Monologue: Sam Altman's BS Eye Scanning Startup

of human and globally inclusive financial network. I want to diet anyway, This slew of buzzwords is meant to distract you from what World really is a collection of extremely shitty apps that requires you to scan your eyeball for some reason. Now, the company behind World is called Tools for Humanity, an annoying name for a company with an annoying tagline that claims they're building for humans in the

age of AI. I note that literally every software company is by definition, building for humans, unless there is a dog version of word I didn't know about. Anyway, back to All's latest bullshit. New users sign up by using one of seven thousand orbs scattered throughout the world to scan their eyeballs, even though it's worth mentioning that the official website only lists eight one hundred and thirty seven locations with the specialist hardware required, and they're in a

seemingly random bunch of countries. Thailand, the Dominican Republic, and Ecuador are all listed, but France and the United Kingdom and Australia are not, I imagine due to local laws or maybe just they didn't want to bother it never is obvious with these people. When he user signs up, they receive sixteen world coin or wld tokens. These are worth, at the time of writing this script, ninety one cents. That's a pretty low price to give up random startup,

a scan of your unique retina patterns. But whatever user accounts are registered on the blockchain, which is, for some reason the good thing. And when I read that, I had to convince myself that I hadn't time travel back to twenty seventeen or twenty twenty one or another time when scam artists were running around this rampantly. You may be wondering what the point of all of this is.

From what I can tell is that it's an attempt to create some sort of verified identification system where companies connect to world systems and can guarantee that each user is real. And I'm really guessing here because world does

not seem that interested in explaining. By verifying your identity using this giant metal orb you get access to a suite of mini apps, including the ability to buy stuff with crypto, create human only Telegram groups, top up a prepaid cell phone using crypto, and crypto for working out livestream from your World account, play shitty mobile games, or

doorso user crypto. Well, it really all of this is just a series of very poorly done apps, and they're all basically crypto apps or something to do with spending your World coins. And for all the pomp, circumstance and bullshit, press World's actual product is the same kind of mediocre, bottom of the barrel crypto bullshit that scam out Ice will howk it into twenty twenty one, with the veneer of respectability given by Sam Llltman and his marketers in

place to make sure the media actually covers it. I should note that you can do all these things already without the additional layer of biometric verification or anything to do with the blog chain. Now, according to mister Altman, and faithfully parroted without a single thought, not one by Kevin Ruce of The New York Times, Alex Heath of the Verge Worldcoin and I quote heath could be used as a form of universal basic income for individuals whose

jobs have been replaced by AI. How where's the money coming from?

It's just it's incoherent. Nevertheless, mister rus of the Times Mysterious went on to say that Altman and Alex Blinia, the other co founder, believe that something like world coin will be needed to distribute the proceeds and powerful AI systems to humans, perhaps in the form have you guessed it? And that's my addition, universal basin income? And I know, I mean, I know, I bag on mister Russe a lot. I know I'm merciless with him, but come on, man, how how what does that even mean? Man?

mean Kevin. Tech companies are notorious for engaging in complex tax avoidance schemes precisely because they don't like distribute the proceeds of their activities, which normal people call paying our fair share of tax. Mechanisms designed to tax these companies engaging in aggressive tax of avoidance practices are now referred to as the Google Tax, precisely because tech companies are

the worst offenders. And I've often said the Open AI's success is based on impossible things happening, like a company kind of raising more money than any startup has ever raised in perpetuity until some yet unseen breakthrough maths or semiconductor engineering happens and allows it to essentially crawl into the black, but not without first burning hundreds of billions of dollars. This is basically what World appears to be

as well, except with far less effort. Like I guess we're going to put all the eyes in the machine and then something will happen. Right, wrong, nothing's happening. World has actually been around for a few years, and they've

been doing some really nasty stuff behind the scenes. According to Ailing Guo and Adi Ronaldi of MIT Technology Review, who reported in twenty twenty two and I'll be Linking in the episode, notes that all would hire local ORB operators to sign people up, and I quote receiving commission for each person's biometric data that they collect, turning them into the equivalent of a door to door salesman, but instead of knives or Kirby vacuums, they're trying to take

pictures of your eyes. These operators, according to tech Review, barely knew what they were selling, what World called coin did, or how the information was collected, what was done with any of this stuff. World preyed upon people in developing and often poor countries like Indonesia, Kenya, Sudan, and Ghana, where people might be tempted with what might be considered by Western standards are pittance to scan their eyes and

download the app as on the side. By the way, world Coin is now banned in both Spain and Hong Kong. Almost every article about world takes their idea at face value that this is a company verifying people's identity using their eyes, and that they will, as a result, be able to connect this to a verified eye database and then do something. Just something will, then something will happen.

It's good to verify people because AI AI bots right right, I mean, social networks are, they're full of bots, and this will stop that somehow, won't it. Yeah, I mean, I want to be clear that this whole thing is extra normally fucking stupid, and nobody would have paid attention, even an Iowa to of attention to it if Samuilman

wasn't attached. And we know that because if you search for biometric blockchain verification funding on Google with the verbeta match and turned on, you see a bunch of companies that have also tried to do exactly the same thing over the past few years. And while they raised the odd million here or there, especially during the twenty twenty one twenty twenty two VC market, they didn't really go anywhere.

On top of the obvious privacy concerns of millions of people creating a giant biometric database of their eyes, World's ideas are somewhere between also rans and complete fucking nonsense. Weld has raised one hundred and fifteen million dollars at a three billion dollar valuation, yet has built no infrastructure of apps, no real business model, and and nothing other

than an aggressive attempt to gather millions people's eyeballs. They do also have an upcoming visa debit card to use your crypto without first converting it into Viat currency, which is an idea that's extremely old and has been done many many times over the years. Oh and they're also going to allow you to verify your identity on Tinder,

which is a feature that Tinder already offers. And really, though biometric verification is already a thing, there's something called pass keys, which are already being offered as a replacement to passwords, and a bunch of sites like Amazon I

think best bias. Well, they work by storing a cryptographic key, not cryptocurrency cryptographic, it's the maths one, and they store it on your device, which is something you already have and verify that against something that you can't easily spoof, like a scan of your face and what face ID does or fingerprints and yes, your iris is in some cases, well World wants to offer exactly that, but you have to use some giant eye scanner thing that you have

to physically travel to one only available in a handful of countries and give your data to a man who loves the lie and make himself more money. And while it's true that some in the developing world lack any formal identification and that in turn makes it harder for them to access travel documents, banking services and government services,

we don't need Sam Moltman to solve that problem. Indias solved this almost sixteen years ago with its ad Hoar program, which now covers ninety nine point nine percent of the adult population. Adhar gives Indian citizens a twelve digit unique identify which is linked to their biometric information. In India managed to accomplish this without crypto or the blockchain. I'm sure it's not perfect, I'm sure that there are critics

of it, but it's definitely better than World. And also it's old news and it's not exciting, even though it worked. Let's talk about Sam Altman and whatever the fuck he's up to now. Some people Alex Heath have also said that World's platform has over one hundred and fifty apps, but neglected to check if that was the case. That it appears there are only sixty three of them, with the vast majority of them being either a crypto app or an app that otherwise verifies you using your World idea.

It's kind of like how Android has always had more apps than iOS, but they are often low quality, like app based wrappers of websites you already can read in your browser, or trivial ones like a flashlight app. Now, to be clear, this is also something that happens in iOS now because Apple doesn't give a rap fuck. Nevertheless, nevertheless, World's App Store is nonsense, and to talk about it is a real app store is journalistic malpractice. Come the

fuck on, I'm sick of this. If Sam Molton was not involved with this, this wouldn't get coverage and it would never have raised money, and frankly, I think everyone would be making fun of it.

peddled by a cynical con man. Twenty percent of World's tokens have, according to MIT Tech Review, already been allocated to their full time employees and investors. And I cannot find any good reason why this thing even needs a token. In fact, I really can't find a cogent reason for this company to exist. I don't see a business model or even much of a product. Well. Zapp is a boring collection of crypto adjacent bullshit, the kind of which

I thought we'd abandoned five years ago. Their token is yet another phony attempt to connect privacy to the blockchain, which is ridiculous because the blockchain is just the type of database, and their mission is almost contemptuous in its vagueness. Well, it feels like something propped up specifically to absorb data.

Venture capital and media attention and inadvertently proves that something is broken in society that allows companies to raise money to do nothing and use the media as their marketing. On just society, Sam will be laughed out of the building or unceremoniously launched headfirst from the top of it. In ours he celebrated for his vacuousness, his ideas championed as some sort of altruistic blueprint for the future.