https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)
A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money in exchange for biometric registration on the network, in a lot of countries all over the world. It seemed to be an attempt to set up some sort of global electronic ID system and currency all in one.
That silver sphere is an iris scanner, IIRC.
Got shut down pretty hard in a bunch of places as a potentially illegal invasion of privacy.
Depending on degree of cynicism*, both takes are compatible with what was observable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)
* For what it's worth, my cynicism for Worldcoin and that eye scanner thing is currently about 7/10: moderately high but could be much worse.
By comparison, I'm 9/10 in cynicism for Facebook and 10/10 in cynicism for everything Musk does except SpaceX, my SpaceX cynicism is only 5/10.
It was 'worldcoin'. And yes I used the term 'money' very loosely there.
Apparently the token was only offered in some countries, and in some places where it was offered, that was considered enough of a bribe to render void the informed consent to collect and process private data.
> but apparently were behind how Iris scanners look these days
Not necessarily - they look whatever you want them to look. In this case sama wanted to create a feeling of futurism - the story being he is leading a global AGI revolution and you can be a part of it by staring in a metal ball.
>A Sam Altman project which seemingly popped up out of nowhere, and offered people free money
Was it free money? I recall that it was some shitcoin token paid out, which may or may not be worth something.
I could be wrong, of course.