When you hear Sam Altman’s name, you probably think of him in the context of OpenAI, the company that’s more or less pioneering the public-facing side of the AI revolution. But Sam Altman is more than just a tech CEO.
Like Elon Musk, Sam Altman has a big vision for the future. He’s building companies that will turn his vision into reality.
Aside from OpenAI, Sam Altman is an investor in a number of biotech companies, he’s the co-founder of Tools for Humanity, and he recently joined forces with Apple’s Jony Ive to create AI-powered hardware that is poised to transform how you and I use the internet.
Sam Altman doesn’t just believe that AI will help you be more productive at work. Artificial intelligence is a revolutionary new technology that will replace the internet and, thus, the economy that’s been built off of it.
Worldcoin is the infrastructure for a new digital economy. It uses biometric verification to distinguish humans from AI. The need to do this suggests a major shift is underway in the economy.
Tools for Humanity was co-founded by Sam Altman and Alex Blania in 2019. The goal of the company is to create a human-centered economy that can coexist alongside AI.
The thesis behind Tools for Humanity is the recognition that AI agents will proliferate and once they do, it’ll be increasingly difficult to differentiate humans from AI. That means you won’t just be out of a job by 2027, the economy as you know it will no longer exist.
There are significant implications to this. Our current economy is structured around the internet. Almost every aspect of the consumer economy – from processing payments to serving advertisements – is built off of digital platforms that exist entirely on the World Wide Web.
The single-most important value the internet has made to the economy is getting audiences in front of advertisers. No more placing full page ads in magazines hoping your targeted customers sees the ad and decides to make a purchase. Thanks to the internet, platforms can identify potential customers, mold their behavior, and guarantee sales.
You might not realize it but some of the biggest tech companies powering the economy right now are built off of advertising – not tech. Meta, Google, and Amazon are valuable because of their ability to harvest their user’s data, shape cohorts, and sell those cohorts to advertisers.
Once AI agents come online, the entire value proposition of advertising on the internet comes undone. Why would any company spend money on ads that are shown to bots who can’t buy or use their products?
Advertisers will move their advertising dollars from search engines and social media platforms to new AI-powered tools. Meanwhile, consumers will be displaced by AI, losing access to what little discretionary income they have to purchase advertiser’s products.
This will transform the existence of the internet as we know it.
Sam Altman – a major player behind the proliferation of AI agents – knows this. So he’s creating a suite of new companies to shape the economy that emerges, including a system that can differentiate humans from AI.
Worldcoin scans human irises and creates a unique ID from them. While there are benefits to having a digital ID, this technology could be used to limit your participation in the new economy that emerges.
Worldcoin is a global project that is both a biometric verification system and a cryptocurrency network. A Worldcoin Orb scans a human iris, issues a unique ID – a World ID – to distinguish humans from non-humans. People who set up accounts are issued WLD cryptocurrency tokens and in the future, this infrastructure could be used for distributing universal basic income payments.
This is both brilliant and utterly terrifying.
A unique digital ID that centralizes personal information on a blockchain is necessary and inevitable. Whether you’re trying to get your driver’s license at the DMV, renew your car’s registration, sell a house, apply for a job, or see if you qualify for food stamps, the administrative processes most of us encounter on a day-to-day basis are inefficient and wasteful.
A centralized digital ID would allow you to store medical records, government IDs, and access digital financial markets all in one place. China has a super app where you can already do this and having an all-in-one mega app is Elon Musk’s vision for X.
Whether you like it or not, there is a high probability digital IDs and digital currencies are going to be part of our lives in the very near future. While there are good reasons to centralize information into a digital ID, there are some obvious red flags.
Once you scan your iris and create a World ID it’s unclear who owns it. You certainly don’t. So does Tools for Humanity own it? The Orb Operator? A data broker?
And once your iris scan is on the Worldcoin network, how will it be used? Harvesting your shopping data and social media engagements is one thing. Owning biometric data, however, is something entirely different. If you’ve watched Gattaca you know where this could lead.
Aside from privacy issues, there’s also concerns about surveillance. Sure, Worldcoin could be used to distribute a future UBI payment, but it could also be programmed to limit how you participate in the economy. If all of your data is centralized in one place and an AI tool is used to analyze it, that AI tool could be programmed to make decisions on your behalf.
If the money you receive in a post-work world isn’t something you earned, you don’t really have the freedom to spend it as you please, do you?
Final takeaway.
Up until now, Worldcoin hasn’t gotten too much attention. The company has been busy scanning irises outside of the United States so this aspect of the AI revolution has flown under the radar.
That’s about to change.
Worldcoin is now available in the United States. Download the World app to your phone and find an Orb Operator to scan your iris and finish setting up a World ID. Orbs are currently available in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Austin, San Francisco, Miami, and Nashville.
Personally, I think the launch of Worldcoin in the United States represents a significant turning point for human civilization. From this point forward, everyone is going to have to individually decide how they will use technology. Either you go with the flow or you don’t. There’s no middle ground.
If you scan your iris, you will get a World ID and have the chance to go all in on the future that Tools for Humanity is creating. If it takes off and you’re an early adopter, the value of whatever WLD tokens you acquire now could be a future windfall.
If you don’t get a World ID you could get left behind. In much the same way that many places don’t take cash anymore – including the coffee shop I’m currently sitting in to write this – there’s a risk if you don’t have a World ID you’ll lock yourself out of participating in the future economy. You might not bear the risks that come with digital IDs, but you won’t fully benefit from the gains generated by the AI revolution either – including access to UBI.
This decision isn’t one to take lightly. Once you surrender biometric data, you can’t get it back. Tools for Humanity has deliberately chosen iris scans because they are the biometric datapoint that is the most AI-proof. There’s clearly something inherently valuable about this unique part of your biological identity. Do you really want to give it up?
A lot of good may come out of the AI revolution. But that good isn’t going to be distributed equitably. The value from the AI revolution won’t be realized by the creation of artificial intelligence itself, but by participation in the AI-powered economy at scale.
Sam Altman and the rest of Silicon Valley only makes money so long as you and I participate in the digital ecosystems they’re building. They need to sell you and I the promise of benefiting from the new digital economy in the future even if they have no intent of surrendering any of the power and wealth they’ve accrued for themselves from it.
We’re still in the early stages of all of this. Right now you still have agency to make decisions about what you want your future to look like. But as we progress further into the AI revolution, you’re not going to have as many options.
If the technologists are right and you do lose your job in 2027, there won’t be another option for you to fall back on. Even driving for Uber is destined to become obsolete.
When that happens you won’t have options. If the only way to feed yourself and your family is to get a World ID, you’re going to get a World ID. And if Worldcoin is programmed to tell you where you’re allowed to shop and what food you're allowed to purchase, that’s going to be your new reality.
I know this is a heavy topic and it isn’t fun to think about, but now that Worldcoin has launched in the United States, it’s important to have this conversation now while there’s still time to think through the implications of what’s coming down the pike.
The future will be here before you know it.
📚Additional Reading
If you want to read more about this topic, here are some other articles that take a deeper dive into Worldcoin, UBI, and some of the implications of biometrically-verified digital IDs.
Worldcoin Wants to Buy Your Eyeball — Should You Sell It?
Worldcoin might be the most important financial innovation since Bitcoin. Yet, very few people are talking about it.
This Study Shows What Happens When You Implement Universal Basic Income – The Findings Aren’t Good
What would you do with an extra $1,000?
Geofence or Ghetto? Is This the Inevitable Evolution of Location-Based Services?
I recently moved to Austin, TX, where scooters are one of the primary modes of transportation. It doesn’t matter where you are in the city, you’ll likely cross paths with someone zipping by on one.
No Really, You Only Have Two Years Until AI Takes Your Job
Imagine being alive during the height of the Industrial Revolution. Factories seem to spring up overnight and new cities are quickly emerging around them. While life doesn’t change too much for the average worker, the social fabric of Europe is coming undone. A new capitalist class has emerged – the middle class – and within a generation, life as you know it has fundamentally changed.
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