business launched in 2023 that rewards users with tokens for their Orb searches. Worldcoin still exists, and you can still collect a certain amount of money when you are verified, but the company has abandoned that feature as it has changed its mind (words crypto and blockchain were not invited during last week’s presentation). The sci-fi factor has continued, even if the device has come to look more friendly. My partner Kaitlyn Tiffany explained an early iteration of the Orb, with chrome as a “bad look.” When I asked him about the new version yesterday, he told me that it looks “like a street light.”
Humanity Tools announced last week that Zoom and Docusign will begin supporting Orb-backed authentication for some users and that Tinder, which has already tested it in Japan, will begin rolling it out globally. The app pays a fee when people go through the verification process; users are not charged. But if Wired has been revealed on Wednesday, the company also misrepresented one of its contracts. As part of its efforts to target the role of robots in ticketing, Tools for Humanity created a nearby product called the Concert Kit, intended to help musicians reserve a portion of their tickets for verified humans. Press sources claimed that Bruno Mars’ world tour, which began this month, would be using it. Live Nation and the singer’s management team denied it, and Tools for Humanity has since denied the claim. In a statement, the company told me that the Bruno Mars reference “was the result of a miscommunication with the Human Tools team.”
That’s more than a little ironic, given that the startup’s entire proposition is about trust. His orbs are meant to distinguish the real from the fake. If Humanity Tools cannot reliably communicate with the people who might be asked to use it, how can it function as an arbiter of truth? When I asked Tiago Sada, chief product officer of Tools for Humanity, why people should trust Orb, he told me that they don’t have to. Once the Orb takes pictures of your face and eyes and verifies your humanity, he said, it transfers the encrypted biometric data to your phone and deletes the data from the Orb. The company has also open-sourced the security model, so people can assess its reliability for themselves.
AI’s ability to cheat is improving every day, and it’s reasonable to argue that we’ll need some sort of human verification process to protect ourselves. One new AI model from Anthropic is very powerful, as well threat to global cyber securitythat governments and central banks around the world have been struggling to strengthen their protection. As CEO of OpenAI and chairman of Tools for Humanity, Altman has a financial interest in the products that create these risks and those that protect against them. He is better equipped than most to understand that despite the great power of technology, humans are still creative at the moment. In order to trust machines, people need to be able to trust each other as well.
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- A US Special Forces soldier who participated in the operation that removed Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power. accused of using classified information to place bets on the Polymarket betting platformprosecutors said yesterday. Authorities allege that the soldier made more than $400,000 by betting on the outcome of the operation using insider knowledge.
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Evening Read
Theft is now a Chic development
By Thomas Chatterton Williams
In 1785, Immanuel Kant introduced his “categorical importance”. In short: Do as you want others to do. This commandment, a version of the Good Code, has been the basis of moral philosophy for centuries. But for The New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino, Kant’s “primary-necessity” no longer applies. Moral correctness, in some corners of left-wing opinion, is out; The blatant disregard for the social contract is internal.
Yesterday, The New York Times posted a video of a conversation featuring Tolentino, pro-communist streamer Hasan Piker, and Times opinion editor Nadja Spiegelman, under the headline: “The Rich Don’t Play by the Rules. It started with Tolentino, a very successful writer, admitting to stealing lemons from Whole Foods. “I think that stealing from a big box store — I’ll just say my platform — is not so important as a moral offense, nor is it in any way important as protest or direct action.”
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*Image Sources: Fado / Smith / Getty Collection; Cundra/Getty; Color Hunter – Color Hunter / Getty.
Rafaela Jinich contributed to this journal.
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