Business
Sam Altman's eye-scanning orbs have arrived, sparking curiosity and fear
SAN FRANCISCO — Earlier this month, a mysterious store selling a vision of the future opened its doors in downtown San Francisco’s Union Square district.
A cryptic message appeared on the storefront window: “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 store attracted a small crowd and curious onlookers. People took turns scanning their eyes by peering into white devices known as orbs — to prove they are human. Then they received, free of charge, a verified World ID they could use to log into online services and apps. As an extra bonus, participants were given some Worldcoin cryptocurrency tokens.
Some just observed from a distance.
“I’m afraid to walk inside,” said Brian Klein, 66, as he peered into the window on his way to the theater. “I don’t want that thing taking any of my data and biometric scanning me.”
The futuristic technology is the creation of a startup called Tools for Humanity, which is based in San Francisco and Munich, Germany. Founded in 2019 by Alex Blania and Sam Altman — the entrepreneur known for OpenAI’s ChatGPT — the tech company says it’s “building for humans in the age of AI.”
In theory, these iris scans offer a safe and convenient way for consumers to verify their human identity at a time when AI-powered tools can easily create fake audio and images of people.
“We wanted a way to make sure that humans stayed special and essential in a world where the internet was going to have lots of AI-driven content,” said Altman, the chairman for Tools for Humanity, at a glitzy event in San Francisco last month.
Like the early stages of Facebook and PayPal, World is still in a growth phase, trying to lure enough customers to its network to eventually build a viable service.
A chief draw, World says, is that people can verify their humanness at an orb without providing personal information, such as, their names, emails, phone numbers and social media profiles.
But some are skeptical, contending that handing over biometric data is too risky. They cite instances where companies have reported data breaches or filed for bankruptcy, such as DNA research firm 23andMe.
“You can’t get new eyeballs. I don’t care what this company says. Biometric data like these retinal scans will get out. Hacks and leaks happen all the time,” said Justin Kloczko, a tech and privacy advocate at Consumer Watchdog. “Your eyeballs are going to be like gold to these thieves.”
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1. An orb. 2. Frankie Reina, of West Hollywood, gets an eye scan. 3. A woman is reflected in an orb while getting an eye scan. 4. Frankie Reina waits to be verified after getting an eye scan. (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
World has been making waves in Asia, Europe, South America and Central America. More than 12 million people have verified themselves through the orbs and roughly 26 million have downloaded the World app, where people store their World ID, digital assets and access other tools, the company says.
Now, World is setting its sights on the United States. The World app says people can claim up to 39 Worldcoin tokens, worth up to $45.49 if a user verifies they’re human with an orb.
World plans to deploy 7,500 orbs throughout the U.S. this year. It’s opening up spaces where people can scan their eyes in six cities — Los Angeles, San Francisco, Atlanta, Austin, Miami and Nashville. The L.A. space opened on Melrose Avenue last week.
Backed by well-known venture capital firms including Bain Capital, Menlo Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, Tools for Humanity has raised $240 million, as of March, according to Pitchbook.
The crypto eye-scanning project has stirred up plenty of buzz, but also controversy.
In places outside the United States, including Hong Kong, Spain, Portugal, Indonesia, South Korea, and Kenya, regulators have scrutinized the effort because of data privacy concerns.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden, who leaked classified details of the U.S. government’s mass surveillance program, responded to Altman’s post about the project in 2021 by saying “the human body is not a ticket-punch.”
Ashkan Soltani, the former executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency, said that privacy risks can outweigh the benefits of handing over biometric data.
“Even if companies don’t store raw biometric data, like retina scans, the derived identifiers are immutable … and permanently linked to the individuals they were captured from,” he said in an email.
World executives counter that the orb captures photos of a person’s face and eyes, but doesn’t store any of that data. To receive a verified World ID, people can choose to send their iris image to their phone and that data are encrypted, meaning that the company can’t view or access the information.
Frankie Reina, of West Hollywood, left, gets an eye scan with the help of Myra Vides, center.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
The idea for World began five years ago. Before the popularity of ChatGPT ignited an AI frenzy, Altman was on a walk with Blania in San Francisco talking about how trust would work in the age where AI systems are smarter than humans.
“The initial ideas were very crazy, then we came down to one that was just a little bit crazy, which became World,” Altman said onstage at an event about World’s U.S. debut at Fort Mason, a former U.S. Army post in San Francisco.
At the event, tech workers, influencers and even California Gov. Gavin Newsom and San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie wandered in and out of a large building filled with orbs, refreshments and entertainment.
Tools for Humanity Chief Executive Blania highlighted three ways people could use their verified World ID: gaming, dating and social media.
Currently, online services use a variety of ways to confirm people’s identities including video selfies, phone numbers, government-issued IDs and two-factor authentication.
World recently teamed up with gaming company Razer, based in Irvine and Singapore, to verify customers are human through a single-sign on, and is placing orbs in Razer stores.
Blania also touted a partnership with Match Group, where people can used World to verify themselves and their ages on apps such as Tinder , an effort that will be tested in Japan.
“We think the internet as a whole will need a proof of human and one space that I’m personally most excited about will be social,” Blania said at the San Francisco event.
Alex Blania, the chief executive of Tools for Humanity, speaks onstage during an event for the U.S. launch of World at Fort Mason Center on April 30 in San Francisco.
(Kimberly White / Getty Images for World)
Back at the World store in San Francisco, Zachary Sussman was eager to check out the orbs with his two friends, both in their 20s.
“For me, the more ‘Black Mirror’ the technology is, the more likely I am to use it,” Sussman said, referring to the popular Netflix sci-fi series. “I like the dystopian aesthetic.”
Doug Colaizzo, 35, checked out the store with his daughter and parents. Colaizzo, a developer, described himself as an “early adopter” of technology. He already uses his fingerprint to unlock his front door and his smartphone to pay for items.
“We need a better way of identifying humans,” he said. “I support this idea, even if this is not gonna be the one that wins.”
Andras Cser, vice president and principal analyst of Security and Risk Management at Forrester Research, said the fact that people have to go to a store to scan their eyes could limit adoption.
World is building a gadget called the “mini Orb” that’s the size of a smartphone, but convincing people to carry a separate device around will also be an uphill battle, he said.
“There’s big time hype with a ton of customer friction and privacy problems,” he said.
The company will have to convince skeptics like Klein to hand over their biometric data. The San Francisco resident is more cautious, especially after he had to delete his DNA data from 23andMe because the biotech company filed for bankruptcy.
“I’m not going to go off and live in the wilderness by myself,” he said. “Eventually, I might have to, but I’m going to resist as much as I can.”
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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