“Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” — Luke 21:28.

Sam Altman, CEO of the company behind the world-altering ChatGPT artificial intelligence system, along with a partner announced yesterday the launch of Worldcoin, a global currency for those who “prove their humanity” through an iris scan. It has been tested in a couple dozen countries, and now they’re ready and hoping to take it global.

The Worldcoin website says, “If successful, we believe Worldcoin could drastically increase economic opportunity, scale a reliable solution for distinguishing humans from AI online while preserving privacy, enable global democratic processes, and eventually show a potential path to AI-funded UBI [universal basic income].”

Obviously this raises concerns with respect to globalism, privacy, freedom, the economy, and even biblical prophecy.

Human Intent?

Worldcoin’s stated purpose is to create a fully private and trustworthy means to prevent artificial intelligence from masquerading as humans and to keep individuals from claiming to be more than one person. At face value it sounds great: The 2020 election sure could have benefited from security like that.

Its primary application, however, would be economic, especially to keep AI out of fraudulent participation in the human business of buying and selling. That is, to solve a problem created by — guess who? — the creators of Worldcoin, among others.

Humanitarian Intent?

The company behind Worldcoin names itself “Tools for Humanity.” Its logos feature the mottoes “For every human,” and “The future is bright, and it belongs to the people of the world.”

Another part of Worldcoin’s stated purpose is to provide a universal basic income globally. Sounds great again, right? Sure, if you like socialism, and if can find it in you to believe a tech giant corporation has nothing but altruism in its heart.

That, plus you’d also have to agree with them in denying that the future belongs in any way to the God who created time and space. Humanism in our day is virtually always atheistic, or in another sense polytheistic, treating humans as gods themselves.

“We’re From a Massive Tech Corporation and We’re Here to Help”

The saying used to be “We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” Usually that’s taken to mean, “Don’t trust a word of that.” I’d rather have the government than this, though: At least we can vote, and retain some semblance of checks and balances. We can at least pay lip service to the rule of law. Tools for Humanity, in contrast, is out to create a global economic kingdom with a self-appointed emperor ruling by right of economic might.

Still, you can’t deny they’ve been helpful. Tools for Humanity went to a number of developing countries, testing their iris-scanner “Orb” with promises of “free money.” How free was it? MIT Technology Review published a scathing report on it:

We found that the company’s representatives used deceptive marketing practices, collected more personal data than it acknowledged, and failed to obtain meaningful informed consent. These practices may violate the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) — a likelihood that the company’s own data consent policy acknowledged and asked users to accept — as well as local laws.

Helpful, yes. Helping themselves. Because they had the money and the power.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Like all cryptocurrencies, Worldcoin uses blockchain technology for data security, and the company promises to delete every bit of information it gets from your iris scan, other than an undecipherable “hash” that can only be generated by your eyeball. It will contain no usable information except the code itself. If you get re-scanned, your iris will generate the same hash, proving that you are yourself, and preventing you from pretending you’re anyone else. That’s all it will do. So they say.

And that much sounds fine. Blockchain is as good as it gets for data security. So what could possibly go wrong with it? The Orbs, for one thing. Covering the globe with enough to scan everyone means massive manufacturing efforts.

Crypto tech leader Vitalik Buterin is worried enough to write, “If even one Orb manufacturer is malicious or hacked, it can generate an unlimited number of fake iris scan hashes, and give them World IDs.” That’s assuming manufacturing is licensed out to multiple different companies. On another scenario, Tools for Humanity could control all manufacturing — as if maintaining control on that scale were possible.

Even that doesn’t make the trust problem go away, of course. The whole point of Blockchain and iris scans is to protect the world from bad actions by bad actors. Do these people expect us to think we can hand that much power to them, and there won’t be any bad actors among them? With a track record like they’ve shown so far? Just how stupid do they think we are?

Speaking of Stupid …

One of Worldcoin’s purposes is “to enable global democracy.” I cannot believe the people who created ChatGPT are that stupid. The best I can make of it is that they’re not just lying to us; they’re lying to themselves, too. More likely they’re counting on us being stupid.

Democracies don’t rest on shared monetary currencies, but shared social currencies, shared values. Not just any values, either. The people need sufficient trust in the system and in their leaders, and the leaders need sufficient distrust in the same. Ordered liberty requires freedom of speech, religion, self-defense, private property, and more. There is no way to expect that of every people in the world except by forcing it upon them — not exactly the most democratic thing for a self-appointed corporation to do.

The best thing we can do is disappoint the self-appointed. Don’t fall for it, in other words.

A Global Empire

Some corporations speak metaphorically of building a global empire. For Coca-Cola, if it spoke in those terms, “ruling the world” would mean bottles of Coke in every refrigerator everywhere. Worldcoin has vaster aspirations. It’s aiming for global domination on a completely different scale.

Buterin was talking about weeding out malicious activity when he wrote, “If we see the North Korean government going around and forcing people to scan their eyeballs, those Orbs and any accounts produced by them could be immediately retroactively disabled.” But if “we” can do that to North Korea, what’s to stop “us” from doing it to anyone else, anywhere? And whoever “we” are, I’ll bet “we” don’t get elected on the first Tuesday in November.

Mark of the Beast?

Finally, this can’t help bring up thoughts of the mark of the Beast, of Revelation 13:16-17. It ticks at least three of the right boxes: Globalism, rebellion against God, and the ability to buy and sell. It’s not an actual mark, so it misses on that count. Still it’s another reminder that the technology exists and is growing. So is the “need” for it, as AI looms as such a strong potential pretender to humanness.

The stated purpose of the iris scan, remember, isn’t to invade your privacy, undermine your freedoms, control your buying and selling, or take over in place of your national government. It’s just a gift they’re offering us so we can prove we’re human, not AI fakes.

So says the man who’s more responsible than anyone else for AI fakery. Give him your iris and he’ll give you money. He won’t take a single thing back from you. It’s strictly for humanitarian purposes, nothing else. So he says.

 

Tom Gilson (@TomGilsonAuthor) is a senior editor with The Stream and the author or editor of six books, including the highly acclaimed Too Good To Be False: How Jesus’ Incomparable Character Reveals His Reality.