The controversial project of Sam Altman’s blockchain, World, is launched in the United States – and said that it intended to deploy 7,500 “orbs” scanning in the cities of the country by the end of the year.
Global Orbs – Chrome -shaped bowling balls that scan a person’s eyeballs to confirm their identity – will initially be available for Americans in six “key innovation centers”, said society: Atlanta, Austin, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville and San Francisco. Those who decide to take the plunge and look in the Orb will have access to the world application and will receive an air card from the WLD token in the world. At the end of the year, the project aims to distribute enough orbs in the United States to give 180 million Americans, more than half of the population, access to the global network.
Altman and other leaders of the parent company of World’s Parent Tools for Humanity announced on Wednesday evening the American expansion at a press conference in San Francisco, as well as a multitude of new features and partnerships for the project.
The global application will now offer its users access to loans supported by the crypto via the non -guardian loan protocol and the prediction markets via Kalshi. Later this year, WLD holders will be able to spend their tokens as money with a new visa debit card linked to the world. The project even integrates its identity verification technology into certain online dating applications. Starting with Tinder users in Japan, the group of giant online dating matches will be piloted using World ID to check the ages of its users.
Altman said that the idea of World preceded Openai, his generative company of artificial intelligence (AI).
“We needed a kind of means to authenticate humans in the era of [artificial general intelligence]”Said Altman at the press conference.” We needed a way to know what content was made by humans, [and what was made] by ai. We wanted a way to ensure that humans have remained special and central in a world where the Internet was going to have a lot of content focused on AI. »»
Altman’s initial ideas on how to solve the problem of human verification were “very crazy”, he said-the world and his orbs sweeping away, only a little.
World is the latest crypto project to announce an American expansion. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, the regulatory environment has become much more user -friendly for cryptographic projects.
The company has announced that it would build a factory in Richardson, Texas – a suburb of Dallas – to help produce the orbs necessary for its upcoming American expansion. After the initial deployment, other major cities, including Seattle, Orlando, San Diego and Las Vegas, will receive the second wave of orbs.
“They will be really everywhere,” said Alex Blania, co-founder of Tools for Humanity. “They will be in service stations, convenience stores, and you can check within 10 minutes wherever you are.”
