This is the Guardian.

Something strange has been happening in cities all over the world.

So I went to a space in Shortich and once you walk in you see three World Coin staff

members, you show them your app, they say, hey, do you consent to this?

You say, sure.

That's Hibak Farah.

She's the Guardian's UK technology reporter.

And she, alongside 2 million other people has gone along to

stare into a shiny silver orb. It's handheld and there's a little camera on the front of it. It's not a close encounter with an alien

species, but a very unusual form of verification. They scan your iris and then you get your World ID and your World Coin Points.

And it's very fast. I mean, it was, you know, I'd say the entire process took less than five minutes.

The company behind the orb say that this is the new frontier in protecting our data from the rise of AI.

What better way to prove that somebody is a unique human than using the most unique

part of their identity? But some people are worried that this scheme amounts to nothing more than mass data collection without the proper legal protections.

So what's the story behind World Coin's eyeball scanning orbs?

And will giving away our biometric data come with

unforeseen costs. From the Guardian I'm Madeline Finley and this is Science Weekly.

Hibbak Farra, you're a guardian technology reporter and you've been looking into this strange story of

World Coin and their iris scanning orbs. So how did this all originate? Where does it come from?

So Wild Coin was founded three years ago by Sam Altman and Alexpania and Sam Altman is the person

who we all know for leading the discussions around AI at the moment.

He's also the person who founded ChatGPT.

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