May 9, 2025 • 12 mins
In this week’s monologue, Ed Zitron walks you through World, Sam Altman’s meaningless new “World” startup that trades you cryptocurrency for a scan of your eyeballs, and how it proves something is deeply wrong with our society.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Zone Media. Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue.
I'm your host ed Zetron. What Last week, Sam Altman's
sort of debuted his latest idea, a project called World
that claims to be and this is a direct quote,
(00:24):
a network of real humans built on an anonymous proof
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
(00:46):
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
(01:08):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:12):
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
(02:33):
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
(02:54):
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
(03:14):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Sam?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
How would that work? What does any of that mean?
Who knows? Just just write the fucking quote down, I guess,
just say it. We don't all have our own personal
Massayoshi Sun to lend US forty billion dollars whenever we want.
It's just it's incoherent. Nevertheless, mister rus of the Times
Mysterious went on to say that Altman and Alex Blinia,
(03:48):
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?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
When has a tech company ever distributed the proceeds of anything,
especially one run by Samilton, the CEO of Open Ai,
a company built on stealing people's shit and trying to
take their jobs.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It's just I don't know, man, Like I try not
to be so much of a hater. But you see
this shit, and you like Kevin Rus is ostensibly not
an idiot, Like, why wouldn't you just say, hey, Yeah,
they say they want this to be universal basic income,
but I haven't described why or how or even what
(04:44):
the practicalities are. And that's a problem that would be
a good thing for the New York Times to discuss.
But no, we need to keep the column going. Don't
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
(05:07):
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
(05:30):
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
(05:52):
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,
(06:14):
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,
(06:35):
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.
(06:57):
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
(07:18):
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.
(07:39):
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
(08:02):
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
(08:23):
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,
(08:47):
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,
(09:10):
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
(09:32):
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
(09:52):
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,
(10:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I've read about fifteen different articles about World to write
this monologue, and I was hoping i'd find just this
mesion of information about this company that would somehow show
depth or substance or something other than Sam Altman is
working on something. And I'm gonna be honest. I came
up shore and what you just heard there was my
cat Howell, who has decided to join me for this episode.
(10:54):
World is a fuss. It's another cynical con yes, how
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
(11:14):
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.
(11:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Good Grief
Zone Media. Hello and welcome to this week's Better Offline Monologue.
I'm your host ed Zetron. What Last week, Sam Altman's
sort of debuted his latest idea, a project called World
that claims to be and this is a direct quote,
(00:24):
a network of real humans built on an anonymous proof
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
(00:46):
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
(01:08):
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
(01:29):
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
(01:49):
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
(02:12):
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
(02:33):
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
(02:54):
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
(03:14):
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?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Sam?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
How would that work? What does any of that mean?
Who knows? Just just write the fucking quote down, I guess,
just say it. We don't all have our own personal
Massayoshi Sun to lend US forty billion dollars whenever we want.
It's just it's incoherent. Nevertheless, mister rus of the Times
Mysterious went on to say that Altman and Alex Blinia,
(03:48):
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?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
When has a tech company ever distributed the proceeds of anything,
especially one run by Samilton, the CEO of Open Ai,
a company built on stealing people's shit and trying to
take their jobs.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
It's just I don't know, man, Like I try not
to be so much of a hater. But you see
this shit, and you like Kevin Rus is ostensibly not
an idiot, Like, why wouldn't you just say, hey, Yeah,
they say they want this to be universal basic income,
but I haven't described why or how or even what
(04:44):
the practicalities are. And that's a problem that would be
a good thing for the New York Times to discuss.
But no, we need to keep the column going. Don't
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
(05:07):
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
(05:30):
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
(05:52):
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,
(06:14):
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,
(06:35):
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.
(06:57):
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
(07:18):
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.
(07:39):
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
(08:02):
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
(08:23):
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,
(08:47):
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,
(09:10):
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
(09:32):
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
(09:52):
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,
(10:14):
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.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Now.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
I've read about fifteen different articles about World to write
this monologue, and I was hoping i'd find just this
mesion of information about this company that would somehow show
depth or substance or something other than Sam Altman is
working on something. And I'm gonna be honest. I came
up shore and what you just heard there was my
cat Howell, who has decided to join me for this episode.
(10:54):
World is a fuss. It's another cynical con yes, how
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
(11:14):
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.
(11:36):
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.
Speaker 2 (11:58):
Good Grief
Host
Ed Zitron
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