The scan uses a football-sized device called The Orb to collect people’s biometric data. The idea is to create a way to identify all humans. The company has dealt with bans in several countries.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
The tech venture Worldcoin says its goal is to scan the irises of everyone on Earth. Now, to do that, they have to convince people to stare into a shiny football-sized device called the Orb. NPR’s tech correspondent Dara Kerr went to Worldcoin’s first major event.
DARA KERR, BYLINE: The scene inside this nondescript building in San Francisco is straight out of the TV show “Silicon Valley.” A DJ spins techno music. Servers pass around detox juice made of golden beets. The Wi-Fi network is called NewWorld. Most everyone here is spreading the gospel of the Orb. I speak to David Khosroshvili.
You’re basically, like, an evangelist. You’re trying to get other people to try and get their irises scanned also.
DAVID KHOSROSHVILI: Yeah, because a lot of people are sometimes, oh, you know, like, I don’t want to scan my eyes. And once you actually have your hands on the hardware and the tech and once you look into it, I think your confidence level increases. The fear goes away.
KERR: The Orb is a creation of Worldcoin. It sees a future where people use their iris scans to prove they are human or, as they say, authenticate personhood. Worldcoin was co-founded by ChatGPT CEO Sam Altman. Here he is speaking to the crowd at the event.
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SAM ALTMAN: We want to see what happens when we do this at mass scale.
KERR: Mass scale is something Worldcoin has pushed for years. It says 7 million people are now on its network from Asia to Africa. In exchange for their iris scans, many of those people got vouchers for cryptocurrency, somewhere between 20 and $50, and that’s raised privacy and security concerns for some governments. Countries like Kenya and South Korea have even suspended Worldcoin. But that hasn’t dimmed the venture’s enthusiasm.
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RICH HELEY: Provide access to every human. We need more Orbs – lots more Orbs, probably on the order of 1,000 times more Orbs than we have today.
KERR: That’s Rich Heley speaking at the event. He’s an executive at Worldcoin’s parent company. He says that anyone can now buy an Orb and start scanning their friends and family.
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HELEY: I want all of you guys here today to be our first community operators. Everyone here will get an Orb.
KERR: The tech venture’s final announcement – it’s no longer called Worldcoin. Now it’s just World.
Dara Kerr, NPR News.
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