OpenAI founder’s newest project could destroy your privacy | Official Website of Louis Velazquez, entrepreneur, finance guy and tech innovator

Ever since the word AI became a part of daily public conversation a few years ago, some frightening headlines have come along with it.

One of the most common is that AI will replace the job you do at work, erasing a company’s need for your services. Some of the most common jobs to be mentioned in these reports are data entry, customer service, and scheduling, although financial analysis and copywriting also sometimes make that list.

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While the idea of AI doing jobs that are boring and repetitive actually sounds like it could create better situations for human beings, it’s quite scary if you happen to do one of those jobs to make your living.

Another thing that you’ve surely noticed about AI right now is that it seems to be everywhere. Open Facebook, and it’s stuffed into the bottoms of posts. Open Siri or Google Assistant, and you’re chatting with one. Read the news, and every big tech company from Apple to Nvidia is talking about its big AI plans.

Everyone’s been so worried about AI and its ramifications that there has’t been much attention on other tech developments lately. But now something new is coming from Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT, and while it won’t take your job, it very well could steal whatever privacy you still have left.

An Orb, made by Tools for Humanity.

Image source&colon; Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images

A device that scans your eye for identification

An unusual store appeared in San Francisco’s Union Square district in early May. It was populated with spheres called Orbs, which people could look into and have their retinas scanned. In exchange, participants got a “World ID” which they could use to log onto online services and apps, as well as some Worldcoin cryptocurrency tokens.

The message on the shop window read: “World is the real human network. Anonymous proof of human and universally inclusive finance for the age of AI. Millions of humans in over 160 countries. Now available in the USA.”

The shop — as well as the technology within — is the latest project from Sam Altman, the CEO of ChatGPT. In partnership with Alex Blania, he founded a startup called Tools for Humanity back in 2019, which sports the tagline, “building for humans in the age of AI.”

At first, the idea seems like a good one: by scanning your iris, the Orbs can identify that you are a real human, vaulting over the problem of someone creating an AI image or video of you that’s intended to pass as you.

But pause a moment to consider what could happen if this precious biometric data is leaked, and the possibilities become much more frightening.

“The one discriminator we had on the internet to distinguish us from machines was always intelligence, but that’s going to vanish,” Blania told WIRED in an interview in June 2023. “To our knowledge, the Orb is the only implementation that can work globally to solve this problem.”

According to Tools for Humanity, over 12 million people have verified themselves using the Orbs, and 26 million have downloaded the World app, where their World ID is stored after using the Orb system. The reason for the shop is the launch of the product in the U.S., which was announced by Tools for Humanity via its X account on May 3.

This is just the beginning of a rollout that Tools for Humanity says will deploy a total of 7,500 Orbs throughout the U.S. this year in cities such as Nashville, Atlanta, Austin, Miami, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

While the company says that the data that it captures using the Orbs is not stored and that it does not have access to it — it’s instead sent to the World app in an encrypted format where only the user can — it’s still feels like something you’d see in an episode of “Black Mirror.” And considering how often things go south in that show, many might hesitate before offering up their eyeballs for a scan.